Tonight, I’m seeing the film The Virgin Suicides at the cinema. The screening will be preceded by a talk by French band Air, who composed the soundtrack. Definitions of what the talk will precisely consist of vary: according to the same one source, it ranges from an “encounter” to a “masterclass”; by any case it will be an “exclusive showing”, better still: “une soirée évènement”.

I learned about the event yesterday on social media. Being a huge fan of Air as well as band member Jean-Benoît Dunckel’s side project Tomorrow’s World, I booked the ticket shortly after.

With hindsight, I’m a bit wary of the cinema’s communication on the event. They might be blowing a lot of hot air into a budget toy balloon. I mean to say, I could have just as well dusted off an interview of the band on YouTube and organized a showing of the film at home on my laptop. That the band should remember the production process so vividly fifteen years down the track sounds a bit suspicious to me, but hey, it’s Air and I’m a groupie, so I might as well not ask myself too many questions.

The truth is, I’m very excited to hear their insights about the making of the OST. Since Dunckel is currently working on the second studio album of Tomorrow’s World, I also wouldn’t say no to an extended aside on that subject… So, Jean-Benoît, if you read this, you know what to do tonight!

Most of all, I’m sure it will be fascinating for me to finally discover the visuals that go with the sound, after listening to the soundtrack so many times on its own. (Besides, it will be the first time I’ve been to a proper cinema in ten years, so that should be an interesting experience as well.)

Why have I only now gotten around to watching this film, you may ask?

Well, as its title implies (and as the final track of the OST confirms), it’s a sad film.

I don’t like sad films. (Plus I might have some baggage with early teenage love – I missed the boat, or, rather, the boat missed me –, so it might have played a role in my not having watched the film yet.)

I read somewhere that you should be careful about the books you read, the films you watch, and more generally what you expose yourself to, as they shape your vision of the world and influence your mood. I’ve never felt any surplus of happiness, thank you very much.

Speaking of happiness, I woke up feeling all positive and bouncy this morning, and the idea that I’d feel the complete opposite tonight after watching the film seemed so funny to me that it heightened my mood even more. And that’s not the end of it: I had planned on working my mood muscle once more after the screening by going to the merriest open mic you can imagine, in a bar full of jolly jolly people. That I should not feel in the mood for it then didn’t cross my mind. I did just write an article in German about how difficult it is to “manually” shift moods, but I hope that I was just writing for the sake of improving my German and that I didn’t really mean it, eh?

Anyway, I’m losing the thread.

I was saying that I try to expose myself to as few negative influences as I can.

I generally don’t feel like doing anything when I’m sad, and although I do agree that sadness or boredom can sometimes bring about change, I’m generally a lot more productive when I’m feeling cheerful and lucid. When in such moods, I readily take actions that make me progress in my life, be that through exploring new things or simply doing things I’ve been putting off for too long but that would benefit me greatly.

It’s for the same reason that I don’t follow current events, although for that one I might pretentiously justify myself by saying that I’m overly critical and suspicious of the media and that I don’t feel like going to the trouble of getting to the bottom of each and every news item.

When it comes to our view of things, we usually make the decisions that benefit us the most. Our personal interest generally comes before the rationality of the decision per se, not that it’s a bad thing (although it can be: shielding yourself from learning about the atrocities and injustices in the world is a sure way not to help).

For example, I’ve gotten very fond lately of the idea of abundance, more particularly of the “abundance mentality”: whatever you’re after, there’s plenty of it; at worst, you just have to find it. Taking on this mentality was very much a conscious decision on my part. I was feeling too attached and possessive of one friend, and I was very much aware that I was the person who needed to change, so I searched a bit on the internet and found out about this mentality. It was like a lifebuoy for me; I embraced it and tweaked my brain to follow the precepts of the mentality the best it could. While some people grow up with that abundance mentality naturally and simply cannot feel jealousy, I had to “fake it ‘til I made it”, based on the sole conviction that adopting this new mentality was what was best for me. A few months down the road, I’m still not quite there but I’m improving, and I’m still a fervent proponent of the abundance mentality. At any rate it’s certainly an interesting experience to “manually” change your mindset like this, consciously correcting your brain each time you catch it falling back to good ol’ scarcity mentality patterns.

It presently occurs to me that I haven’t really talked about the mentality itself, so let me tell you that it has helped me become proactive in various areas of my life. For instance, I’m now convinced that there are pleeeeeenty of people who share the same interests as me (even niche ones), and/or a similar personality, and with whom I can connect deeply. My tribe exists, and I just need to find it. And with the Internet, it’s a piece of a cake, really. You just need to make sure you give out enough information about yourself so that if one member of your “tribe” were to come across your profile, they should know that you’re a good match. I got this crucial idea from personal development blogger Steve Pavlina, to whom I’m very grateful in general. Here are a few of his articles that cover this subject: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/02/broadcast-your-desires/ and http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2013/07/how-to-attract-quality-relationship-partners/.

As a result, I wear shirts of favorite music bands pretty much every day (which once sparked a conversation about my favourite band, woohoo), I’m going to share articles of interest and personal writing more and more on social media (you can follow me on Twitter or its less commercial alternative Mastodon), I’m launching my blog about music soon, I have installed several social discovery applications and added my interests there, and I’ve switched to more exhaustive profile descriptions on other websites.

As far as social abundance is concerned, I realized that I already had loads of existing opportunities to meet new, interesting people, so I decided to act on them instead of ignoring them.

I’ve also found that clearly communicating your desires to the other person is also essential and helps avoid loads of headaches. For example, right now I’m more keen on in-person conversations than online messaging, so I tend to promptly invite people for a drink.

I have no idea how to end this article. Considering how disorganized it was, this could just as well be its beginning.