It was around the time of my post about ghosts, below, that I took the time—entirely on a whim—to play a game that had been hanging around in my gaming systems for a long time: What Remains of Edith Finch.
I had downloaded it, on sale at one time or another, on PS5, and then on Switch, and then on Steam, as though the game was chasing me—but it took me years to finally get to it.
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It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t seen it, or who doesn’t have a rich emotional life, how a video game can move you deeply, in the same way that only the rarest works of literature, or poetry, or art can.
But I played Edith Finch and was transfixed by Milton’s story. And then I learned about The Unfinished Swan. And together, the two of them have gone to that place in me where only the most important things go, with the experiences and moments that you can’t bear to remember and that you also can’t bear to forget. Things that changed you.
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I don’t know how many people there are in the world like this, but for a certain kind of kid, Milton’s story resonates so deeply that you’re moved beyond tears, to that place where time stops and it’s just you, the core of you, and the past that you bring with you—all of the people and the places and the triumphs and the sadnesses that you have lost, that are no longer with you, but that will nonetheless always be yours.
A certain kind of person, who was a certain kind of child, knows exactly why Milton decided to paint himself a door and then walk through it, never to be seen again. It was the dream we had without realizing we were having it.
I was that kid. There are others, I’m sure.
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I don’t know what to say other than that sometimes there is order in the universe—you have a thought, you begin a post, and the universe answers with a work of art that feeds you, takes you back out of the daily grind and back to the world of magic and melody and longing that you left behind—or thought you left behind—with your childhood.