Books and Movies

I am completely amazed by the power of the motion picture and also by the written word. It is all so amazing! Can you tell I am excited? When a person can create a work that influences my life and causes me feel a certain way, it just makes so happy. In my development as a writer and also as an artist my greatest inspirations have come from movies and books. Suddenly I am enraptured in the pain of character or their joy. I hate the villain and I scream(inside) at a character that makes a stupid decision. Sometimes, when a certain part comes out that so freaking mind blowing I even laugh aloud and possibly jump up and dance or do some weird display of amazement. Seriously. :) I really get into it. But I never do this with people around, thankfully. Then from that I am inspired, then from that raw emotion I forge an idea and I crank out a work of art or, mostly likely, a poem. I am almost at the point where I despise creating something without any inspiration or excitement! It feels like I am grinding against nothing. I have only said this to emphasize the importance of both. Though we have not had motion picture until recently considering historical time. No fifty years is not a long time. :) However, even before the creation of television and the boom of modern media, we had theater. There is a certain importance in visually seeing something acted out to remember a particular story or even an event that happened within a group of people. It is also important to read a book to remember a story or event. But also it is important to be simply entertained, life is hard and it is good at times to be taken away and perhaps only for a while experience another world.
It is hard to say how much of what I know and how I act has been influenced by books or tv, but I hope I have learned a little by piles of books I have read and many movies I have seen. I am starting to think that without life to pound my head in, I would have never learned the things I have read and seen in those different types of media. You can study all you want, but until you actually apply what you have learned there really is no experience gained or useful way you could use all that information.