What Your Deepest Desire Says About You
Published November 19, 2021 · 8:33 · 140,173 views
About This Video
Van wants to paint a word on the back of a chair he did not buy and did not pay for. A $250 chair, more than he paid for his first car (not adjusted for inflation). The word is Russian. The idea is stolen from his mentor, Tom Sachs, who hand-painted Tarkovsky's name on the threshold of his studio. Stalker. 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. When was the last time you saw that?
A psychological essay that uses desire as a diagnostic tool. What your deepest desire says about you is not what you want. It is what you lack, and the lack is the architecture of your personality. Van treats desire not as something to pursue but as something to read, the way a mechanic reads a symptom to find the underlying failure. The inversion is the channel's signature move: take the question the audience thinks they are asking and show them the question underneath it.
Transcript
this spirited man really wants to paint a word on the back of this chair but he won't
because he did not buy this chair did not pay for it
if he did paint a word onto the back of this chair he'd have to replace the chair with a new one
and it's an expensive chair to replace two hundred and fifty dollars more than he paid for his first car
not adjusted for inflation he wants to paint this word for a strange reason
an idea stolen from his mentor from his teacher perhaps two ideas stolen from his mentor
from his teacher and the ideas have something to do with channeling a master
the mentor hand-painted this name on the threshold of his the mentors studio
this is not the mentor's name it is the name of a master from
long ago here's an old photo of the masters threshold from long ago
[Music] so who is this spirited man attempting to channel and what does this russian word have to do with money he's attempting to channel this man
andre tarkovsky the great russian filmmaker why because tarkovsky brought us this character the stalker and sometimes this spirited man
feels like the stalker or perhaps he aspires to be like
the stalker 100 fresh on rotten tomatoes when was the last time you saw that
this stalker is not the kind of stalker that you're thinking of not that kind this stalker is a sort of guide
a sort of guide that this spirited man aspires to be the stalker
is a kind of artist maybe stalker is a film about being an artist
so what sort of guide is this stalker and what does this have to do with money
[Music] the stalker is a guide who brings desperate people to a place called the zone this is how he makes his humble living by guiding desperate people to the zone the zone
gives people hope it is illegal to enter the zone lethal security guards the zone
the zone is a very strange place where time space and emotions bend reality
when we enter the zone the film turns to color like oz
[Music] though it is frightening and full of strange enigmatic laws of physics that he doesn't quite understand
the stalker loves the zone and why do desperate people
why do the writer and the professor want to visit the zone because within the zone
there is a place called the room and inside the room when one steps into the room
his deepest desire will be granted the writer wants inspiration so he thinks
the professor wants scientific discovery so he thinks perhaps a nobel prize
so he thinks but the stalker does not go into the room
the stalker is satisfied with leading others the hopeless into the room but the stalker
why he never goes into the room a stalker is forbidden from entering the room especially for
his own selfish reasons [Music] what happens when a stalker enters the room well we don't know exactly
but the stalker's teacher another stalker called porcupine he went into the room
when porcupine came out left the zone and returned to life outside the zone
porcupine was suddenly filthy rich it turned out that porcupine's deepest desire the thing he suffered most for
was just money and when porcupine realized that his deepest desire was simply money
why he killed himself this spirited man thinks it's very important to earn lots of money for himself and this thought concerns him
the thing to do perhaps he thinks is to be a stalker and guide people into the zone
in the end none of the three goes into the room but each of them seems to have reached some sort of
epiphany or catharsis having experienced a journey through the zone
we watch them from inside the room we're inside the room
[Music] and so this spirited man will refrain from painting the russian word on the back of the 900 spanish chair
because the chair belongs to isabel and he doesn't want to spend the 900 to replace it
the 900 will go to equipment for his interview setup for his patreon and hopefully the
patreon brings in lots of money [Music] because it bugs him that he's refrained from painting stalker in russian on the back of his chair for the sake of money [Music] you
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Spanish chair mentions — $900 chair discussed
People Referenced
Andrei Tarkovsky, Tom Sachs
Films & Media Referenced
- Tarkovsky film central to episode theme