Seeking 'MAGICAL' Places
Published May 20, 2024 · 6:49 · 57,189 views
About This Video
A meditation on place that begins with the search for "magical" places, locations that produce a specific, hard-to-name feeling of rightness, and takes an unexpected turn into a witnessed mystery that Van can't explain and doesn't try to. The refusal to explain is the point. Some experiences resist narration, and the honest response is to hold the strangeness without resolving it into a lesson.
The video operates in the register Van uses for his most personal work. Slower pacing, less structural argument, more attention to what it feels like to stand in a particular spot and feel something shift. The seeking is active (you go looking for these places), but the finding is passive (the place announces itself). That's the whole mystery.
Transcript
undefined undefined the spirited man patreon is basically the alternative Universe to this YouTube channel and right now there's about half a dozen unpublished spirited Man YouTube
videos on our patreon ad free we also have interviews that I shot 20 years ago in Berlin about Berlin ex Patriots also
I do live streams also it's the best way to get in touch with me I respond to nearly all of the messages I get on the
patreon about every week There's Something New it's five a month and there's a link right at the end of this undefined undefined
video nice this has to be a B I know I would do that magical places this is better than Disneyland for a 5-year-old finding them is an internal drive for me that I forgot I even had until I started
texting back and forth with Ari shaffir gross I live in one a magical
place I've lived in them since it's been up to me Rusty o look sprinkler vals take those with us okay so this is's what's this great this is the kind of magical place
that I love once great and someone's trying to save it they wisely stuck Us in the back with all of the maintenance
[Music] equipment oh no here [Music] com I discovered this hotel in a loose sight menu holder at a breakfast place in now we checked in on January 1st there
were six cars in the parking lot booked a room without a reservation or calling ahead oh freezy well she said the undefined undefined
jacuzzi should be warm by now look at this view this is beautiful she is so mean it's not her it's just too
expensive to heat that pool during the winter but in the summer I'll bet it's really nice there was a woman and a man
[Music] maybe my age but I think he was younger in a wheelchair staying in the Little Wing by the pool I noticed them while the boy and me
were discovering the Wonder of this old place this
is what the man sat in the wheelchair silent observing not observing us not
observing the boy and me I don't think but he could definitely hear us was better than anything want to turn on the
Jet and respecting his privacy I did not Snoop but it seemed as if the woman
spoke to him in a tone of voice you would use you would gently use to cheer
someone up but I might have imagined that I caught glimpses of this man in the wheelchair
observing a filled but empty Cold Water swimming pool and I thought at first
that it might be a bit indecent or disrespectful for the boy and me to
express our joy too audibly in front of this man in the wheelchair that the boy and me should
perhaps be more modest with our voices it's kind of like a
fish and then a second thought an immodest thought that seeing this man in
the wheelchair who watched a filled but empty Cold Water Swimming Pool made me feel
blessed and I am blessed and we are blessed and we were
blessed and I think that maybe we were meant to see that man in the wheelchair and maybe that's why we found
this old hotel will fall and down will come [Applause] [Music] baby I have to get into the emergency room here you go do two mornings later before we
left we saw flashing lights outside the man in the wheelchairs room two fire
trucks an ambulance uh police truck [Music] it looks like it's headed towards us let's just get all the bikes packed and stuff so that we don't get soaked dad do that right now Dad yeah bud um some of
that broken down Hotel yes still has a roof and when we later left the hotel
and drove by the man in the wheelchairs room the fire trucks and ambulance were gone
but a sheriff's deputy stood guard at the threshold of the man in the wheelchairs [Music] room I had the feeling that something important had happened undefined undefined all [Music]
People Referenced
Ari Shaffir