Sunday, March 20, 2005
Secrets
As I was writing Dream Machine, I noticed and entertained myself with the various themes I was touching upon, but most importantly, I found it essential to go into the characters and themes themselves and try to divulge things, to make them better. For the most part, I was writing about secrets and their almost too alluring aspects and I later realized that -well- there are some things that aren't worth exploring.
What are secrets anyway? A piece of information sworn by word never to be told? Yet there are some people who live secret lives, I should know; I am one of those people. People who never reveal more than needed to be. Often, for protection or security. But what I find that I should always keep a part of myself, for myself, may not apply with other people. In every human being, there's this urge to know things, it begins when you are a child and as we grow, our thirst to understand everything grows more and more. Human nature, perhaps? or human curse?
I have been pondering on the concept of questions and answers ever since I read From A Buick 8 by Stephen King. If you watch those monster movies, you always have the basic formula of scientist and monster, the old Frankenstein story. We stumble upon something that we do not understand or seek to dissect and as we go deeper and deeper into the truth, we find ourselves battling the very thing we sought to resolve. Mary Shelley may have stumbled upon the very concept of man and science in Frankenstein's story; that we are our own demons in a way, fueled by our hunger for something insatiable. A man craved immortality and did so by breaking the boundaries of human rights by defecating human corpses and stringing them into a monster -of his same name- only to have it ultimately rob him of everything. Is this our fate?
Really, how far is Frankenstein from Nuclear weapons? We created the nuclear bomb to end world war 2 yet even now, there is a silent arms race for the same thing. Possible even, to erase us. We asked ourselves how would we end the war and we gave ourselves an answer, yet now, our answer seems to have backfired and now, we question ourselves once again. We, as people, have struggle with our demons, they are our secrets. They are secrets known only as you sit in a lonely room with only your thoughts to accompany you. They whisper softly in one ear and vanish completely in the other, leaving you with did I really think that. Is it worth to seek answers to everything, for the sake of satisfaction?
The real story of Genesis dictates that Adam and Eve weren't cast out of paradise because they disobeyed God, but instead, God didn't want them to eat off the tree of life since they alerady partook of the tree of knowledge. If ever they did eat off the tree of life, they would be no different from God, and of course, God was aware of this and so, we -mankind- are mortal. If we were immortal, what would stop us really, from becoming God? Nothing. We now have the power to destroy our world a thousand times over yet we do not stop there, we keep searching for things that seemingly form out of the air. Did we really sacrifice immortality for knowledge... did we? Did we give up our lives for the sake of knowing? Did we -in fact- sell our souls to learn every secret there is?
How far are we from heaven when we have dug ourselves too deep, trying to find answers in the sand?
Riding the Lightning
11:37 PM
