On Leaving

Guido Anselmi had bold ambitions. Not necessarily bolder than those of Duke students, most of whom have each half-hour scheduled down to a tee, who have jobs on Wall Street or for the Peace Corps, who champion organizations or win national titles. But his ambitions were a different type of bold. The protagonist of Federico Fellini’s film 8 1/2 desired to create his own film, one that “could help bury forever all the dead things we carry within ourselves.” At Recess, by no means do we attempt such a therapeutic cleansing of the self through our articles, no acts of reverse necromancy through creativity. We have, however, extended ourselves into our reviews, reports, interviews. We’ve left our text in the curling edges of Thursday Chronicles, we’ve burned pixelated imprints into computer screens and onto your eyes, all in the hopes of procuring some sort of effect.

But, in his vain attempt to create a cinematic masterpiece, Guido hits an existential roadblock, telling a friend: “I have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.” In today’s world of hyper self-expression, a world with more and more media outlets, it’s easy to ask why. How tempting an idea, to stop adding clutter to an over-cluttered world.

In my last review, I asked how one leaves. Weeks away from a diploma, I by no means have solved that seemingly impossible quandary. But as I think back on the hours spent writing for this publication—the trips to the Rialto and the Chelsea, the weekends at Full Frame—I’ve come to a clear, perhaps archaic, realization: one cannot leave. My classmates and I may be gone from here, leaving  our lives, to quote the film’s critic, “in tattered pieces, in vague memories, in the faces of those we never knew how to love.” But at this point, why leave by burying the past? Instead, communicate, extend, relive and above all create.