What does it look like to have eyes that see?

Walking through the streets of NYC, what do you see?  If your Bill Cunningham you have an eye to see and appreciate the eclectic fashion of everyday people.  Bill Cunningham, at 82 years old, has given his life to documenting and celebrating the narrative of NYC street life.  He has photographed NYC fashion and society for over 50 years.  Currently he’s well known for his weekly columns: “On the Street” and “Evening Hours” in the New York Times.

Cunningham is a remarkable anomaly of a man.  He is kind, daring, and humble.  He is an egalitarian and a maverick.  He’s a historian.  He uses his camera like a pen, not trying to take the best photographs but wanting to honestly document ordinary New Yorkers going about their days.  Cunningham truly has eyes that see.  Yes, they are keenly trained to see all things fashion, but they see in incredibly beautiful and fascinating ways.

It took Richard Press, the director, 10 years to ease Cunningham into being the subject of this documentary.  And even still the film is shot without a film crew and Cunningham himself has yet to see it.

Cunningham is a cultural anthropologist and this documentary is his story.  There is something absolutely endearing and captivating about this simple man and he has a thing or two to teach all of us about what it means to be an artist with eyes that see.

Sure, Diary of a Country Priest didn’t roll off the press in August (unless it was August 1937), but the book continues to resonate and stands as a crucial addition to the literary canon—at least for anyone interested in wonder, faith, and art (and if you aren’t interested in one of those, you may be on the wrong site).

Through the diary of a young priest in 1930’s France, we see tussles with parishioners, constant fixation on poverty and money, and an insistent physical pain which will not let go. More than this, we see a supposedly faith-filled man at odds with his God, struggling in the dark.

Reminiscent of Mother Theresa’s letters revealed after her death, we are reminded that faith is less about belief and more about centering your life on something, that agony is innate in all humanity (he writes: “I believe that ever since the fall, man’s condition is such that neither around him nor within him can he perceive anything, except in the form of agony”), but that pain might actually force us to stumble into the light.

While not for the faint of heart (did you see the quote?) DoaCP gives us all we could want: the anti-hero at odds with others, with God, with himself, and yet someone whom you are glad to know. Whether you agree with him or not, the world needs more people like the country priest—a man who wrestles with faith, with pain, and yet manages to uncover grace.

We like to think of our art as spontaneous. Movies about writers either show them angst-ridden and wondering what to write, or pouring golden words out of their fingertips. Musicians find inspiration in late-night parties and members of the opposite sex. Photographers? Well, no one tells stories about photographers, because we’re all photographers in the 21st century. We’re all carrying around our equipment in our right front pockets and can download an app to make our photos even more artsy. (It’s pixilated! It’s in black and white! It’s a fish-eye lens!)

Only, we can’t. We’re only fooling ourselves and our doting mothers when we think the latest shot on our iPhone or even SLR camera is worthy of National Geographic. Art, for the photographer, does not mean snapping a photo when standing on a desk (wow—a new angle, or it would be if Dead Poets Society never happened); it means struggling to find the right composition, the perfect light; it means publishing the eight photos out of 25,000 that tell a story. And coincidentally, there is a story behind such photos.

As Picasso said, “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” What are the stories behind the great art of our time? A man revisits the frozen plains of Alberta for one chance at a timeless shot. A woman rewrites a scene for the 20th time (Hollywood leaves out the re-writes: all writing in Hollywood is perfect if you’ve smoked enough cigarettes while staring off into the distance). Perhaps great art cannot come about without a great story behind it, of someone working, working for that unfolding of time—whether in writing or film or music or whatever it may be—that makes us draw a breath and wonder again at the world.

Who decides whether or not you are loved?

HappyThanksYouMorePlease, the 2011 Indi Film by Josh Radnor, takes a stab at answering this question with just the right combination of intention and lightheartedness.

Whether you are a twenty-something or not, it’s interesting to see if an artist, in this case filmmaker Josh Radnor [Writer + Director], when painting with broad strokes about a generation, is able to capture the depth of the human experience. Described by IMDB as a film that “captures a generational moment,” HTMP is a film that attempts to paint with these broad strokes.

Radnor not-so-subtly opens his film, which is all about moving from young adulthood to adulthood, with the statement that writing short stories is not the same thing as writing longer form narratives. Is this what it is to become an adult? Learning to make the sacrifices necessary to write longer stories with our lives? Is this part of what it means to be loved?

It may be.

With the tag line “Go Get Yourself Loved,” it may seem like Radnor has simplified the complexity of young adulthood to simply chasing after the next relationship. But he dodges that mistake by daring to articulate a reality about the true nature of love: the hardest work at times may be on the receiving end.

Is it possible that being loved is a state of being that exists whether or not the beloved receives it? Is being loved the state of receiving love from the person you chose to receive it from, or is love something that is given to you whether you receive it or not? Is it time to start writing longer stories? Is it time to confront adulthood?

HappyThankYouMorePlease is an opportunity to consider all this and more.