Sat down with a cup of tea to browse through those channels-by-the-hundreds that contribute to millions of Americans' vegetative hours, and when my eyes fell upon the familiar images, everything inside me just sort of ground to a halt. As i sat down slowly, face relaxed in childlike wonder, remote in hand, my mind took me back to the first time i'd ever seen this film.
What is it, exactly, about watching movies in school? What was so special about the drawing down of shades over the windows, the feeling that you were all complicit about doing something in secret, something taboo... coupled with the knowledge that this insanely valuable and highly-coveted recreation time was simply handed to you, for no reason– or perhaps it was a rainy day? But sometimes it was simply just because. And there was no greater comfort than being able to sink sleepily into your seat and allow everything around you to just fall away while you and your classmates drifted along a dreamy suspension of slow hours... sometimes you got to watch a fiction movie (i remember Pippi Longstocking and Gulliver's Travels, among others), or else you were given an educational smorgasbord of short films about the solar system, nutrition, the animal kingdom, or earth sciences...
[Sidebar: here is where Boards of Canada really shines. This short track is one of my standout faves. Takes me back to that special place, every single time. Press play, and read on (if so desired):
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Then it was always so disconcerting, to rouse, when the lights came back on and the teacher clapped her hands together, smiling; sometimes, maybe, you'd fallen asleep at your desk and drooled a little onto your arm, or left your ear's hot imprint there. There would be a shuffle of feet as everyone blinked, and squinted, readjusting in their chairs.
And since it was usually a rainy day, you'd stumble bleary-eyed out onto the schoolyard, struggling sluggishly to get your backpack on over your jacket, and begin the moony walk home in the strange-dark afternoon light– stepping around the gathering puddles, walking your best straight line on the curb, smelling the acrid piles of wet oak leaves choking up the gutters. You might stop to observe the raindrops caught fast in a spider's web, or pick up a fallen stick to drag along the sidewalk behind you. Then there was always that one house you had to walk by on your route that gave you bad juju, causing your extremities to tingle and your eyes to quit blinking (the one in my neighborhood had thick arms of ivy creeping inside through the windows' edges from the exterior walls, and it seemed that not a single solitary soul resided there).
Maybe you had the film's narrator from earlier echoing roundly in your skull, reminding you about how clouds form or how fast cheetahs run; how crayons are made and how sunflowers follow the sun. Maybe you had to be home right away, or maybe you were on your way to a friend's house.
Either way, there would probably be juice.
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