How Art Informs Our Worldview

I re-watched the Pilot for the TV show Gossip Girl again the other day. As trashy and angsty and soap opera-y that show was, I liked the first season of Gossip Girl for many of the same reasons I liked the first season of The O.C.: Well-rendered teenage characters who were both intelligent and stupid, both mature and childish, story lines that while melodramatic were for the most part believable and romantic entanglements that were more considered with the difficulties of keeping people together than the relative storytelling ease of tearing them apart. Both of these shows became much more dramatic and ridiculous over the course of their run times, but those first seasons were full of genuinely emotional moments, and they caused me to empathize with nearly every character presented.

The glaring omission to that category would be Gossip Girl's Chuck Bass.

Arts, Ants and Sonic the Hedgehog

The line in High Fidelity (the book) goes like this: "I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want do it for myself." It comes near the end of the book. For those with only knowledge of the movie, it would be in the bar scene, where Rob asks Laura to marry him.



For those of us who love music - for those of us who love any kind of art form purely and with great fervor - we understand what Rob is talking about in that passage. It's a bit inexplicable how a moment of music, or a scene in a movie, a brush stroke in a painting can change your mind, but it can.