Repeat exposure

Repeat exposure works in two directions. Either we develop a liking for something we are exposed to over and over, or we become desensitized to it. People are far more likely to become attracted to a person they see more often than less often. People become desensitized to graphic images that they see on a regular basis. We become desensitized to emotions, too.

I chose to direct a scene because I felt an emotional connection to it, because it was emotionally powerful to me. After sitting with it for a month, it becomes a pile of puzzle pieces, nuts and bolts that I have to fit together to make a working machine. I have no attachment to it anymore.

To make a parallel claim, the more you repress an emotion, the more you become used to repressing it. You become desensitized to the repression of that emotion, and it no longer means anything. You forget it's there? Maybe. Or you see it as though you're looking at a painting, a film. It's far away, an exhibit.

There is a language for logic. Emotion has no language. To find the language for emotion? That is art.

I often wish that real life was structured like a play. In plays, everyone has to say what they're actually thinking or feeling eventually, because otherwise the audience wouldn't know what was going on. In real life people don't have to do that. Everything can stay bottled up. The action doesn't move forward, though. It just hangs, lifeless.