sleepwalk with me

sleepwalk with me is mike birbiglia's new film. i saw it thanks to SIFF tonight {seattle international film festival} and i spent half the film cringing, half the film laughing, and half the film nearly in tears {yes, that's three halves, it was that good}. it hits a little too close to home on so many fronts: facing failure as an artist, what success looks like as an artist {and more importantly, how it's linked to speaking your own truth truth}, relationships, facing even more failure...i could go on.

but i think what is lingering longest about the film was how it didn't end all tidy and wrapped up in a bow but open, in transition, not fixed or perfect but simply on the right path or at least closer to it. and i am beginning to realize that is all we can really ask for.

i know this probably is a bit tangential, but it brings to mind a quote from the tobolowsky files {which i have been meaning to write about since they came on my radar last fall – it's a podcast by stephen tobolowsky filled with entertaining stories that are the vehicle for little gems of wisdom and prose like the one i'm about to give you}:

relationships are the battleground where we fight for what version of ourselves we become: honest or deceptive, independent or lazy. they reflect all of our potential and all of our weaknesses at the same time. like schroedinger's cat, our relationships are the rarefied super-position where we are all things at once. once you fall in love, you are in the box and your story begins. you never know how you'll react to fortune or jealousy or children. you never know until you open up the box. when you start a relationship, you always have ideas about how the other person will broaden your horizon and lift you up, but truthfully a relationship will always redefine itself around the level of its greatest weakness.

episode 48.

sleepwalk with me.
or just plain walk with me.