Move Me to the Sun

New title, for real this time.

I was looking for a name that encompassed everything. I liked Green Pill because of The Matrix and how other people seemed to immediately understand what I was trying to convey. But that's already been used in so many ways. I searched "green pill" on Spotify and immediately found a podcast called "GreenPill" about "crypto-economic systems that create positive externalities for their neighbors & for the world." Instagram is full of meme accounts with a play on the phrase. Okay.

I liked Looming because of its implicit meaning and how it describes the process (I hope) I'm engaging in. But it's too subtle. Looming what? What's looming?

So, as always, I turned to showtunes. This year I fell in love with Sondheim's song "Take Me to the World" from Evening Primrose. I liked it last year, I became obsessed with it this summer. I describe the world with its lyrics. The phrase "move me to the sun" is tattooed on my brain at this point.

I never watched Evening Primrose or even listened to all of its songs. I went online to watch it but stopped myself, wanting to read its source material: a short story with the same name from a collection called Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier. I flipped to the first page of the story and read the first line: "March 21 Today I make my decision."

I was immediately gripped by the certainty that everything I thought and believed was true and that I'm on the right path.

Here are several anecdotes that explain why the line excited me:

March 21 is the first day of spring (most years). The concept of spring is central to the plot and meaning of the musical Hadestown, my personal Bible, another obsession. I was born on the first day of spring of my birth year (not everything is about me, true, but this is still cool).

This character made a decision. Over the past two years I have been collecting sayings about acting with conviction. One of my favorites, the one that inspired me to officially compile the list of sayings, is from an episode of Only Murders in the Building. Oliver, played by Martin Short, says to Charles, played by Steve Martin: "You said it yourself. The only wrong choice is no choice. Indecision is death."

I recently became obsessed with Anatomy of a Fall, another story about choices and decisions. One character tells another: "When we lack an element to judge something, and this lack is unbearable, the only thing we can do is decide. To get out of doubt, we are sometimes obliged to decide to switch to one side rather than the other." I've watched that movie 3 times. The first time, I knew it was in my top 8. The second and third watches made me certain that I could never get bored of rewatching. And then the first line of "Evening Primrose" is "Today I make my decision." Come on!

Back to Evening Primrose and "Take Me to the World". I haven't listened to the music or read the short story, but I have read the Wikipedia article thoroughly. From this, I know that Ella, the character who sings the lyrics "move me to the sun" has decided to leave the department store she's been living in for thirteen years. She is pleading with her love interest, Charles, to take her to the outside world he just came from. She's been living an artificial life and wants to see the real world: Take me to the world that’s real / Show me how it’s done / Teach me how to laugh, to feel / Move me to the sun

Like Neo taking the red pill in The Matrix, Ella wants to know the truth and see what's real, the whole picture. Like Eurydice in Hadestown, Ella can sense that her mall prison is a kind of soul-death. I tried to imagine what it's like to not see the sun, to not be comforted and grounded by it's regular appearance and disappearance and feel it warm your skin. Sometimes it feels so good, I imagine that I can photosynthesize and tap the original source of life force. I would want to leave the department store, too.

What I'm trying to do is shed the distortion and perversion that characterizes our relationship with the rest of the Earth, with each other, and with ourselves. Ella begs: "Take me to the world where I can be alive." Moving "to the sun" is moving toward perceiving and interacting with the Earth honestly and ecologically without the deception and obfuscation we're always swimming in, consciously or not. I think it's a process that requires patience and joy. I think it will reward discipline and detours. I think it's iterative and probably has no end point. I'm looking forward to it.