I love reading Kristen Kalp's blog Brand Camp. She always shares something that surprises me and gets me to see things in a new way. The other day she posted this video, which has an excerpt from a speech that Charlie Kaufman made at a BAFTA event. The video was made by the filmmaker Eliot Rausch, using Kaufman's words. I have downloaded the pdf of the entire speech and it is well worth reading. Mr. Rausch's video BLEW MY MIND. Here is my favorite part from Kaufman's speech:
I do not know what the wound is, I do know that it is old. I do know that it is a hole in my being. I do know it is tender. I do believe that it is unknowable, or at least unable to be articulable. I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won’t be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live. It is the thing from which your art, your painting, your dance, your composition, your philosophical treatise, your screenplay is born.
WOW, right? He has such interesting things to say about us as humans and society and mass consumerism. This is one of those videos I will have to watch over and over before I even begin to understand it fully. It is one of those things you hear and you can feel how right it is in your bones, even as your mind struggles to keep up. It is art. It is real. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
What I have to Offer from Eliot Rausch on Vimeo.