Last time I was thinking about passing the time. The book about Stanley Kubrick provided me such existential insights.
What was the name of the book? It was “The Stanley Kubrick Archives.” Taschen published this book. I already mentioned that I read Taschen books with breaks. They are designed in such a fantastic way that we can easily take a break in reading, in the middle of the book. Later on, we can get back to it after weeks of break. I started to read the book about Stanley Kubrick in September 2018. Then, I wrote this post on the 19th of February, 2020. I still have ~10% of content to read, to finish reading.* For now, I stopped between The Shinning movie and Full Metal Jacket film. Thus, as we can see, reading such a marvelous book can take me a minimum of one and a half years.
During that time, Stanley’s face accompanied me while reading Taschen’s work of art.
In the book, we see archival photographs of Stanley Kubrick when he was young, middle-aged, and old. I realized, once again in my life, in a quite short period, that passing the time and, eventually, death is an inevitable, inescapable thing that all humans will face (others, who are dead, already experienced it). Moreover, I thought about how many additional artworks Kubrick would be able to prepare if humans could live, let’s say one hundred and fifty years. I had merely sad feelings that some people deserved (by taking into considerations only their works of art) to live a little bit more. Thanks to that, they could be able to produce subsequent masterpieces.
Am I fair-minded by writing such a thing?
Maybe all the people (with exceptions of such people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol-Pot, etc.) deserved to live long? Undoubtedly, I am not the one who can and who should answer such questions. I am convinced that silence is the only honest answer.
Nevertheless, I simply regret that Stanley Kubrick did not produce more films. Rest in Peace, Stanley!
* In March 2020, I finished reading the book.