FOR SOME REASON or another I had an earworm (def: a song or melody that keeps repeating in one’s mind – but in my case just words) of ‘Jim Jarmusch’ rattling about my head for the last two days. Not films he’s directed, nor any tangible elements from his flicks, just his name bouncing around. I have no fucking idea why. I haven’t seen any of his films since Broken Flowers, several months ago. Nowhere in my recent readings has his name cropped up, not in mags or books or even the internet.
Yet the name ‘Jim Jarmusch’ continued to repeat randomly in my head for several days. Now, here’s the weird thing. I’m not religious at all, nor spiritual. I am logical and as rational as my free will allows, if we have free will (that’s an entire other debate!). So this evening I sit down to write and as I await my three year old laptop to splutter alive, I see some events guides that I picked up several days ago. One happened to be for the Edinburgh Film House who show indy flicks and generally arthouse stuff, steering clear of vacuous schlockbusters.
I flick through it thinking of taking my girlfriend to something, I read back to front often, I don’t know why, and then BAM! – Edinburgh Film House had an entire run of Jim Jarmusch films on that ended just recently. Apart from the fact I am annoyed that I never knew they were screening Ghost Dog, one of my all time favourite films and monstrously underviewed, it was another of those very strange coincidences of reading or hearing about something, something uncommon, that then becomes linked days later through your actions. This always freaks me out a little bit. But the rational part of my brain makes sense of it by thinking of everything as loosely connected in any given society. This particular earworm was my strangest ever as I simply had a name echoing down the corridors of my mind.
Still, it’s happened many, many times and I’m always amazed to a degree, pleasantly surprised, mildly baffled but not wanting to put some cosmic spin on it. Universes don’t align and there’s no destiny. Things simply happen, randomness is entirely non-random – either way, I like it. Jim Jarmusch! Jim Jarmusch!
LionAroundWriting 