There's a scene in the Netflix series Umbrella Academy in which five of the siblings that make up the main characters of the show have just reunited in their shared childhood home after years apart and have separated themselves around the expansive estate after an argument when Tiffany Darwish's I Think We're Alone Now starts playing throughout the house. Each of the five slowly begin dancing to themselves, gradually getting more free and uninhibited with their movement.
That scene is perhaps the most striking of the consistently striking series, and is the ultimate voyeuristic experience of "looking through the keyhole", almost overwhelmingly intimate.
As a promo for the release date of the series' upcoming second season, they've released an at-home remake of the scene, a remake made all the more poignant by the now-trite but true "alone together" nature of the quarantine.
In a series with gorgeously choreographed fight-scenes and enough explosions to rival Bond, this scene captures my attention more than any other, and induces my most emotional response.
Applying this song and scene to my circle of nearest-and-dearest feels about the same as overwhelming nostalgia to me. It's not original to be amazed by the fact that others exist just as we do, and are as real alone as they are when we're around and aware of them, not because we're all raging narcissists but because it's a truth we can't ever experience or observe, aside from stunning performances of unremarkable, intimate moments on stage or screen. But really considering that everyone, even as I type or you read, is independently doing something is somehow an overwhelming thought.
If someone cued up I Think We're Alone Now and zoomed out from my life to see my friends, scattered across the country and globe, all independently dancing or reading or scrolling or sleeping or typing or cooking or driving, would that viewer too be moved to tears?, rewatching the clip over and over?
Beyond my circle of friends and family, it's boggling to consider this concept of simultaneous existence continuing for everyone I've ever known, barring instances of death. Once-friends I haven't talked to since middle-school, everyone I've ever had an argument with or grown apart from, the people I resent and the people I idolize, the guys who changed my oil today. I trust you're capable of coming up with your own examples of "people I've seen at least once".
Earlier today something sparked the memory of a conversation I had with a cabin-mate at summer camp, probably around 2012, and I wondered if I could find her online. All I had to go by was a first name, and I only very vaguely remember what she looked like. Of course I couldn't find any profiles that were promisingly hers, her existence in my mind is limited to us sitting on a hill pulling weeds out of the dirt and discussing dinosaur armpits. But even she is (hopefully) somewhere performing her own moment of independent-existence. Just because I may not (knowingly) ever see her again doesn't mean she hasn't stopped existing as I do, and that gets me every time. Maybe I just struggle with object permanence.
Watching that scene was the first time I'd heard the Tiffany classic, and on its own it's a stellar composition, but I don't think I'd have the same appreciation for it away from the keyhole through which I first heard it played. There's just something more profound about two(+) people being simultaneously apart and alone than two people being alone together. Maybe it's that watching others perform solitude is such a salve, usually we only ever see ourselves alone. Or maybe it's just articulate. I'm not alone, but we're not "alone together", we're alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment