Lightness
Walking back from the train station I feel that sense of voyeuristic detachment, that stepping outside of oneself, that makes me think of Milan Kundera’s famous novel—more specifically its famous title, because I’ve never read the book, although I have seen the film. The story attached to it has weighty themes about life under communism, but you could cast them all off and lose nothing that mattered; you could throw away a lifetime’s writing if the five words you kept were as pithy and lasting as those.
If only they didn’t work best as a title; then he wouldn’t have had to write a novel around them. He could just have walked to and from the train station, saying to his neighbours, when they asked him why he had that odd look on his face—that one you get when you become overwhelmingly aware that you’re alive and physically present in the world right here and now, hovering between tears of happiness and complete emotional collapse: “Oh, you know. Lightness of being. Unbearable, really.”
16 August 2005
You've just gone and reminded me of a CD I haven't listened to for nearly a decade, by an artsie Aussie musical outfit called Mr Floppy. It was called The Unbearable Lightness of Being A Dickhead and featured a lot of excellent sampling. I'm gonna go dig it out and bung it on now in honour of your ruminations... Cheers, Rory.
Added by Dom on 21 August 2005.