Matt Agnello's Blog - return self;

October 31, 2009

WeHo CVS is packed with denzins of hell all looking for booze

--
Matt Agnello
http://hungryfilmmaker.com
Sent from my iPhone

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October 14, 2009

Not often do you get to sit in your car in LA and listen to the rain

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October 10, 2009

Finally, Mario gets the girl #ckwedding

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October 10, 2009

I'm reading the Wikipedia article on Alan Turing. While going through his biography, I notice a picture of a plaque on his home. The top half reads: "Alan Turing. 1912 - 1954." Since this is a mathematician, I'm inclined to resolve that curiously placed minus sign to deduce his age: 44. And I can't help but think he died so young.

When someone's death is covered in an article or on TV, the person's age is almost always mentioned immediately after the declaration of death. "Joseph Manning died at his home. He was 35."

The intention, I think, is to well up in the reader or viewer feelings of pity. Only 35? "He died too early," or "he could have done so much more with his life," or "he left so much unfinished."

Though numbers can be quite powerful, I don't think a person's age can convey that much information. We know someone's death is almost always untimely, that they have left something undone, even if it's as mundane as a pile of laundry. I think mentioning age makes us consider what they might have done after death, and this is responsible for our pity. But if we take up this line of reasoning, where does our consideration of possibilities -- our worrying -- stop? If we consider all the things one might do after death, must we also consider what could have happened in life? What if he went to a different school, or married a different person, or chose a different house, or took a left instead of a right to leave for work? If we do that, we have to consider worlds that include all possible actions that the person could have taken while alive, and along with the branches of possibility never traveled during life and the life never lived after death, the sheer amount of human possibilty squandered quickly becomes crushingly depressing.

So, if you're writing an article about someone who has just died, leave the age out. We know they died too early. What we don't know is what they did in their lifetime, the one that exists in this particular narrative of the universe where they lived at X and worked at Y and turned left to leave for work, that's really interesting, inspiring, or just unique. The rest is just possibility space.

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October 1, 2009