A Mal/Serenity vid.

"Do you know what the first rule of flying is?"

U toob

Or Right-click & Save

"Do you know what the first rule of flying is?"

We don't talk about flying?

Also? It's the second rule too, right?

Fighting.

We don't talk about fighting.

But flying talky is okay.

Also, the second rule of flying is no steering with your knee, and definitely no steering with invisible controls and hoping no one notices.

I thought it was to fall and miss the ground.

I thought it was to fall and miss the ground.

Indeed.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it. The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt. That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard. Clearly, it's the second point, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

Booster update, if anybody is wondered -- they put themselves into bankruptcy a few days ago, in Minnesota (rather than Oregon). However, there are rumblings online that the feds are plannin' things, but asking people not to post about it in detail online yet.

Wonderful vid, Juliebird. That's a keeper.

Even though I still really really hate the "first rule of flying" speech.

thanks a bunch, dcp!

Lots of hard work, time, and love went into that vid.

Why do you hate the speech?

I like the message, just hate the metaphor used. I posted about it at dcp "Firefly 4: Also, we can kill you with our brains" Oct 15, 2005 10:00:21 pm PDT

I used fly sailplanes, and I still miss it. It makes me take stuff about flying in books/movies/tv shows too seriously.

Pictures: [link]

I've drabbled about flying a few times.
dcp "The Great Write Way" May 18, 2004 8:20:34 pm PDT
and
dcp "The Great Write Way, Chapter Two: Twice upon a time..." May 23, 2005 1:34:57 pm PDT
and
dcp "The Great Write Way, Chapter Two: Twice upon a time..." Oct 24, 2005 7:08:25 pm PDT


If you were to ask me, I'd say the first rule of flying isn't "Love." It's "Don't die." There is a famous old quote:

Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.

— Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, London. Circa early 1930's.

Space -- "the black'' -- can also be included in that list. Love may be what Mal finds keeps him going, it may be what makes Serenity a home, but it won't "[keep] her in the air when she oughta fall down, [tell] you when she's hurting 'fore she keens." I really wish Joss had used a different metaphor for that speech--one not involving flying and vehicle maintenance.

t /rant

curfew's in a half, so I'll check those out later, but I'll add my own gripes about the speech: Kaylee had plenty of love for Serenity and everyone around her, she knew she'd fail soon "tells you she's hurting before she keens", and Mal let penny-pinching get in the way of making her well, and Serenity broke and the Home had to be abandoned and the Family broken up in Out of Gas.

The reason I love the speech on a non-literal level is a subject that I've touched on twice before in my vids: most blatantly in "Prep for Flight". The idea that you can do what you need to survive, but you're not really living, because you're not loving. And if you can't love, you're not flying. It's almost counter to the concept of "keep flying". I've actually grown to hate "keep flying" because of it, because it means that one is surviving on the most barest limits, and not actually living.

Not actually doing the things that constitute having a life: love, family, home. That "keep flying" isn't as worthy as actually Flying. And Flying means letting yourself fall, means stop trying to survive, and start living, loving, even if it means you crash, and maybe you burn. And maybe you don't come back from that. You don't survive that, but you lived, you flew, really flew.

I wonder if it was a concept that was deliberately meant to have multiple meanings over the course of the story: the pilot ends with "keep flying/surviving", but the movie ends with "flying/living/loving".

And that's a whole jumbled mess of trying to articulate something that I feel about the show and movie in general, and maybe it doesn't make sense, but I'll say that I agree with you in the sense that I wish the flying speech hadn't gone on as much as it had, in such a specific direction, because, yes, the metaphor doesn't match up quite so nicely.

I mean, I don't think that letting love in and allowing yourself to love will keep you alive, keep you in flight, as the speech implies, but I do think that it could make you more in tune with things that need fixing (relationships, engine parts). Where "Love's Divine" differs from "Prep for Flight" is that the latter embraces the idea that "falling [in love] in order to fly" could mean that you crash and burn, whereas "surviving" means you could live a long, healthy, and empty life. But Mal's willingness to die for his belief counters that to a degree.

/ramble makesnosense ramble makesnosense ramble makesnosense.

Maybe I'd be in bed by now if I'd just read your links!