Holy fucking AWESOMENESS. Go see "Primer" post haste!

Please go see "Primer," please please please, so we can talk about it.

I had a very productive weekend involving working out, cleaning my house, getting errands done (new bra! woo!) and generally attempting to get my life in order. After successfully battling entropy for the weekend, I decided that I would reward myself by going to see Primer (which is only playing in NY at the Village East Cinemas -- take note!)

HOLY SHIT. It's the best mindfuck movie I've ever seen. It's also the only movie that successfully rocks the paradox of time-travel. It's so good. Soooooooooo good. I don't think anyone else in the theatre grokked it -- afterwards, everyone was turning to his or her partner and say "Huh?" As a solo moviegoer, I had no one to turn to, but that was okay. I held my own hand the whole time. It was lovely. If only I could sling an arm over my own shoulder, I'd be psyched.

Here's a helpful hint -- it's Primer prounced pry-mer, not prih-mer. Like in sci-fi books about alternate realities and ultraluminar travel? Earth (our Earth) is Earth prime. Like that.

Basically, when the movie really kicks into super high mindfuck gear, I experienced this sensation, this frisson that I like to call "the quickening." The quickening is this feeling I get when I'm experiencing so infinitely pleasureful that it feels like my heart is too large for its socket within my ribcage and it feels like its expanding and expanding and expanding. This often happens when I listen to particular songs: "I've Been High" and "Country Feedback," by REM, or "Mimi" by the Long Winters, or "Janine" or "Looks" by Mike Doughty, or "Disarm" by the Smashing Pumpkins. When it happens musically, it usually relates to a specific musical progression and often a swelling of an organ-line behind guitar. Am and Em chords tend to trigger it. It also happens when I watch movies ("City of Lost Children") or experience a bleshing moment of theatre (like during everything by the Improbable Theatre Company, or "House" by Richard Maxwell.)

"Bleshing" is a word coined by the Blue Man people to indicate the moment when the action on stage and the thoughts of the audience intertwine complicitly. It happens at the end of Blue Man when all the toilet paper happens, and it's something I strived for back in college when I was rewriting and directing "Offending the Audience."

Anyhoo. Back to the quickening: and it happens when I stumble across an idea or a realization that fits perfectly. The quickening happens when I read of new developments in string theory or nanotech. It happens when I see someone I love. It happens when things strike my funny fancy, like when Dana Carvey does his 'chopping brocolli' number or when the tortoise in "Three Amigos" goes, "Goodnight, Ned!"

Other Quickening moments:
* In Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, when Clementine and the Jim Carrey character are making love under the blankets and Clementine tells the story about her ugly doll that she wanted to be beautiful and asks if she, herself, is ugly
* When Baby confronts Johnny in his bunkhouse
* The piano bridge of the Doors' song Crystal Ship
* the last, instrumental minute of Minus 5's "great news around you"
* The theme music and opening credits of Twin Peaks
* the part about the man who's going to make it rain in "fool on the hill"
* in Toys, when Robin Williams and Joan Cusack have on these virtual realities that make them feel like they're on a roller coaster
* Sinead's "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance"
* Chris in the Morning Stevens' philosophical interludes from Northern Exposure
* When I haven't listened to Leonard Cohen in a while, and then I wrap myself in his lyrics
* the song "American English" by Idlewild
* when my friends do things at the peak of their abilities and they're happy
* when someone to whom I'm attracted plays with my hair and/or rubs my neck. HOOOeeee. magic spot, yo.

Anyhoo. When do you go to see Primer, please pay careful attention to the voiceover, because there's an essential tidbit of information that is delivered in approximately 2 seconds of v/o, and if you miss it, you're lost.