came to understand the way a cue works when I thought about Nic’s and my different reactions to the movie Requiem for a Dream. Nic loved Darren Aronofsky’s relentlessly dismal story of a boy and his mother, a heroin addict and speed freak. I found it unbearable. Even the people I know who liked the movie were depressed by its bleakness and depravity, but Nic was thrilled by it. Nic later told me that the drug scenes, accompanied by throbbing music from the Kronos Quartet, which are cautionary, nearly unstomachable for most people, made him want to get high.
