Last night k and I went to the premier of a film by a friend. The film is fantastic and thought provoking. I recommend it if you have any interest in things New Orleans.
But it was the answer to a question in the Q & A after the film that really got my mind going. Asked about the decision to go ahead and release the film in the wake of the past year, Rebecca answered that she thought the film fit in to a larger pattern of questioning that is going on in the city. She said that all of us here are asking the questions, Why here? Why now? Why have we decided to return?
And she is right. What happened last night is that her question hit me from an unexpected angle. Almost as if I have been thinking about the questions so often over the past year that their richness had faded into the background. I guess in a weird way I suddently realized that I’ve been thinking about them on autopilot for a while now — which is perhaps another way of saying I wasn’t truly thinking about them anymore. Just going through the motions.
The more I thought about my answers to the questions — friends, community, meaningful work, livable urban spaces, culture — the more each answer ceased to be an answer and morphed into its own new set of questions.
The paradox of choice in action? Not sure. I haven’t sorted it out yet. Certainly not a crisis. Mostly just interesting.