Where the Hell is Matt?
July 7, 2008
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
I don’t know why, but when I watched this, I was really moved. Matt says on his webpage that he doesn’t have a reason for doing what he does, and people can draw their own conclusions, and this is mine:
People long to be free. Freedom of expression is a part of that – they long to be able to express joy and not care how they go about doing it. But one of the barriers to freedom is the need to consider tomorrow, and the repercussions that today’s actions will have on it. If you act like an idiot, then tomorrow you won’t get the job you want (“someone saw me acting like an idiot in public, and word got out”).
One of my favorite webcomics is XKCD. Probably my favorite strip, though I don’t refer to it often because of the language, is this one:
I think that what people need to act out their freedom is a leader – someone who takes the first step.
I’ve seen it time and again in my life, and I’m sure others have seen it too: something is too hard, too embarrassing, too weird to do – until someone else does it. Suddenly, everyone is doing the hard, embarrassing, weird thing, and have an amazing internal thrill at the freedom they now have. The classic example is dance or worship expression in the church. People who go to a church where the majority raise their hands, coming from churches where that isn’t the norm, experience the thrill of dramatic worship without the risk of possible offense that it would carry back home. When they return to their original churches, they return to their original styles of worship – but if you observe their quiet or personal times with God, you’ll see that they’ll prefer the option that grants more freedom.
So to clarify: I think this guy goes places, and does things many people want to do – express joy with their bodies, repercussions be damned – and I think that people join him because they resonate with what he’s doing, and he’s giving them the freedom to act out their joy.
And I think that this is beautiful. Baz Luhrman famously said:
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
I stand in awe at Matt. I don’t know what his beliefs are, but I honestly believe he has tapped into something of heaven, because I see what he does and I think of home.
