Last night, I walked through the calm and beautiful streets of Barcelona to get to a restaurant. It was so warm that I took my jacket off and went in just a t-shirt. All around me, people were sitting in bars and cafes, talking and drinking and laughing.
It was an extremely unpleasant walk, and I was extremely annoyed the entire way.
At one point, the girl who next to me gave me a kiss on the cheek. Then she pulled back in surprise. “Why are you crying?” she asked.
“It’s this wind,” I said, irritated.
Sure enough, a modest breeze had been blowing the whole time, and for some reason my eyes welled up and tears were streaming down my face. I kept wiping my face but that seemed to just encourage the conspiracy between my eyes and the wind, and the tear production increased.
I’m telling you this because I just asked myself what things have happened to me in the past 24 hours that I might include in this email.
This “tears in wind” experience popped up in my mind, and it linked up with the more poetic “tears in rain.” That phrase comes from a famous 42-word monologue, near the end of the sci-fi classic Blade Runner.
The monologue is delivered by a Roy, a dying android, who has been alive for only four years, and who is both less and more than human. As Roy sits in the rain on a rooftop, shutting down, he says:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
The “tears in rain” monologue has been called “perhaps the most moving death soliloquy in cinematic history.”
After the shooting of the scene, crew members reportedly applauded and even cried.
The scene has been analyzed by critics and philosophers, referenced dozens of times in other pop culture — and perhaps most significantly, it has its own dedicated Wikipedia page today, separate from main Blade Runner page.
Why am I telling you about this?
Well, I figure if a 42-word monologue manages to have this kind of influence on the world, it might be worth thinking about why exactly that is.
But this email has almost reached its end. In a moment more, it will sit down on the ground, deliver its death soliloquy, and shut down, like a short-lived but passionate android. If you’d like to read more essays like this, time to act.