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Multiple lenses

When I began as writer, I wished to be a play­wright. Grow­ing up in New York City meant I could and did go to a lot of plays. (It was vast­ly cheap­er to go to the the­atre in those days.) In any case, one of the plays I saw was a the­atri­cal adap­ta­tion of the Japan­ese film, Rashomon. It proved to have an enor­mous impact on me.

Rasho-Mon

Sim­ply put, Rashomon tells a rather vio­lent sto­ry, but most impor­tant­ly, it tells it in dif­fer­ent ver­sions, as expe­ri­enced dif­fer­ent­ly by the main char­ac­ters. The out­line of the sto­ry always remained the same, but the details, motives, some of the events as well as expe­ri­ences were dif­fer­ent, some­times rad­i­cal­ly so.

Quite sim­ply, it changed my way of look­ing at the world, offer­ing a vast­ly more com­plex and (yes) more inter­est­ing way of under­stand­ing peo­ple. It taught me that no two peo­ple ever expe­ri­ence any­thing—even a shared moment—in the same way.

Nothing But the TruthPer­haps this is the ori­gin of my Noth­ing but the Truth.

Of course, this kind of think­ing, look­ing at the world through mul­ti­ple lens­es, has immense val­ue for a writer. The moment you accept the notion that every­one expe­ri­ences every­thing in a unique way open end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for nar­ra­tive and under­stand­ing. As a char­ac­ter in my forth­com­ing, Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor says, “Pete, noth­ing is sim­ple. Know that and you know half the world’s wisdom.”

It is also not a bad way—if I may sug­gest it—of being part of the world.

1 thought on “Multiple lenses”

  1. Try­ing to under­stand why a per­son thinks the way they do, or acts the way they do helps a lot when you run into anger, stub­born­ness or pet­ti­ness. It does­n’t solve the prob­lem but it makes life easier.

    Reply

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