Where somebody blinks is a moment where you can actually get access to the architecture of their thoughts. And so I started watching people in real-life and just noting where do they blink. And it was clear that they do blink at certain moments and not at other moments. And this is not what you read about when you open your biology textbook, certainly back then, which is that blinking is the body's need to moisten the surface of the eye. If that's all it was, then in an environment at a certain humidity, at a certain temperature or with a certain wind speed, the blinking would become thermostatically separate. So, in this environment blink every 12 seconds and you would remain blinking every 12 seconds unless it got hotter, in which case the blinking would happen every eight seconds. Or unless the humidity rose, in which case you would slow down and blink... But that doesn't happen.

Our blinking is tied to what we're thinking and how we're reacting to what's happening around us. And in a sense, editing is blinking for the audience. We are showing them a thought and in every shot is a thought or a series of thoughts. Then at the right moment, we are ending that thought and giving them a new thought. And then ending that and giving them a new one. And just as we are disturbed when we meet somebody whose blinking seems to be off... And politicians are notorious for this because they're telling us things, but they're lying to us frequently. And they're not only thinking about what they're saying; they're thinking about many different things. So their blinking rate is being determined by stuff that we cannot perceive because they're politicians. But this applies to everybody, not just politicians.

So when you meet somebody, and there's something off about them, watch where they blink, and their blinking probably has very little to do with the exchange that's happening with you. When somebody is really angry at you, they will either blink 60 times a minute or sometimes they won't blink at all. When they're not blinking at all, they have one thought which is: I hate you, and I'm going to kill you if you say that word again and don't you ever come... Or: I hate what you said, and I want to run away, but now I want to fight you, now I want to call you this and I want to call... And the blinks are desperately trying to separate out this snowstorm of thoughts that are running through the person's mind.

Anyway, the point is that I suddenly realised that there is an affinity between how people blink, where they blink and the way a film tells itself. And a poorly edited film is like meeting somebody who's blinking at the wrong places. You know, I get what you're saying, but you know, there's a blizzard going on that is preventing me from really feeling comfortable in your presence.