The Wonderstruck essays followed are unapologetically optimistic and have been predicated on a profound belief that life is not entirely random... and that the intention of the universal and infinite works itself out through the interactions that we have with one another and all the world around us.
Christopher Hitchens believed that the credulous are so because they have rehearsed their minds to accept as miraculous what is patently impossible. He is probably correct; but those who rehearse their minds to reject the possibility of the miraculous are missing many wondrous things because they have rehearsed their minds to do so.
Long before I discovered the film Wonderstruck on a day filled with serendipity and synchronicity, my mind and soul had been rehearsed for acceptance of the wondrous because of the consumption of art. I grew up on a steady diet of high-quality films, literature, and music. And as you probably know, if you have lifted this tome to read, art of all kinds is filled with turns of joy, rapture, and chills.
Yes, you come to expect it. And when it comes, because you have expected it, because you have been paying attention and waiting... well, you can be wonderstruck.
I was further inculcated by formal study of the arts: poetry, literature, and film. I later taught literature, film, and theater at the college level, and also worked as a movie and pop-culture reviewer for twenty years.
So, yes: I was already predisposed to find wondrous things in art and artists themselves. As my writing became more creative and less clinical, I also came to grips with the idea that I, too, am an artist-not merely an appreciative member of the audience.
Still, my encounter with the film Wonderstruck and the circumstances surrounding that encounter-documented in my book Wonderstruck-had a profound effect on how I have come to interact with artists and their work. My approach is now much more personal, and the joy, rapture, and chills from the dramatic turns have become more intense. The essays in this collection demonstrate that intensity-documents of divine appointments and magic moments rather than reviews or critiques per se.
And yet I hope that the words I say about these works and their makers lead you to seek some of them out for yourself.
Everything that you read in these pages is 100% true, if much of it wildly improbable. I have lived my questions, as Rilke once recommended to a young poet, and these essays are a record of my progress, gradually, without perhaps even noticing it, toward living into my own answers.
I invite you to question my experience, to ponder whether such a universe can actually exist.
But be patient with my words, especially if they resonate, and read them slowly. And also be patient with your own journey as you live your own questions.
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