Now. Play.

Glass Goblets & Darkness

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.” ~ Alan W. Watts

Dusts by Mindaugas Pov

I doff my noggin topper to for his February 4, 2015 short-short film called “Dusts“, a visually enrapturing sequence overlaid with the voice of Alan W. Watts. The filmmaker from Vilnius, Lithuania limits his explanation to technical notes: “Had a chance to test and play with camera mapping technique in 3dsmax. All these shots were made entirely from various pictures. Post done in After Effects.” Pov also credits two photographers for the evocative images:

Thanks to all three of you for contributing to this visually rich accompaniment to Alan W. Watts’ words.

Wholeness by Alan W. Watts

Here’s a [mostly?] accurate transcription of Watt’s rumination.

“When you die, you’re not going to have to put up with everlasting nonexistence, because that’s not an experience.

 

A lot of people are afraid that when they die, they are going to be locked up in a dark room forever.

 

Try and imagine what it would be like to go to sleep and never wake up? Think about that; children think about it. It’s one of the great wonders of life.

 

What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can’t have an experience of nothing. So after you are dead the only thing that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience, as when you were born…

 

Doesn’t it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing; and that you’re doing all of this and you never had any education on how to do it?” ~ Alan W. Watts

Note that the ellipsis in the quotation above represents a sizable chunk of Watts’ reflection on wholeness that Pov edited out of his video. If you’re interested in the full recording, play this sound file.

Astonishment and oneness aside, what to make of all this? Well, according to Alan W. Watts the secret to life is to invest oneself fully in the present and play. If chronology didn’t contradict the claim, I might have cobbled this together myself!

Secret of Life

“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” ~ Alan W. Watts