Mars N Shit

The Martian is phat. 

There's a scene near the end once Damon's character has come home to earth after spending a fairly gnarly time on Mars, where he gives a speech at the Nasa space-centre to a room full of budding astronauts. I saw the film first time round in the cinema and the speech hit me like an uppercut from a 145-pound Conor Mcgregor, but obviously since i'm not heavy into the pirate dvd scene i happened to not be recording it from the back of the auditorium on a tri-pod, and so being unable to watch it back the scene lingered instead long in my memory, until it gradually morphed and evaporated into a muddle of snatched sentences about something or other that made little sense. I searched for it on youtube for a few months but in vain. It was only when on the plane to New Zealand a few weeks back that i got a chance to watch it again.


Sitting there, breathing in the recirculated air and dreaming of the snack trolley, at last the scene in question came into view. And once again it was a total KO, giving me no option but to pass the hell out instantly. It was only by dint of the 15 hot towels dutifully brought to me by the stewardess who was fine as hell that i eventually came round, watching it a cool 68 more times before transcribing it onto my boarding pass.

Here it is.

When I was up there, stranded by myself, did I think I was going to die? Yes. Absolutely. And that’s what you need to know going in, because it’s going to happen to you. This is space. It does not cooperate. At some point, everything is going to go south on you. Everything is going to go south, and you’re going to say.. this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that. Or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just.. begin. You do the math, you solve one problem. Then you solve the next one. And then the next. And if you solve enough problems you get to come home.

Some gee has since uploaded it to youtube.

I'm not going to treat you like a group sat in a kindergarten semi-circle and explain why the speech is so heavy, i think it goes without saying it speaks for itself. But it's not about space. If anything it's a reminder of the power of writing, and oratory, and of art in general. To transcend, and to say something already well-trodden so well that it makes the subject matter new again. To the point where you can't but pay it attention. For my money i think this speech does that. And for those of you who are finding all this a big bunch of baloney i doff my cap to you sirs, for you've worked out a whole heap of shit that will take me a lifetime.