I like scenes from movies. I don't mean every scene from every movie. I don't even mean those scenes from movies which play particularly well during spins of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", although I must admit that I love the part of any laser show at any planetarium when shadow rabbits run to the lyrics "run, rabbit, run".
I mean, instead, little moments that, for me, touch me inside, whether the touch in question is the pseudo-intellectual shell within or the crystallized marshmallow inside the gumball. I thought in the context of our recent election that the whole thing could be summarized in a "why vote?" way.
"Why vote?"--because of the scene in "Broadway Danny Rose" when the talent agent for the obscure and talentless treats his talent to a Thanksgiving dinner of TV dinners.
"Why vote?"--why, because of the scene in which the fascist conformist is trailed by hordes of children singing "La Internationale".
"Why vote?"--because of the scenes in which the French villagers in "Weapons of the Spirit" describe the simple food they fed the people they saved.
"Why vote?"--to hear "Singin' in the Rain"
"Why vote?"--to feel the thrill when the alien spacecraft plays those notes in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
I'm a simple person. I think that "why vote" is more a metaphor than a call to the ballot. I think it has to do with worlds being safe for democracy, and air being free of smokestack nuisance.
But the reasons I think that life is worth voting in and not giving up upon capture me at the strangest moments, in darkened cinemas, between the covers of secondary science fiction novels,
and in wikipedia entries about fractals. I vote for paramecia and parcheesi.
To me, "why vote" is less a question than an imperative, which runs beyond the past election, into the next, and beyond elections, into everything.