Reinterpreting Interpretation

So I miss grad school. I miss this strange and (dare I say it?) "twilight" time of my life when I was neither fully out of academia nor entirely in it. It was before I was a teacher, crossing to the other side of education where, as much as you enjoy suggesting world interpretation into potential muse-minds, you can never be the muse-mind...eating and drinking and becoming intoxicated on nothing else but the word, the interplay of image and interpretation. No, this near-sacred era of life was about roughly 10 peers you saw every day, coming and going in and out the doors of great reading, thinking, and imagining. All day, we sat and looked at pictures of both written and visual word -- watching movies, reading books...some were good, some weren't. But the process was always moving, because it opened a part of us hungering for nothing but the exploration of the image.
Now, if you're saying, "Huh?" and wondering what the heck I'm talkin' about...well, that's ok. Time has determined in me the truth that, like eye color, height, build, and degree of brilliance, the yearning to explore image is ingrained in one's makeup, not infused by the mind. In other words, you either got it or ya don't. And, since we're all made differently, uniquely, that's ok, too. But, if you're like me, this interpreting is like a lover to the mind...euphoric, heady, amusing, and most stimulating.
So, I miss grad school because the biggest sum of pages in my book of time were rendered to interpreting, discussing...and what for? For the pleasure of thinking. For the satisfaction of sharing. For the growth of exchanging. For the betterment of growing. It's like a quote from the movie Mr. Holland's Opus: when referring to budget cuts that eradicate arts programs in favor of the "necessary elements" like reading and writing, Mr. Holland says, "Keep cutting. Pretty soon they'll having nothing to read or write about." Text is what we think about. Write about. It's what innervates a part of our humanity. Anyway, get it or not, this is a tremendous gift of and to the mind...and those possessing it seek each other out relentlessly.
Every now and then, some new text will capture my mind and reignite the fire of interpretation. My latest literary obsession, if you will, is the movie "Twilight." No, not the book. The movie. Director Catherine Hardwicke has done an extraordinary job of rendering book to movie in a fashion that spotlights image and text in an articulate display of music, light, juxtaposition, foil, tension, insuination, and melodrama. Fanciful, sometimes, but masterful always. As I think this text out, I'll be blogging. Great outlet.

I think I'll do music first.