West Side Story

It's been a ridiculously busy week this week - no time to think. But I went to the Spielberg West Side Story in Wythenshawe this evening - part of an initiative to bring arts to Wythenshawe. I think Spielberg's remake is a masterpiece. I first saw it on a plane to China. Embarrassing because it made me cry - always difficult to say you want another coffee when that happens!

What's so extraordinary about this version is the sensitivity with which the love scenes are played. The timing is exquisite - Spielberg's musicality is not just in his use of the music, but in the choreography of the camera and pacing of gestures. But it just tells us how music is at the root of emotion. Everyone relates to this because everyone knows how this feels - even if not everyone actually experiences something so intense. But some people do. 

But the process of making something so sensitive is not something that is driven by feeling, but by intelligence and technique. One of the other things that has happened in the last week is a set of fascinating academic discussions about the difference between form and process, particularly with Lou Kauffman. 

The form of an experience is not the same as the process of experiencing it. The structure of the love scenes in the film is not the same as the experience of watching them. The form of a mathematical proof is not the same as the process of discovering it. The form of a piece of music is not the same as the process of hearing it, and certainly not the process of writing it. 

But form and process may be united at a deeper level. To think this is to think that there is no time. There is no moment where Maria and Tony are apart, and another moment when they are together. There is no "moment" at all, but everything is one together. To be in a deep spiritual state where we appreciate that is to have hope not just that things can get better, and that the moment of things being good and whole is ever present with the darkest of times.