Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

consider the following long quote from Roger Ebert's recent review of the film "the Sea Inside":

""The Sea Inside" is based on the true story of a quadriplegic from Galicia, Spain, who in 1998 did succeed in dying, after planning his death in such an ingenious way that even if all the details were discovered no one could be legally charged with the crime. What we see in "The Sea Inside" is fiction, based on the final months. [...]
What would I do in the same situation as the man in Spain? I am reminded of something written by another Spaniard, the director Luis Bunuel. What made him angriest about dying, he said, was that he would be unable to read tomorrow's newspaper. I believe I would want to live as long as I could, assuming I had my sanity and some way to communicate. If I were trapped inside my mind, like the hero of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, that would be another matter -- although consider the life of Helen Keller.
In "The Sea Inside," Ramon Sampedro has considered all these notions, and is not persuaded. He does not care to live any longer. [...] I agree with Ramon that, in the last analysis, the decision should be his to make: to be or not to be. But if a man is of sound mind and not in pain, how in the world can he decide he no longer wants to read tomorrow's newspaper?"

Ebert is saying that reading the newspaper gives you a reason to live or at least not to kill yourself.

i think this is very true. unless, of course, that newspaper is USA Today. . . .

guess i look at it like this:

don't lose hope. this goes for life as well as for art, in the life of a creative artist. you may feel that you are nothing, but you really are something. don't give up, 'cause if you do you will be nothing. whatever it takes to find meaning and express it through creation: whether it is love or hate, tap into it and express it.

love or hate can give life meaning. but to lose hope and slip into despair is what makes things seem meaningless.

I think in the strict sense we all commit suicide - from the smoker, to over-eater, the alcoholic, the workaholic... the list goes on, but over-anything is symptomatic of a suicidal tendency, altho obviously not as violent as sticking a loaded, cocked 45 to one's temple... but all end the same way - death thru insistence by resistance to change.

well said, and profoundly disturbing, too . . . .

there are, of course, social channels that facilitate this 'suicide' of the overeater, the smoker, the workaholic. profiteers off the vagaries and constancies of human desire. is it really then murder? or a collosal accident? there is a line that runs directly from the barrell of the gun through my arm through the nervous system into a difficult to pin down locale in the brain and another line running, this time back in time, to the mouth of a foreman, to hius brain, to his ear, to the mouth of his manager . . . to the desk of an executive . . . to a column of numbers on a spread-sheet . . . to a whim of a stockbroker . . . to his girlfriend's silence . . . to her doctor's ignorance and advances.

Then there is the question of altruistic suicide.