Sunday, November 4, 2007

You Tube, I Tube, We all Tube.....

I recently went to the movies to see "La Vie En Rose," the extraordinarily poignant biography of Edith Piaf, usually referred to as France's Judy Garland (though I think such comparisons of lives is an injustice to all). I've often reached the end of films rather teary-eyed, but this one left me so overcome, I could bearly read the credits; though not at all identifying with "the little sparrow's" wretched years of decadence, I did, however, because of my own sorrows, blend my own consciousness with hers as she lay on her deathbed. It was both an art moment and a life experience I will not ever forget.

When home, I found myself unstoppably curious to see and hear the real Edith Piaf -- simply keywording in her name on You Tube brought up 1954 face and song immediately. Suddenly, the vision and sound on my small screen merged with my mind's eye and ear-return to eery reiminder of the big screen's anguishing drama, and I felt haunted by both. It seemed utterly surreal that video, taped so long ago, was instantaneously available through the machinations of technology, a contradiction that I've found frequently troubling, but neither did it escape my awareness that You Tube undeniably enhanced a movie (itself a form of miraculous technology) that had already profoundly touched me. If I do not feel antagonistic toward the invention of film, what right have I really, to think the computer has gone too far, or fear it will go still further?

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