Out Loud

Last week I watched two movies, both of which I had seen before. Say Anything, featuring John Cusack, whom I do adore, that I recently found in the five buck bin. Only the second viewing of this particular nonstandard coming of age film, likely the first was on cable tv a few years after its 1989 release. The second movie, which I have seen multiple times, is a favorite by one of my fave directors. Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon. Each and every time I watch it I catch more little details that I hadn't noticed in previous viewings. And I anticipate moments that I relish, like Kevin Kline singing Lawyers, Guns and Money while driving through a rough LA neighborhood just before his car breaks down. And when Claire (Mary McDonnell) informs her husband Mack (Kevin Kline) that his headache is inappropriate in the presence of a likely miracle. This time I discovered something new, a theme common to both of these films. Why in the world do we confide in each other, tell each other our stories, share our secrets? Because in that telling we make our experiences real. That in keeping things to ourselves we can question whether it really happened. But in the act of relating our personal news to another it becomes part of our life's legend, part of our narrative. Sometimes to illustrate a point to a crowd, sometimes a confession to a loved one. Personally, I can say that the reason I journaled extensively as a teen was to remember and make real the chaos and uncertainty of my young life. The very act of putting my experiences down on paper gave some solidity to the near constant state of upheaval. A device to separate the real from the imagined. Telling our stories. An exclusively human behavior that is so very basic to our nature. It makes us real.