So I was really into this show. At one point in it there's a shot of a tree with its leaves wafting in the breeze; it had no narrative significance, but it was pretty to look at while the heroine narrated at us, and perhaps it suggested a context to her affairs that a more conventional picture of her face wouldn't provide. For some reason this animated image of a tree resonated with me, perhaps because I lived in a neighborhood full of trees.
Every night I would come home from my second-shift job and walk the dog in the dark. One of our neighbors had placed a light under a tall tree; the light shone up the shaft of the tree, illuminating its entire length up to the canopy of leaves. I think I would have overlooked it if I hadn't had that animated image of a tree awakening me to the way trees exist on their own beside our lives; the numinousness of trees suddenly mattered to me after a life of living around them, and that illuminated tree became a nightly touchstone for me.
So. I've progressed from cartoon trees (that in retrospect looked more like wobbling green bubble gum blobs than foliage) to trees with dramatic lighting, to just liking trees in general. I regard this as progress: from the mediated experience to the thing itself.
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