So I have begun a journey. Of watching, no experiencing, the entirety of Lost again. And I want to write about it. Not in an episodic format recap type of way (though I suppose an occasional recap will happen). You can find those anywhere. I want to use my writing style (stream of conscious) and write as I re-experience Lost.

Some notes:

I did not originally plan to watch Lost. It began airing while I was in college and I really didn't pay attention to TV at the time. I came to the show somewhere around season 3-4 and went back to re-watch things from there. I'm starting with the pilot, obviously.

The airing (and my watching of) Lost spanned a marriage, a birth, a divorce, a period of horrible solitude, a new relationship and re-marriage. For me, the relationships and sense of weight given to them made the show for me. The mystery drew me in but it was the relationships that had me on edge.

It's impossible for me to watch the pilot episode without getting choked up a bit. When Jack and Kate meet for the first time, the paths they go down, it's all a bit much for me emotionally. I still don't think I've fully 'processed' the initial post-island interlude and what happens with Jack and Kate. For me, that portion of the show came during the worst of times, and in many ways I was what Jack was for that part of the show. And unlike in the way I fantasize how my life could have been, it's inevitable that Jack's going to go down a rabbit hole. And hit things pretty hard.

Of all the characters on the show I identify with him so much. Maybe it was his trip to the bottom coinciding with my trip to the bottom. Maybe it's the feeling that the father-shaped hole in Jack's heart is really a longing for relationship. One that stays just a longing because the motivation that father shaped hole provides drives Jack away from people eventually.

And on a closing note, as I have finished the pilot, part one, I wanted to observe that I see some Tolkien overtones in the way this show is rolling out the story. A tragic main character who leads everyone, a group of people who are relatively unfamiliar with each other banding together, Sawyer as Boromir, brooding from the start. Maybe I'm misreading. But that's the point here. I'm not re watching to recap. I'm re watching to absorb, to think, to react, to experience.