Sunday Double Features

I have this theory that time passes faster as we age because we have less milestones by which to measure the passage of time. School is filled with these markers. New quarters. Midterms. Spring Break. Graduation. Then we get a job, where milestones are still present but less significant. Annual review. Vacation. Monday morning. Those of us that have kids, find themselves measuring time by their children’s milestones. First steps. First grade. First birthday. First dance. But then, suddenly, it stops. We find there aren’t enough markers in our lives for us to remember “was that ten years ago? Or fifteen?”

Humans suck at abstracting time. We need metaphors. Time isn’t a ticking numerical timeline in our heads. We don’t recall something was fifteen day ago, because we can slowly re-count the passage of time over the last fourteen days; we remember it was fifteen days ago because it was the same day we tried that new Tex-Mex restaurant, and that was the day after the dentist, and the dentist appointment was for the 13th, and today is the 29th…so…that was fifteen days ago. We measure time in relation to events.

Nothing will make this more clear than becoming self-employed and working at home. It’s very easy for every day to become the same day, and for time as a measurable thing to disappear from your life.

We like to think of time being something we want to loose track of. And we do want that—IN THE MOMENT. We want to have hours go by because we are laughing with friends. We don’t want to be watching the clock and feeling time ticking slowly forward as we play with our pets. We want to get lost in some activity; to achieve flow. BUT we still want to know that today is Sunday; the the month is March, that the year is 2024. Without that GPS sense of location in time, it feels as if our life is slipping away. It’s gone before we feel it. We’re never present in it. It’s always behind us.

I’ve discovered recently that a large part of feeling present comes from anticipating something in the future. (There’s an irony to that which amuses me.) Wanting something that will happen later somehow makes us more aware of where we are now.

Yet, here’s the rub: we live in the least anticipatory time in human history. We wait for little and when we do wait we we honk our horns at slow moving green lights. We don’t wait for letters, we send emails, text messages, and DMs that arrive instantly. We don’t go to the store hoping to find the item we want, we order online from stores that seemingly never run out, and in the off-chance that they do, we go to another website in seconds. We don’t wait to buy albums—hell, we don’t even wait to get to the store to buy those album. The moment they’re released, we have them at our finger tips. (We don’t even pay for them!) We don’t wait a week for the next episode of a tv show, we binge. We have groceries delivered and diner AND WE NEVER TAKE OUR HANDS OFF OF THE LITTLE SQUARE PORTALS OF INSTANT GRATIFICATION IN OUR POCKETS.

Is it any wonder that with so little anticipation, we experience so little enjoyment?

As a way of combatting this, I’m building artificial anticipation into my life. And I’m starting with movies.

Back when I was a kid, going to the movies was a thing. There was always at least one movie you were dying to see and you were champing at the bit until that day came. I miss that. I miss not having everything I can imagine available in an instant. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true. It turns out that without the desire, the anticipation, and the lack, the pleasure in finding things becomes a bore. In fact, it becomes a chore. Nobody enjoys the thirty minutes of scrolling “for something good” before finally watching anything.

So, I’m bringing back the double feature (another relic of movie houses and drive-ins.)

Every Monday, I’m picking out two films which have some connection to each other (both mafia movies, both star Sylvester Stallone, both are Japanese, both end in slow motion bloodbaths.) But I’m not going to watch them on Monday. I have a little chalkboard next to my TV. I’m going to write their names on that chalkboard and then I’m going to stare at those titles all week like a marquee, when finally, on Sunday I’ll hit play.

I’m doing this tonight for the first time. And yes, I’m excited! In fact, I’m probably going to start the first movie after I finish sending this.

It occurs to me that some of you might want to watch along. So, on Mondays, when I pick out the movies, I’ll send my picks along to you. Something short—the description of each from Letterboxd maybe and few words about what the theme of the double feature is.

It’s lovely subversion of the digital world, don’t you think. Instead looking back at what has passed and writing a review of some sort, we’ll be looking forward to what has yet to come. Maybe you’ll make your own marquee each week. Fi so, I’d love to see that if you do.