Is this the best moment ever? Heh, well it's at least tied with about a dozen or so other moments.
Anyway, in this episode, Chris, who comes up with some rather unusual artistic efforts, decided to make a catapult-like device, and fling a cow. (To be eaten afterward.) Half-way through the episode, Ed is talking about that happening in Monty Python & The Holy Grail. Thinking that repetition is the death of art, Chris calls the whole thing off. Eventually, Maurice, while yelling at Chris to finish what he starts, mentions how we don't see Maggie crying, even though her house burned down. At this, Chris gets a look of wonder on his face. Inspired by the thought that "Every moment of destruction is a moment of creation," he heads to Maggie's. When he sees her charred piano, he knows his quest is over. Days later, we're ready to see the piano fly:
It's not the thing you fling. It's the fling itself."I've been here now for some days, groping my way along, trying to realize my vision here. I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight. I've come to find out that it's not the vision, it's not the vision at all. It's the groping. It's the groping, it's the yearning, it's the moving forward. I was so fixated on that flying cow that when Ed told me Monty Python already painted that picture, I thought I was through. I had to let go of that cow so I could see all the other possibilities. Anyway, I want to thank Maurice for helping me to let go of that cow. Thank you Maurice for playing Apollo to my Dionysus in art's Cartesian dialectic. And thanks to you, Ed, cause the truth shall set us free! And Maggie, thank you for sharing in the destruction of your house so that today we could have something to fling. I think Kierkegaard said it oh so well, 'The self is only that which it's in the process of becoming.' Art? Same thing. James Joyce had something to say about it too. 'Welcome, Oh Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience, and to forge in the smythe of my soul the uncreated conscious of my race.' We're here today to fling something that bubbled up from the collective unconsciousness of our community. Ed, you about ready? The thing I learned folks, this is absolutely key: It's not the thing you fling. It's the fling itself. Let's fling something, Cicely!"
) I love that interchange you just posted Fist. And the farewell episode, along with the visits by the jewish lawyer, was so well done the entire media industry should have buried themselves in shame for letting such a good show go. Tam and I cryed when it went off the air and had a hard time watching anything on TV after that.
Seriously, you can't stop learning from this show, so now you can go out and get the dvd's. I'll bet you forgot all the amazing philosophy and religion in it.
