Monday, November 25, 2013

Seeing the Patterns

I have a compulsive need to find patterns in things; to find some sort of meaning in the chaos. This sort of ties into my other post about empathy and trying to understand people's behavior, but it goes further than that. I look for patterns in everything, not just people's behaviors.

Now that the CD player in my car is broken and I have to listen to the radio (grrrrrr), I sometimes notice that two or three consecutive songs will have common themes or very similar lines, and I wonder what that means. Then I realize that it's just a fucking radio and it doesn't mean anything. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm supposed to get something from it. I think I have mentioned before how I tend to have the same ideas, or images pop up in my life over and over again. I'm sure it's just that, once I've noticed it once, I'm more likely to notice it again. But it doesn't feel like that. It feels like it should mean something.

That's one reason I get so invested in different TV shows. The patterns (usually) actually do mean something. I get such a thrill from searching for the meaning in mundane events and trying to predict what they are going to bring about. Often times though, I end up reading into things even more than the writers intended. Then I get disappointed when no one acknowledges the fact that three seasons ago someone said something that relates to that thing that other person mentioned this season. Battlestar Galactica has been both perfect and terrible for this purpose because they make it seem like everything is significant but never actually explain why. The whole time we've been watching it I have been analyzing everything and predicting what those things are going to mean. We are now into season four and I have still received absolutely no confirmation whatsoever.
You have no idea how much time I have spent thinking about why they used All Along the Watchtower. I have read over the lyrics about a hundred times and come up with some sort of relevance for every one of them. I would be willing to bet that it doesn't mean even half of what I think it does. 

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