Every wannabe wordsmith has a shoehorn in the toolbelt
I often get my words confused. I am prone to becoming drunk with the potential power that the right words can provide to the right prose. Communication is all about pictures, and the emotions that those pictures bring to us. If a word creates a certain picture in your mind, and it turns out that you got that word wrong in the first place, it can be quite difficult to amend that picture.
For me, that word is often times: aficionado.
The cause of this confusion is probably due to the contents of the magazine Cigar Aficionado. It’s pages were filled with words like veiny, nutty, full-bodied, and other descriptions of cigars that might as well been written in Icelandic. Because I could not be sure what all of these words referred to to, or even meant, I assumed that one needed to be an expert in order to enjoy such a magazine. With that, I concluded that the word aficionado surely referred to some sort of professional knowledge holder or wise sage (in terms of cigars in this case).
In actuality, aficionado is really just a synonym for fan. Seriously, look it up. No word from Facebook if they considered replacing “Become a fan” with “Become an aficianado” before settling on the “Like” button.
Being an aficionado of LOST
I adore LOST. I ridiculously love it. I’ve shared my love of LOST with so many people, I am practically an evangelist for it. I literally named my daughter Evangeline, not just because she was “good news”, but because I wanted a significant way to acknowledge the impact the show has had on my life (my wife was also smitten with the beauty of the name, but that’s a minor detail).
The pilot episode of the show was eyeball-widening intense; with big-budget, high-quality special effects, terrifying moments of near-death and actual death, convincing pathos in many of the characters, and probably most important of all: plenty of mystery. A giant man-chomping monster, a mysterious radio signal on a loop for 16 years, and a polar bear running through the forest. They were all WTF moments at their head-scratching finest.
But the biggest mystery of pilot, and the one question that was begged by the title itself, was whether or not these people would be found. Would they eventually get off the island?
All of these holes in the story created a huge gravitational pull for me to lean in, to continue watching, and to hope beyond hope that everything would turn out OK. But my hopes were not just fed by the new illumination of the continued narrative each week… my imagination ran wild with possibilities and theories of “the truth”. In those dark places, where certain details of the story had not yet been told, I could hardly stop myself from coming up with reasonable and not-so-reasonable solutions to the puzzle.
When the finale of the third season of the show turned out to be a flash forward, giving us a glimpse into the future, the found question of LOST… was finally answered. The gap in my mind was filled with “the truth”, but somehow I still wanted to know more. I was still leaning in, I was still watching, and I was still hoping that everything would turn out OK. I cared about the characters. I cared about the minutiae. I cared about all of it.
As the show was drawing to a close earlier this year, I felt myself dreading the new gap that was imminently creeping up in my own life: a world without LOST. Gaps and holes are fine, as long as there is a starting point, and a finishing point. Open-ended questions can be maddening and neurosis inducing. Although life before LOST was wonderful and fulfilling, the idea of never hearing that spooky title frame sound left me close to despondent. Beginning a gap that never ends is like a death.
When the show finally did come to a close several weeks ago, a number of people were disappointed. While everything did turn out OK for the main characters, some fans did not appreciate the final 15 minutes, which seemed to imply a sort of do-it-yourself spirituality, in which any and all religious or spiritual belief eventually leads to a self-created place of paradise. Other viewers were stunned by the fact that a large number of questions (holes and gaps) went unanswered. Many of these folks were disappointed to find out that a specific element of the story which was particularly meaningful to them, was ignored or poo-pooed away.
Personally, I was extremely satisfied with the finale. Although I had my own theories along the way, and I had my moments of jubilance when I happened to be “right” with one of my predictions, I was prepared to be happy no matter what. Somewhere along the way, I had given up the reigns to my enjoyment of the show. I consciously relinquished my role as an objective viewer, and became a homer for whatever the writers put in front of my face to enjoy. My love was blind, and I didn’t care where it let me. Whether the gaps were filled or not, my mind was set, and I was determined to enjoy all of it.
So, as future without LOST has now become a present without LOST, you may not be surprised that I don’t believe that it is really over. My mind gave the world of LOST considerable meaning to me, and that same mind cannot let it go. I don’t want to believe that it is over. The endless gap that started at the culmination of the series is unacceptable for me to suffer.
Since much of the value of LOST during it’s run was subjective and self-created (like the postmortem paradise of the finale), why can’t I manufacture my own hope for the narrative to continue?
So that’s what I’m going to do. When the DVD
I may not be an expert, but I am an aficionado.
Are you?
I’ll see you in another life, brotha.
