Koyaanisqatsi

Last night, I had the pleasure of going to the Hollywood Bowl with a friend to hear Philip Glass' score to Koyaanisqatsi played by the L.A. Philharmonic and the Philip Glass Ensemble. The film was shown while the orchestra orchestrated. I had a wonderful time.

I've wanted to see Koyaanisqatsi in its entirety since I first watched a half hour clip from it in my Intro to Film class at UT Dallas during my first semester of college. Koyaanisqatsi is a a 90 minute film without dialogue. Basically, it's a montage of natural, industrial, and urban scenes shot in time lapse photography and set to music. Here's the trailer:

Koyaanisqatsi was released in 1982 (if you couldn't tell from the clothing and hairstyles of the people in the trailer), and while now much of what it is and does has become commonplace, at the time, its use of time lapse photography was groundbreaking.

Ostensibly, the film is about how our lives are inundated by technology and about how we are destroying the "pure, natural" environment and ourselves through our use of technology, but that is not what I was struck with as I watched and listened last night. I was brought face to face with the bigness of God and the vast variety and beauty in our world.

There are scenes in the film of hundreds and hundreds of apartment complexes, and while I'm sure the filmmakers' intention was to highlight our uniformity and anonymity, I saw the homes of thousands of people, and I knew that God was in and over and around each of them.

The film portrays beautiful landscapes in Canyonlands National Park and the Grand Canyon (I saw Horseshoe Mesa, which I've hiked) and Lake Powell (I've walked along its shore), and then it juxtaposes these images with clips of masses of people walking down the streets of New York City. I thought, "Wow. Those Parks are amazing, and I want to go to there, but each one of those people is more mysterious and endless and more fascinating than any of those natural environments. I could spend years in Canyonlands and eventually know it all; I could spend an eternity with any one of those people and never find where they end."

As the film continued, I saw more and more places I wanted to visit and more and more and more and more people I wanted to get to know.

One scene stands out for me more than the rest. I have to think it was in New York City based on the way the people were dressed. A short, dark-haired man with a thick mustache is standing at an ice cream counter holding an impossibly pink double scoop and talking with the two young African American men behind the counter. He's smiling. They smile at something he says. He reaches across the counter to shake their hands and as he turns to leave, he sinks his teeth into the top of his ice cream cone.

As I watched him, I thought, "I want to know that man. I want to know where he's from and how that has shaped him. I want to know what flavor of ice cream he's so completely enjoying. I have not been where he is. I do not know what his life is like. I have not experienced much of what I'm seeing in this film. There is a lot of world out there, and I want to see all of it."

This world is full of amazing, beautiful, unique people, and each of them is as complex and nuanced as I am. Each of them is the center of their own world, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that each person experiences life differently than every other person. Every life lived is unique. Every person is like a phone booth that opens into outer space. Every person is an eternity wrapped up in flesh.

And God is very, very big, because God knows every last inch of every person.

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word with multiple meanings, most of them having to do with life being out of balance, but the final meaning given is the one I like the best - "a state of life that calls for another way of living."

Koyaanisqatsi calls me to more fully engage with my world and particularly with the people in it. It inspires me to notice the beauty inherent in each person and the grace of the world around me. God has made an amazing earth and filled it with even more amazing people. I pray I see it better.

-- Elijah Davidson