I was listening to the U2 song "The Wanderer" just now – the one Johnny Cash sings vocals, and there's this vivid post-apocalyptic image of a man walking down an "old eight lane" highway. I was thinking of that book I read a while back, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Then I was thinking of Wim Wenders' movie, Paris, Texas. One of the greatest movies. How it opens: the amnesiac Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) walking along through the Texas desert, in a sort of mindless straight line, clearly disturbed, obsessed, broken.
I feel like that man sometimes. Just walking through the world in a line, no longer with any purpose except to move forwards. Wandering, in a straight line.
And so then I was thinking of other movies I love, and I thought of Fitzcarraldo (by Werner Herzog). I looked it up on wikipedia, and discovered a wonderful quote by the director: he described himself as a "conquistador of the useless" in discussing the fact that rather than use special effects, he actually moved a real, giant steamship over a hill in the making of the movie (which is about moving a giant river steamship over a hill in 1890's Peru).