thinking about the limits of control. pshew. it's hard to think. it's saying all of life is a dream, but it's a hard dream. how do i know what it's saying, i just try to think about what it says to me. a good film keeps playing within your head. this one i think happens mostly after viewing. it's reviewing itself in my head. so maybe jarmusch is not just floundering, or he's floundering with intent. i saw it once and then again with r. both times i said it's beautiful and yet it felt disconnected. i felt disconnected. but i think it's about the search for connection in a world of control. i thought this morning about how the world is operating. how the masters of war control the riches of the planet and the people are deracinated from the land and forced into the artifice of the city and the war economy. we went from animal to human, from nurturance and relationship to extraction, from partner to wage slave. we live in the limits of control having lost control. we have no control of the government and no control of the land. all we have is relation and art, and these actions are strained and attenuated in the system of extraction. what is hard is to live in this extraction, to be a resource to oneself and others while the predatory controllers of the commonwealth see us as no more than units of extraction.
there's more to look for but the phrase that was written on the back of a pickup kept nudging me. la vida no vale nada. 

Life is Worth Nothing

Life is worth nothing

if it does not come to an end

so others can have

what one enjoys and loves.

 

Life is worth nothing

if I just sit here

having seen and imagined

that they call to me everywhere.

 

Life is worth nothing

when people are killing one another

and I go on singing here

as if nothing was happening.

 

Life is worth nothing

if I hear a death cry

and it does not touch

my heart it stops.

 

Life is worth nothing

if I disregard the fact that the assassin

has gone by a different route

and prepares another ambush.

 

Life is worth nothing

if another brother is taken by surprise

when I knew beforehand

what was being prepared for him.

 

Life is worth nothing

if four fall every minute

and in the end by crime

the day is won.

 

Life is worth nothing

if I have to put off

another minute of being

and die in a bed.

 

Life is worth nothing

if in the end what goes on around me

I cannot change no matter

what I have and what protects me.

 

And that is why for me

life is worth nothing.