Solitude and Connection: Complementary Art on My Wall
I recently added two new pieces of wall art to my growing collection inspired by mythologically significant figures from movies and television.
The subject of both new pieces is Peter Capaldi’s passionate and curmudgeonly portrayal of the 12th incarnation of The Doctor from Doctor Who. His is the only version of the 14 who have so far played the character that I felt captured what a 2,000-year-old alien, who had seen, experienced, and endured more than any of us can imagine, might actually be like. And though there are many episodes and moments from his three-season run on the show that I could have chosen as worthy of immortalizing, I chose these two as polar opposites, the yin and yang of what he is capable of experiencing. It is a similar dichotomy that I relate to in my most extreme experiences of life.
The first image comes from the episode Heaven Sent (season 9, episode 11), the brilliance of which I’ve written about before. The Doctor is in a state of despondent, disconnected solitude here, much more than he usually is when he has a companion to keep focused on the good in humanity. He’s alone now because the friend who supported him emotionally has died, tragically and unfairly. Her cracking photo is on the wall behind him, reminding him of his loss, the only thing he can reflect on as he sits alone in shadow.
The Doctor is at one extreme of his possible experience, trapped in grief and thinking about how the life he has lived has led him here and whether it is possible for things to ever be any different. He does not have any reason to believe that any coming moment will be different than what he has endured so far. It is a timeless and eternal experience of emptiness, his natural state. It’s how I often feel when I compare myself to the world at large—like I will always be viewing it from afar, never truly a part of it.
“Happy ever after doesn’t mean forever. It just means time.”
The second image represents the opposite of the first, and it comes from just two episodes later: The Husbands of River Song.
We see The Doctor do something I’m not sure he’s ever done before: let himself act human and be happy for a while. He allows himself a small break from his alienating life of moving from crisis to crisis in a universe that constantly requires his intervention. Instead, he finds one thing worth devoting his whole time and whole attention to: a woman so exceptional that she alone takes precedence over every other miracle he could be out there performing in the universe at large.
Around her is the most grounded and human that we will ever see him act. A whole new dynamic to his personality that never gets to come out becomes activated around her, and she finally makes him feel connected to the reality he acts as a hero to. He is capable of many exceptional things, but she fills the role of his reason to be exceptional. He goes from a world of black and white to color being at rest around her, which is vividly displayed in the respective color profile of each image.
The Doctor cannot ever live like a man because he is always focused on something deep and imporant that almost everyone else ignores. Only by the intervention of a force even more powerful for him does he get pulled out of space and back down to Earth with the rest of us. That force is the woman he cannot ignore. She is the only force in the universe capable of moving him from one far end of the spectrum of human experience to the other. She is his catalyst for feeling like he is connected to the universe he saves every week.
She is a representation of what life is like when it is full of, well, life itself and all the beauty the universe is capable of offering.