Sarah and I had coffee afterward and talked of the film, but not of her boyfriend, our mutual friend, Kevin. Perhaps this detail is of no importance. Perhaps connections like this are like names: superficial. Perhaps everything has a meaning, and things like names help form the patterns by which me may comprehend our lives. My uncle, my mom's brother, is named Kevin. He was the Kevin of my childhood. He is a firefighter. Who am I to say what's important?
I usually get excited about movies when they address a unique vision concerning either the artistic or the spiritual, especially if I can take it under the expanding umbrella of my own vision. We Need to Talk About Kevin addressed neither. It was a compelling, original discussion of child-rearing's toll on the bohemian lifestyle, and a particularly terrible relationship between a mother and her sociopathic son. The music choices, the cinematic expression of emotion—playing with focus, disorienting editing, varied pacing—and always the performance of Tilda Swinton, all this was exemplary. But this movie alone would not have sent me eagerly to the task of writing.
The other movie I had wanted to see at the local independent movie theater was Jeff, who Lives at Home. It was to begin an hour after ours had let out and Sarah had already seen it and recommended it. Today was my no-holds barred, no-doubt-about-it day off, so I decided to see it as well. My only other plan for the day was to visit Jimmy at City Hall to give him some 'zines I had made from my essay on William Carlos Williams' "The Basis of Faith in Art." I said goodbye to Sarah, who had to go to the very job I did not have today, and I headed off.
At City Hall I found a German tourist talking to Jimmy from across the table set in front of his living area, and another man sitting cross-legged with his back against the wall, over by Jimmy, enclosed in the encampment. I presented Jimmy with the photocopied booklets and Johanis—he introduced himself to me—took a picture of Jimmy holding them. He put ten dollars in the Occupy bank—a red tin in the shape of the British telephone booth celebrated as the time travel device in Dr. Who, wished Jimmy luck for the inevitable spring resurgence of the movement, said he'd follow on TV back in Germany, and moseyed on.
The man who was sitting back with Jimmy asked my sign and read from my horoscope from the free Weekly that had come out that day. "Liminality"—"the betwixt state"—was my theme, meaning the moment of convergence between two opposites when it is neither one or the other. I was in "a time and place where uncertainty and ambiguity reign even as exciting new possibilities loom."
The fellow who read my horoscope took one issue of "I Need to Occupy My Mind with Something," as I had called the booklet, to read and bring back, and said goodbye. And I took his spot on the ground below Jimmy sitting in his lawn chair. He was reading a Rolling Stone Article on Bruce Springsteen, I could see as he set it down. He was not wearing his California State Parks Ranger's hat, but a more traditional cowboy hat and unstylish sunglasses. He had another book open with its spine up on a tupperware crate next to him.
The peculiar conversation that followed all happened naturally, perhaps as our talks had already progressed similarly in the past, and I was already sat like a disciple beneath him, come to hear the teachings of a sage descended from the mountain, me bearing offerings. He went straight to the property in northern Santa Barbara County that he had talked about before, once by the free coffee/sample station at the Trader Joe's where my friend Kevin works. He talked about his year alone there—encounters with bears and mountain lions, sharing the location with them; rock formations and trees communicating with him; searching for a round rock—not unlike my bocce balls—not finding one until hearing a voice that advised that he dive off a particular rock—which he did—and intuitively finding this one rock, understanding an affirmation that it was his; hearing a symphony in the collections and slipstreams of a river and saying that it sounded like the collections and slipstreams of a symphony—like Handel's Water Music—metaphors and perceptions of beauty as fluid as...a symphony.
I felt silly hearing all this, these lucid descriptions of spiritual epiphany, peaceful mellifluous accounts of open awareness, and knowing I would leave before I would hear all that Jimmy could tell me, just to go to see another movie. But that was my intention, and I had to leave eventually. I gave my farewell and got back on my bike and arrived a few minutes later.
I missed the previews and the first few minutes of the movie. Jeff, who lives at home, Jason Segel's character, was already heading out of the house out into the world, getting onto the bus as I was sitting down. He was off, at his mother's insistence, to get some wood glue to fix a wooden slat in the kitchen. I quickly gathered he was also on a mission for himself beyond going to Home Depot for his mom; he was on a spiritual quest to realize his destiny that began with the name Kevin.
This is remarkable—Jeff and I, him 30, me 26, on a constant search for signs (he asks one Kevin if he's seen the Mel Gibson/M. Knight S. movie Signs), perhaps under the influence of weed, not participating in bourgeois society to an "acceptable" extent, concerned more with awareness than ambition, we went out into the world with "Kevin" as our guide—I rarely get a day off with no errands to run, responsibilities to worry about, and when I do I like to gravitate freely from one place to another, usually watching a movie at my old place of work, always more aware, more open to the pulsing reality around me, more like Jeff, the two of us joined by more than mere location.
As far as I know people don't disrespect my worldview—"laugh at me" or "make fun of me" as Jeff's asshole brother Pat does (my brother Patrick, not played by Ed Helms, does have a more material view of the world than I do, but he is a good listener and sensitive to the oddball insights of myself and others, usually)—but they do not necessarily share my idiosyncratic view of the world (my good friend Kimberly once said it would be terrible if everyone saw things as I did). That being said, I don't literally jump on trucks that say "Kevin Kandy" because my gut tells me that is the sign I am looking for (someone called his house, I gathered, at the beginning of the movie asking for "Kevin"). But I do go on intellectual or spiritual journeys, picking up books, following lines of thought, with the same logic. And isn't a movie just the embodiment of an idea, the filming of personified symbols, ways of thinking?
Kevin is the undefinable clue, the thing that creates what we're told is deja vu, the reward of awareness, what squares will ostracize you for acknowledging. And we need to talk about Kevin.
Perhaps the two movies aren't too different from one another, just in levels of positivity and intensity. The first Kevin is infinitely negative, a physical, actual threat to what is good in society, and also a critic of its mediocrity—the hypocrisy of adults, the complacency and dullness of television-centric American life. The second Kevin, the more abstract, multi-faced Kevin of the Duplass brothers' ecstatic movie is infinitely positive, a spiritual possibility to any member of society that wants awareness in place of single-minded ambition, sincerity and love in place of repression and ignorance. Either way, Kevin is a subject we need to broach, and a sign post we must keep a look out for, a demon we must not ignore.
As for my friend Kevin, I don't know how he fits into my day. When I told him, via text message, that "I just saw two movies about [him] at the Osio," he responded, "fuckin sweet."
I have another acquaintance named Kevin who I have known since high school. While riding my bike home I passed him walking on the sidewalk. I turned and waved and saw him smile and flash me a peace sign.
Fucking sweet.
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