Premise: After being away from his hometown for a decade, a man returns to the place he grew up for his childhood friend's funeral. While staying in town, he reconnects with old friends and a former lover, setting off a rediscovery in how he perceives this place he resented from far away.
And, now, a far gone excerpt from wherever in the world you're reading this:
"We all have an underlying desire to feel normal, to be accepted by the communities we call ours, and to discover a purpose for why we’re spending our time alive waking up, eating, working, kissing, fucking, playing, worrying, wondering, wandering, discovering, hiding, dancing, following, creating, thinking, tinkering, sleeping, and dying. It’s human nature, and we know all too well how perplexing this all is. Insecurities will bubble up; some fleeting and understandable, and others will feel like the subplot to a tragic comedy. The unraveling of your otherwise steely reserve might even feel like the beginning of an unsettling arrhythmia that pulses with a throbbing magnitude through every centimeter across the nervous system. We oddly forget, though, this means we care.
Premise: A promising star in the competitive world of ballet suffers a tragic injury on the cusp of getting picked up by a prominent company. On the path to recovery, she realizes dance was all she was, and reckons with losing the thing her sense of self was all tied up in. It's once she lost everything that she finds a new way forward.
And, now, a step or two from this dance routine:
"For an art form that’s so beautiful in its graceful threading of movements and so fluid in its storytelling, ballet comes with the same vicious realities of any other sport. It’s extraordinarily competitive, especially at its highest levels. It’s ruthlessly detached, ready to discard faltering talent the moment it’s so obviously replaceable. And once you’re out of contention, whether it’s due to injury, retirement, or a temporary stallout in life, you’re torturing yourself on a doomed path of crushing disappointment and empty search for meaning should you decide to work your way back."