.

I am not talking about the production of art, though that also sometimes inflicts nasty emotional pain. No, what I am referencing is when the art you consume, in my case film & television, strikes you in a deep and emotional context that the creators may not have intended. Last night I watched the most recent episode of HBO’s hit series The Pitt about the disasters and triumphs in a fictional Pittsburg hospital’s emergency department. It’s a fantastic program with every aspect of production, writing, and performance absolutely stellar.

One of the multiple storylines going on in the episode unsettled me, leaving me to wonder in terror if what I watched could possibly be my fate. Panic attacks are not part of my emotional make-up. I learned this about myself 30 years ago. While working in a gas station on the night shift, people would come in bloodied from assaults and accidents, and I maintained my calm, but with this particular plot, my heart sped up, and my discomfort made me want to turn away. I am not going to reveal which storyline. It’s not really relevant to my mindless meanderings. This is about how art impacts us and sometimes in wholly unintentional manners and how that impact might even lead us to change the course of our lives. I certainly will be thinking long and hard about it for at least the next week and images from the episode continue to haunt me.

The last time something like this struck me so very personally was the summer of 1984. Ghostbusters, which gets a shout-out in my most recent novel, released that summer and along with my friends, we ventured to the multiplex for this comedy that essentially asked nothing of its audience save the suspension of disbelief. But it turned out to be a little painful for me, at least on a first viewing. My emotional trauma, slight as it was, lessened with repeated viewings.

And what was it that hurt me, personally, in that silly broad comedy?

Lewis Tulley, Central Park West.

When Lewis Tulley, perfectly performed by the terribly talented Rick Moranis, made his first appearance on the screen, chasing his doomed crush for Dana (Sigourney Weaver) I physically cringed. It seemed that all of my doubts and insecurities had been given form and portrayed for everyone to see and to have a good laugh at. Of course, no one else saw it that way. Not the strangers in the auditorium, not my friends sitting next to me. My reaction — a product of my own doubts and insecurities  –was just that, my own creation. It took a long time before I could watch that performance without a twinge of embarrassment, but it did eventually come.

The Pitt’s episode hit just as hard as Ghostbusters did, but on a totally different vector. And I must remind myself of a truth I uncovered many years ago: Self-perception is the least reliable human trait.