"Sunset Boulevard"

Joe: You used to be big.

Gloria: I am big! It's the pictures that got small.

We don't expect our perspective to shift with age... but it does. When I first watched the classic film "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) thirty years ago I naturally identified with struggling young screenwriter Joe. As the story opens, Joe is evading tough-guys from a finance company intent on repossessing his car. For non-payment, of course. In his escape Joe limps into a Hollywood estate, once grand but now fetid from neglect. There he stumbles upon eccentric inhabitants: a once-famous but now aged silent-movie star, Norma Desmond, her (dead) pet monkey, and her creepy butler Max. 

Seeing the movie again, now, I relate more to Norma than young Joe. Norma is clinging to a fantasy: her "return" to the cinematic spotlight. We, the audience, are invited to ponder whether Norma is rational or insane. Delusion is an easy guess given her decrepit circumstances. Indeed, screenwriter Joe's first opinion of her compares Norma to Miss Haversham in "Great Expectations."

But... perhaps Norma isn't crazy. After all, she WAS a star thirty years ago. Her exaggerated affect had cultural value back then. And she's still remembered by Hollywood mogul, Cecil B. DeMille -- who plays himself in the movie, along with other "waxworks" like Buster Keaton.

The film hits me differently now as I ponder whether I'm still rational -- or have drifted away from you youngsters into a magical land of personal fantasy. Last year, when I was physically, socially and spiritually separated from "society" I felt pangs and bliss of deep isolation. In that state you question why we seek human connection. Normal people merely assume an answer but those on the outskirts -- the ill, the deviant, the insane -- face this question with arrant seriousness. Why do we care about connecting to their "reality"? Should we care? It's possible to detach from everyone else and drift away on your own ice-floe. Like the elderly in some indigenous arctic tribes.

Some, like Norma and me, choose to "return" to society -- but with radically new perspective. Things that formerly mattered, now don't. Friendship needs to be real, not phony. Empty gestures to attract social applause (most posting on social media) are realized to be hollow and absurd. Ultimately, we can "make a comeback" but we'll do it on our own terms, infused with real meaning, not false pretenses designed merely to impress others.

"Alright, Mr. DeMille. I'm ready for my close-up!"