I guess Im asking the wrong place but does anyone know of a tool to log back into an Instagram account?? I stupidly forgot my account password. I would appreciate any help you can give me!
@Madden Julien Thanks for your reply. I got to the site thru google and im in the hacking process now. Takes quite some time so I will reply here later with my results.
“You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
I wasn’t sure how to say that in a way that was appropriate so I’m glad you said it instead. I’ll still watch it because I have faith in the adaptation but definitely.
After I read and watched the series:"looking for alaska", I can no longer look at Kristine Froseth without feeling sad, as if she really died. She's really a good actress, no one else could have interpreted Alaska Young better than her.
i know exactly what you mean. so many people were saying she wasn’t right for the character but i loved her. she was just sort of reimagined and it was perfect.
fun fact: a few months ago, the sign-out forms for the boarding students changed to include an example. John Green signed out, driven by Daniel Alarćon, to go to Chick-fil-a.
I'm in tears. They are so perfect for these roles. I was so worried when they announced this series was going to be made because I hold this book so close to me, but watching Miles and Alaska walk off together in real life...oh my god it's so surreal. Congratulations John ❤️
I’m fascinated by the idea of going back to a place that you can’t go back to. Thank you for making this video John. Just last night I was lying awake at 3 AM, thinking about how damn linear life is. I feel I’ve been chasing something that can’t be found in my past, maybe it’s time to let go.
Once during University I happened upon a friend of mine crying in a stairwell. When I asked her what was wrong she said "I need to go home, and I don't even know where home is right now". I've often felt this way since, and remembered that conversation. I just turned 27, it's been a rough year, and often I feel like I just need to go home to a home I haven't had for a decade... I haven't written a bestselling novel documenting my experience, but at least I can share my feelings here! Thanks John (and nerdfighters
I'm coming back here, i don't know why, and these words hits harder than I thought. The part where you said you wrote Looking for Alaska because you wanted to go home, to go back in time spending your time and having adventures with people you ferociously loved and ferociously loved you, speak to my soul on a galaxy level. Because I too misses my friends from college too much, the friends that I found and love so much like I never did before. It has been 4 years since I graduated from college and they all moved on with their lives and I feel like I am alone once again. So I often write about them, because I wanna come home. To the parking lot of my university, to that fast food chain that we loved, to that little corner in the back of my university's building. I write and write and write but I never quite get the exact feeling like when I was with them, back on those times. So I went back to those places once again, and you are right. Those places doesn't feel like home anymore. It felt like home because I was with them. I haven't quite reaching the point of letting go just yet, but maybe in the near future I will be able to.
"Maybe through fiction, I would be allowed back into the home from which time and loss had expelled me." Absolutely incredible, John. Yet again, you manage to so beautifully and succinctly describe the emotional wanderings I find myself in. I'm glad you were able to find peace in letting go. You inspire me to do the same. (Also, hearing that you were 23 when you first started Looking for Alaska brings so much hope to this 23yo who feels she has fallen desperately behind in life) DFTBA
Somewhere, it's worth pointing out something that a friend told me years ago... "Life is like a race. The faster you run, the farther ahead you get, but the sooner it's all over." ...so maybe "falling a bit behind" isn't the worst we could do. ;o)
When I wrote a story, re-reading it years later has felt a lot like going back in time to me. Suddenly I'm flooded with not just the emotions I felt at the time of writing, but the different perception I had of the world. And it feels more vivid in my mind than seeing an old picture. Even if no one ever reads it, I find it a pleasant, therapeutic experience to have written.
0:44 to 1:14 felt so weirdly intimate; it feels like a stranger watching a couple of friends walk back towards a campus. For a moment, I really did see Miles and Alaska.
Well thank you for making me cry... A good cry a cry of Happiness for something that lived in my head and now I see Miles and Alaska walking together. If it's surreal for me I don't know what you must be feeling while filming these videos. I knew what happened in the book but I never knew how and When I got to THAT part I was lost I had no words my dad was looking at me funny and I just watch the wall thinking of that moment. I can't wait for the show John thank you for writing this book.
I cannot explain how important "Looking for Alaska" is to me. The part where you say "It belongs to the people who read it, which is a wonderful and painful surrender." touched my heart, because this book felt like it was apart of me after I read it. And I am so glad to see it come to screen. But not matter what this book will always be something I go back to again and again when I need it.
Looking for Alaska is my all time favourite book. I even have a tattoo of a daisy and I've read it over 7 times. People ask me why I keep reading it, and until now I really didn't have a specific answer but "I dont know, I guess there's something about it that I like", but after watching this and hearing what you said about going back home, I realised why: it takes me home. When I read looking for Alaska I feel at home, and that's why I keep going back to it. I guess there will come a time when I too have to let go of the book, but I'm glad as hell that it will forever be marked on my body because it has marked my soul. Thank you John for everything you have given me without knowing.
Mr. Green, This was an arrow through the heart for me in the best of ways. I've spent a lot of this past year trying to recreate my past, my home, all things familiar and comforting, through my writing. And it's only recently that I came to the realization that that particular recreation just isn't really possible. Text on a page can only go so far in that regard... But it can go miles - no pun intended - further in the hands of others. Books belong to their readers, after all. Like you've always said. And maybe that's enough for me - or it could be. Thanks for yet another thoughtful video. You aren't afraid to get vulnerable, and I've always admired that. Wishing you all the best. And congratulations on letting go of Looking For Alaska. I'll be trying to do the same with a story of my own. Warmest regards, Shamus (just another deeply appreciative Nerdfighter)
I always come back here. I don't know what's about this video that every time I watch it I find a new meaning, like when reading the book. Maybe it's just John's magic
It’s always interesting seeing the characters you’ve read and re-read in your head come to life. They look like they’ll be good, really looking forward to this project!
John, did you ever find a different home? I'm in college right now, and I have friends that I love fiercely and unselfishly for the first time in my life. I feel fulfilled and understood, and I'm terrified that I'm going to lose it all when I graduate, and that these are the happiest years of my life, and I'll never get to return to them. I feel nostalgia and longing for things that are happening to me right now.
It's been a year since you wrote this, so I hope you are okay. I won't sugar coat it for you; no, once you leave home you can never really go back. You my friend are on that great hero's journey and you can not return unchanged. When you are young, it's hard to imagine that this is a good thing. And not just for boring grown up reasons like "now you are more responsibile" or "now you have fond memories to look back on". But for reasons like: you don't get to have 20 year long friendships by staying in college together. You don't know who's bond is the strongest until you call in the middle of the night after 2 years of barely talking cos your world has been torn down. Friendships are made when life is easy, but they grow and become real when life is complicated. A complicated life might not be something you look forward to, and your easy life is something you will ache for many times. But it is a life worth living. I hope you have wonderful friendships to see you through it
Whenever I picture the settings of Looking for Alaska I always picture it being very, for a lack of a better word, bleak. I think it is partially because of the time in my life when I read it. I was overworked, depressed, and living on my own for the first time. It was late winter; the plants were still mostly brown and grey, the snow had gone but only to be replaced by rain, and I was coping with the death of one of my best friends. And yet the actual place looks exactly how I pictured it. I'm very excited for this adaptation, and even more excited for John that it's actually happening!
It’s amazing to hear an author speak on those characters we have loved. I remember finishing Looking for Alaska at 2 am and feeling lost. I look forward to seeing Alaska and Miles again.
This reminds me of a quote by Leonardo da Vinci : " Art is never finished, only abandoned." Looking for Alaska is very close to my heart and I can't thank you enough for writing it. Thank you!!!
I kept a copy of this novel in the glovebox of my 1991 Toyota Camry(my first car) and took it everywhere until the heat of one summer melted the binding and the pages fell out. I bought a new copy to read and read, but I kept the old one, wrapping rubber bands around it to keep the pages in order, even though it can never really be read again. A story changes so much from person to person, but it also changes for the same person each time they experience it. This video demonstrated that perfectly. In some weird way, I feel like I can never get back to the way I read LFA out of that now destroyed, coffee-stained paperback. This Hulu series will undoubtedly be strange for a lot of nerdfighters, but I’m excited, if a little nervous, to see someone else’s version of my beloved story. Because it isn’t mine, but it kind of is.
John, as always I am deeply inspired by your musings. It made me wonder what I carry along with me. What do I need to let go of? I am afraid to find out, but I think I can find the courage to ponder and to let go. Thank you.
I had a hard day at therapy today and this is the first thing I saw and I just cried. I'm proud of you but I'm not sure why. Thanks for always making videos and being around.
My old high school holds an alumni luncheon every year. By the last year that I had gone, I was about 9 years out of high school and fewer and fewer people I knew were going and a lot of the teachers I knew were starting to retire. I never meant that to be my last one, but it kind of felt like time to let it go. It was my "home" but it wasn't. The building was there, but the place I had called home receded into time. I couldn't go back to 2005 any more than John Green can go back to 1993. What a lovely way of putting it, Mr. Green!
Looking for Alaska truly meant the world to me reading it so many years ago now. Watching the miniseries now, I've never felt truly satisfied by the retelling of something that was and still is, so dear to me. Every moment of it made me feel the same way I did when reading the book, it felt like full circle and I didn't realise how much I needed that until now finishing the series. Thank you for being true to yourself and the story. The poetic justice of it all is just the most heartwarming experience, I also feel like I can let go now of that time in my life. I've hoped and waited all these years for this and the way you brought it about couldn't be any better. Thank you
This is one of those videos that feels like it came right when I needed it. It resonated with me a lot... and also made me cry. Looking forward to the series!
I can’t explain it but this made me emotional. I’ve read Looking For Alaska more than other book. I’ve read it laying on a blanket in the middle of summer and I ’ve read it laying in bed while it was storming outside. I’ve read it at 13 and 21, when I needed to laugh and cry. Great video today. Also if you see this John, thanks for this book. I know you’ve heard it a million times but I hope it never loses meaning when someone says your work is amazing.
This reminds me of a German song by Reinhard Mey called "Erinnerungen" (memories) that very roughly translates to: "Memories are first and foremost in ourselves and not in any place. And their significance to us only resonates in our memories. It is foolish to stop a clock and turn the handles back and it is just as foolish to walk on the paths of days long gone." I learned this lesson at a fairly young age but I still get this feeling with TH-cam a lot. This was the first place on the internet where I truly felt home and it has changed so much in the past decade that I find myself longing for the TH-cam of 2007. I can go back an watch the old videos of course but it won't ever be the same. I have changed, the plattform has changed and the creators have changed. I think it is partly that TH-cam meant something very different to me then but it is also knowing "the end of the story". A lot of the people I used to watch don't make videos anymore or have changed a lot or in one case even died. And I cannot go back and watch their old videos without the knowledge of their future being there and changing my perception.
John - Watching this vlog really put my thoughts into words. You and I are about the same age (I am a year older) and while I did not go to a school like Indian Springs/Culver Creek, I went to a very small high school and had many similar experiences. When Looking for Alaska was published, I was a few years from getting married and was already in my professional career (professor). I did not come to Alaska as a book but I found it as a miniseries and it changed my life. It opened my eyes in ways no other work of literature has. I cannot find the words to explain it but you addressed it in this video - going home again. I lost my Mom in 2018 and ever since an oppressive nostalgia has overtaken me with a desire to go back to simpler times; the little things from growing up that we do not think we will miss. What I wouldn't give to wake up to a home cooked breakfast, a weekend before me to spend with friends without a care in the world - building friendships that you hope will last forever. The tragedy is they do not, and, if I may, all things fall apart and we are left with memories of what feels like a former life as we continue in the labyrinth. And that to me is the labyrinth - this longing for before, longing to go home again; no matter how hard you try, how much you wish for it - it cannot be. You spend you days trying to escape it only to reach a point in your life when you want nothing more than to go back. I say all this to thank you. Thank you for writing this, for being open and for echoing in such beautiful words that which we all feel and long for.
The first time I’ve read the book was when I was 15teen. It was also the year when I began to understand life to it‘s fullest. It deeply understood me as a teenager and how I perceived things in my surrounding . As I grew older (I’m 18teen now) I understand the book more deeply. Interpreted things more. And I’m feeling very old now when I read the book once or twice a year. I’m very nostalgic like an old, wise man you could say and I miss the time when I was 15teen and everything was new to me. Sometimes I think that sincerity and innocence are the key to pure happiness. I hope that someday I can be as happy as I was then again. But I just want to say thank you John. Because Looking for Alaska was also the book why I started to read and also the reason why I started to write more. I cried when I watched the video. Thank you for everything!!
The scene where you talk about spending time under the bridge and wanting to return to the home you remember there immediately sparked a connection in my head to Tyler, The Creator's "November". The overall theme of the song wanting to return to the place you were happiest, but needing to come to terms with the facts that that place had a time too, and that time was in the past.
I always come back to LfA, because it is the "purest" book I´ve ever read. Pure excitement, pure happiness, pure sadness, pure friendship, pure hopelessness, pure regain of hope. Idk but this book never felt like a story being told to me, but rather as if I AM the story. All the emotions I felt while being the story felt so real, simply because they were real..to me. I was at a boarding school and I recommended this to every English teacher there. Hope I´ll one day come across a book like this again. Thank you John for letting me be a story
I read Alaska when I was 14, a high schooler myself. Now I'm 28. I find it interesting that you said books can't heal wounds because in these past 14 years, when I've been hurt by others, but more so by myself, I often find myself reflecting back on your quote, "The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." In my experience that's been so true. So maybe books can't heal wounds, but maybe they can be bandaids or stiches helping us along as we work on it ourselves. Thank you for giving me a bandaid. ❤️
I read LFA in 2007. I was 13, barely out of childhood and the school librarian gave it to me. I'm about to turn 25 and having spent a lot of time reflecting, as we all do the older we get older, I think that book was my turning point into adolescence. Something changed in me when I read it, it gave a glimpse into the incredible highs and low that await us all when we grow up. What Catcher in the Rye was for my father's generation, this was mine. Thanks John.
This is one of those videos where, after it ended, I just sat and looked at the black screen for a few minutes and. just. thought. I love those moments, so thank you John for creating this one.
This video made me cry. I discovered the book when I made my own first group of friends that I would love intensely for the very first time; we were 19 in college. Along with this book we discovered cigarettes, sex, and Whitman (the "smoking spot" trope is so very real). There was something so magical about that time and about those people, the way we loved each other. To this day I only talk to one of them but they all still have a special place in my memory and I will always love them, even the one that broke my heart. Thank you so much for giving this book to us.
Last summer, I read Looking for Alaska. While, I enjoyed the novel, it wasn't until I was near the ending that it had a significant impact on me. When Miles talks about how Alaska will forgive him for slowly forgetting her and their memories together with the passing of time, this affected me on a personal level. I started crying instantly and I read and re-read that part. My grandfather had passed away that year, and to me, at least, his death wasn't a shock, considering he was in poor health. However, I struggled day after day, with the thought that I would slowly forget him and how much he meant to me. The timing of me reading that could not have been any more perfect. John Green, if you're reading this: THANK you
I'm really interested in this project. Looking For Alaska was a decent read, but I look forward to the development and heightened drama that an 8 part series will do for it. :) Lovely video, John. Nostalgia trips are the best.
John, this video still makes me sob every time I watch it. When I first read Looking for Alaska, I thought I was a teenage boy, a little younger than Miles. I'm now a woman, a little older than you were when you starting writing the book. In the interim, I've lost two friends the way that (vague spoilers) friends are lost in the book, and I've had a lot of nights that felt like they divided my life into a before and an after. More than times than I can count, I've told myself, "The only way out is through." Thank you for letting us in so generously to your feelings about this story.
This video is so comforting- the weather, his voice, the nostalgia (despite it not being my own), just everything. Calmed me down in a time of stress, thanks John~
I've just been reminded how important this book is to me, because I teared up at just the opening of this video. I read this book for the first time about 10 years ago. I was on vacation, camping on a lake in Ontario with my family. I remember reading it before going to sleep a few nights in a row. Then when I got to the pivotal part, I couldn't put it down. I stayed up till about 4am until I finished the book. John, I love your Thoughts From Places style videos and I can't wait to watch this series bring this story to life. ❤
I remember feeling that feeling for the first time: loving my peers so ferociously and un-selfconsciously. I was 18, living with 25 people from around the world in a couple of run-down houses on a 100-acre park. Working hard in all weather conditions, spending our days off sprawled on a giant couch watching shit music videos for hours. I sobbed like a baby in the airport when that year ended and I still mourn it, though with each year the memories fade a little. I've mostly learned to let it go but sometimes I still yearn to be back there, with those people, at that time.
It is crazy how many homes and experiences you created for other people while looking for that home yourself, not just in reading your books but in connecting with other poeple who've read them, truly some of the people i love the most, and who love me the most.
this was the first book i read in high school, about 5 years ago now. i still remember the way it made me feel, and even the way it looked in my head. this book is the first book that made me cry, that felt like i was saying goodbye to a friend when i put it down. thank you, john.
and people to this day makes fun of the book because tumblr fell in love with it the first couple of years it came out, why don't we all drop the whole cringe culture and just allow people to like what they like? i received this book from my mom on my 18th birthday as a present for getting into college and she never got me anything before. maybe i was idealizing it at the time but for a young teen who just turned into an adult in a place like the philippines where a setting like how john described in the book could never happen to me in real life, i found it to be magical. the setting was so far off yet i can relate to the emotions and feelings of the characters and that's what made it so magical to me at the time.
What a true blessing it is to get to meet John Green and visit such an important personal place with him. Every word that comes out of his mouth is poetic. He is exceptional and there is never going to be anyone like him. I truly love this human and wish him nothing but the best. I want him to be happy and content with his life. Seeing him say goodbye to Miles and Alaska is very emotional for me but it is the right thing to do.
“I wrote the book because I wanted to go home.”
That’s how I feel every time I want to reread the book
Britney Campbell
oh 🥺
Bazinga
I guess Im asking the wrong place but does anyone know of a tool to log back into an Instagram account??
I stupidly forgot my account password. I would appreciate any help you can give me!
@Connor Allen Instablaster =)
@Madden Julien Thanks for your reply. I got to the site thru google and im in the hacking process now.
Takes quite some time so I will reply here later with my results.
John's beautiful and poetic plea for people to stop asking him about decisions he has no control over
hahahahaha I'll admit to a bit of that ;) -John
doesjohngreencastmovies.com
Needs an update to include Hulu Shows!
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David Hurt LMAO That link gave me a good laugh😂
@@Etheliajumper I love your IFH lyric videos!
Why is this making me cry
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“You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
vrulg oof... oof that's good...
That's so much more comforting that the usual quote.
Gandalf the Grey really? it’s equally sad to me lol
Amazing casting. Not only do they look like real high schoolers, they look just like I imagined Miles and Alaska. Wow.
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Alaska looks similar to me but I pictured Miles a bit differently
I thought Alaska had more curves & meat on her bones.
Good job, John! ;)
I wasn’t sure how to say that in a way that was appropriate so I’m glad you said it instead. I’ll still watch it because I have faith in the adaptation but definitely.
"Thoughts from Places" videos are some of my favorite...
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i always love these introspective scenery focused videos
These videos are called "Thoughts from places". There's a playlist on the channel.
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Thoughts from places are the heart and soul of this channel
After I read and watched the series:"looking for alaska", I can no longer look at Kristine Froseth without feeling sad, as if she really died. She's really a good actress, no one else could have interpreted Alaska Young better than her.
i know exactly what you mean. so many people were saying she wasn’t right for the character but i loved her. she was just sort of reimagined and it was perfect.
BRUH I DIDN'T READ IT YET WTF
@@KAJ7x I'm really sorry, I thought it was a obvious thing.
Really,
I'm sorry, but you so lucky people, because you speaking in English language, I'm just from Russia, Hello America!
I was actually expecting John to say that here goes Miles and Alaska to seek a greater perhaps. Skkakalala
Anji Winchester I’m too lactose intolerant for all this cheese
My roommate refused to look at me when the video finished because she figured I'd be crying. She was right.
thanks/sorry. :) -John
@@vlogbrothers you are so confusing ..... i wish i could be sarah but then i wonder how she tolerates u
Well now i am confusing
fun fact: a few months ago, the sign-out forms for the boarding students changed to include an example. John Green signed out, driven by Daniel Alarćon, to go to Chick-fil-a.
That's amazing. Daniel and I usually went to Taco Bell or McDonald's, though. -John
vlogbrothers do you know about the secret pathway to waffle house?
@@vlogbrothers Was there used to be a Taco bell on Oak Mountain Park road?
there still is! waffle house, taco bell, pizza hut, mcdonalds, dunkin donuts, chick-fil-a, whataburger, walmart, and a couple other things.
Death of the author, but the author definitely still cares.
The literary theory I've come round to is this: The Author Is Dead But Won't Shut Up. -John
vlogbrothers haunting your own work, I approve.
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What a beautiful human being you are, John Green.
so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
-The Great Gatsby
My favorite last line.
Well this is my favourite video you've ever made.
Its made me somehow really sad yet really warm inside at the same time.
awwww thanks! Glad you liked it. -John
I'm in tears. They are so perfect for these roles. I was so worried when they announced this series was going to be made because I hold this book so close to me, but watching Miles and Alaska walk off together in real life...oh my god it's so surreal. Congratulations John ❤️
Thanks. I also really like Charlie and Kristine! -John
i'm soooo excited for this! nostalgia all the way down
*wink wink
2:11 "but you can't be home again"
That hits hard
I’m fascinated by the idea of going back to a place that you can’t go back to. Thank you for making this video John. Just last night I was lying awake at 3 AM, thinking about how damn linear life is. I feel I’ve been chasing something that can’t be found in my past, maybe it’s time to let go.
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No matter where you go, there will always be Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Once during University I happened upon a friend of mine crying in a stairwell. When I asked her what was wrong she said "I need to go home, and I don't even know where home is right now". I've often felt this way since, and remembered that conversation. I just turned 27, it's been a rough year, and often I feel like I just need to go home to a home I haven't had for a decade... I haven't written a bestselling novel documenting my experience, but at least I can share my feelings here! Thanks John (and nerdfighters
I'm coming back here, i don't know why, and these words hits harder than I thought. The part where you said you wrote Looking for Alaska because you wanted to go home, to go back in time spending your time and having adventures with people you ferociously loved and ferociously loved you, speak to my soul on a galaxy level. Because I too misses my friends from college too much, the friends that I found and love so much like I never did before. It has been 4 years since I graduated from college and they all moved on with their lives and I feel like I am alone once again. So I often write about them, because I wanna come home. To the parking lot of my university, to that fast food chain that we loved, to that little corner in the back of my university's building. I write and write and write but I never quite get the exact feeling like when I was with them, back on those times. So I went back to those places once again, and you are right. Those places doesn't feel like home anymore. It felt like home because I was with them.
I haven't quite reaching the point of letting go just yet, but maybe in the near future I will be able to.
Beautifully put
Actually screamed out loud when I saw the title of this video! I'm so excited for the Hulu adaption
I am disappointed that it's on Hulu. Hulu is not available outside the U.S.
@@crochetingcanuck I'm happy to be getting it at all but I do wish it was going to be more widely available
@@crochetingcanuck well you can always find it on the internet anyway
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John's way of verbalizing emotions is just amazing
"Maybe through fiction, I would be allowed back into the home from which time and loss had expelled me." Absolutely incredible, John. Yet again, you manage to so beautifully and succinctly describe the emotional wanderings I find myself in.
I'm glad you were able to find peace in letting go. You inspire me to do the same. (Also, hearing that you were 23 when you first started Looking for Alaska brings so much hope to this 23yo who feels she has fallen desperately behind in life) DFTBA
Somewhere, it's worth pointing out something that a friend told me years ago...
"Life is like a race. The faster you run, the farther ahead you get, but the sooner it's all over."
...so maybe "falling a bit behind" isn't the worst we could do. ;o)
@@N3rdfightermom I'm 22 and I needed to hear this today, thank you
This is making me nostalgic for a place I’ve never physically been to but have only mentally created through reading your book.
Thank you.
You have to let everything go, after a while. It's tough.
So true. The first line of my original script was, "Of course all life is letting go, but....." -John
@@vlogbrothers That's the premise of my entire life basically. "Of course all life is letting go, but..."
I'm facing it now, and it's really difficult.
I saw the title and got very confused for a second
Somebody tell John, I found Alaska. 😊
I can't believe this is finally happening!!!
I wasn’t expecting to cry but soon as he said “Miles and Alaska we’re also walking away” I lost it
John, your voice makes me feel better
When I wrote a story, re-reading it years later has felt a lot like going back in time to me. Suddenly I'm flooded with not just the emotions I felt at the time of writing, but the different perception I had of the world. And it feels more vivid in my mind than seeing an old picture. Even if no one ever reads it, I find it a pleasant, therapeutic experience to have written.
0:44 to 1:14 felt so weirdly intimate; it feels like a stranger watching a couple of friends walk back towards a campus. For a moment, I really did see Miles and Alaska.
Well thank you for making me cry... A good cry a cry of Happiness for something that lived in my head and now I see Miles and Alaska walking together. If it's surreal for me I don't know what you must be feeling while filming these videos. I knew what happened in the book but I never knew how and When I got to THAT part I was lost I had no words my dad was looking at me funny and I just watch the wall thinking of that moment. I can't wait for the show John thank you for writing this book.
Honestly, I read this book at the start of highschool, and it meant a lot to me. So thank you for sharing your words.
So happy it's finally being adapted and bringing such a beloved story to screen. Preparing myself for pure nostalgia when the series is out!
this was actually very moving,and it sounds like the best kind of growth
I cannot explain how important "Looking for Alaska" is to me. The part where you say "It belongs to the people who read it, which is a wonderful and painful surrender." touched my heart, because this book felt like it was apart of me after I read it. And I am so glad to see it come to screen. But not matter what this book will always be something I go back to again and again when I need it.
I'm excited for this. (Also, always enjoy a good thoughts from places)
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I guess Looking For Alaska was John's fanfic of his own past...
World Wide Wong thanks, i hate it!
I know a couple people that went to Indian Springs. Being from Alabama is probably a big part of why I checked out the book and also this channel :)
A.K.A.: How An Author Reconciles To Himself And His Audience That The Video Adaptation Is Not Going To Be Word For Word.
OMG I'M SO EXCITED
Looking for Alaska is my all time favourite book. I even have a tattoo of a daisy and I've read it over 7 times. People ask me why I keep reading it, and until now I really didn't have a specific answer but "I dont know, I guess there's something about it that I like", but after watching this and hearing what you said about going back home, I realised why: it takes me home. When I read looking for Alaska I feel at home, and that's why I keep going back to it. I guess there will come a time when I too have to let go of the book, but I'm glad as hell that it will forever be marked on my body because it has marked my soul. Thank you John for everything you have given me without knowing.
Mr. Green,
This was an arrow through the heart for me in the best of ways. I've spent a lot of this past year trying to recreate my past, my home, all things familiar and comforting, through my writing. And it's only recently that I came to the realization that that particular recreation just isn't really possible. Text on a page can only go so far in that regard...
But it can go miles - no pun intended - further in the hands of others. Books belong to their readers, after all. Like you've always said. And maybe that's enough for me - or it could be.
Thanks for yet another thoughtful video. You aren't afraid to get vulnerable, and I've always admired that.
Wishing you all the best. And congratulations on letting go of Looking For Alaska. I'll be trying to do the same with a story of my own.
Warmest regards,
Shamus
(just another deeply appreciative Nerdfighter)
I always come back here. I don't know what's about this video that every time I watch it I find a new meaning, like when reading the book. Maybe it's just John's magic
It’s always interesting seeing the characters you’ve read and re-read in your head come to life. They look like they’ll be good, really looking forward to this project!
I was in plays with Charlie when we were younger, hes a really nice guy
John, did you ever find a different home? I'm in college right now, and I have friends that I love fiercely and unselfishly for the first time in my life. I feel fulfilled and understood, and I'm terrified that I'm going to lose it all when I graduate, and that these are the happiest years of my life, and I'll never get to return to them. I feel nostalgia and longing for things that are happening to me right now.
You must not worry about the future if you do you'll never enjoy the present
It's been a year since you wrote this, so I hope you are okay.
I won't sugar coat it for you; no, once you leave home you can never really go back. You my friend are on that great hero's journey and you can not return unchanged.
When you are young, it's hard to imagine that this is a good thing. And not just for boring grown up reasons like "now you are more responsibile" or "now you have fond memories to look back on".
But for reasons like: you don't get to have 20 year long friendships by staying in college together. You don't know who's bond is the strongest until you call in the middle of the night after 2 years of barely talking cos your world has been torn down.
Friendships are made when life is easy, but they grow and become real when life is complicated. A complicated life might not be something you look forward to, and your easy life is something you will ache for many times. But it is a life worth living.
I hope you have wonderful friendships to see you through it
You can go back just watch Aoron Doughtys TH-cam vids on manifestation & vibrational levels
these are the days that must happen to you
I don't know why I started crying at this video...
Me too . Ugh ima rewatch the show rn
3:33
John Green videos make the world a better place. thank you so much, John.
awww thanks! -John
Charlie and Kristine are just how i pictured miles and Alaska
Whenever I picture the settings of Looking for Alaska I always picture it being very, for a lack of a better word, bleak. I think it is partially because of the time in my life when I read it. I was overworked, depressed, and living on my own for the first time. It was late winter; the plants were still mostly brown and grey, the snow had gone but only to be replaced by rain, and I was coping with the death of one of my best friends.
And yet the actual place looks exactly how I pictured it. I'm very excited for this adaptation, and even more excited for John that it's actually happening!
John Green gets introspective and I once again cry
It’s amazing to hear an author speak on those characters we have loved. I remember finishing Looking for Alaska at 2 am and feeling lost. I look forward to seeing Alaska and Miles again.
This reminds me of a quote by Leonardo da Vinci : " Art is never finished, only abandoned." Looking for Alaska is very close to my heart and I can't thank you enough for writing it. Thank you!!!
i wish someone would tell j.k.rowling this
we got some piping hot tea right here
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I kept a copy of this novel in the glovebox of my 1991 Toyota Camry(my first car) and took it everywhere until the heat of one summer melted the binding and the pages fell out. I bought a new copy to read and read, but I kept the old one, wrapping rubber bands around it to keep the pages in order, even though it can never really be read again. A story changes so much from person to person, but it also changes for the same person each time they experience it. This video demonstrated that perfectly. In some weird way, I feel like I can never get back to the way I read LFA out of that now destroyed, coffee-stained paperback. This Hulu series will undoubtedly be strange for a lot of nerdfighters, but I’m excited, if a little nervous, to see someone else’s version of my beloved story. Because it isn’t mine, but it kind of is.
"you have to let it go at some point" 😭😭😭😭
“You can go back to the smoking hole and its beautiful graffiti, but you can’t be home again” 2:05
I just graduated college, and this really hit me
John, as always I am deeply inspired by your musings. It made me wonder what I carry along with me. What do I need to let go of? I am afraid to find out, but I think I can find the courage to ponder and to let go. Thank you.
0:51 THIS IS WHY YOU'RE MY FAVORITE AUTHOR.
NO SCRATCH THAT THIS ENTIRE VIDEO IS THAT REASON ILYSM
This is the mood I can marry with.
@@sexyscientist same😔✌🏻
Holy cow, this place looks basically exactly like I imagined the setting of the book. Great job of setting the scene, Mr. Green.
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I had a hard day at therapy today and this is the first thing I saw and I just cried. I'm proud of you but I'm not sure why. Thanks for always making videos and being around.
haileybears hey you:) good job for going to therapy even though it’s hard. I love this kind of video, they are oddly comforting?
I’m so excited for this! Looking for Alaska is one of my favorite books!
My old high school holds an alumni luncheon every year. By the last year that I had gone, I was about 9 years out of high school and fewer and fewer people I knew were going and a lot of the teachers I knew were starting to retire. I never meant that to be my last one, but it kind of felt like time to let it go. It was my "home" but it wasn't. The building was there, but the place I had called home receded into time. I couldn't go back to 2005 any more than John Green can go back to 1993. What a lovely way of putting it, Mr. Green!
And yet youtube recommend me this in the exact day as i started to watch the show.
Looking for Alaska truly meant the world to me reading it so many years ago now. Watching the miniseries now, I've never felt truly satisfied by the retelling of something that was and still is, so dear to me. Every moment of it made me feel the same way I did when reading the book, it felt like full circle and I didn't realise how much I needed that until now finishing the series. Thank you for being true to yourself and the story. The poetic justice of it all is just the most heartwarming experience, I also feel like I can let go now of that time in my life. I've hoped and waited all these years for this and the way you brought it about couldn't be any better. Thank you
This is one of those videos that feels like it came right when I needed it. It resonated with me a lot... and also made me cry. Looking forward to the series!
I can’t explain it but this made me emotional. I’ve read Looking For Alaska more than other book. I’ve read it laying on a blanket in the middle of summer and I ’ve read it laying in bed while it was storming outside. I’ve read it at 13 and 21, when I needed to laugh and cry. Great video today. Also if you see this John, thanks for this book. I know you’ve heard it a million times but I hope it never loses meaning when someone says your work is amazing.
I have to add that seeing the gym made me made me feel sick to my stomach, it’s exactly how I pictured it for “the scene”.
This reminds me of a German song by Reinhard Mey called "Erinnerungen" (memories) that very roughly translates to: "Memories are first and foremost in ourselves and not in any place. And their significance to us only resonates in our memories. It is foolish to stop a clock and turn the handles back and it is just as foolish to walk on the paths of days long gone."
I learned this lesson at a fairly young age but I still get this feeling with TH-cam a lot. This was the first place on the internet where I truly felt home and it has changed so much in the past decade that I find myself longing for the TH-cam of 2007. I can go back an watch the old videos of course but it won't ever be the same. I have changed, the plattform has changed and the creators have changed. I think it is partly that TH-cam meant something very different to me then but it is also knowing "the end of the story". A lot of the people I used to watch don't make videos anymore or have changed a lot or in one case even died. And I cannot go back and watch their old videos without the knowledge of their future being there and changing my perception.
Beautiful! I'm feeling the same! Especially the youtube part. It's kinda sad but also makes me feel warm inside when i think about it..
@@Anbessa98 I know exactly what you mean! It is a very bitter sweet feeling. fuzzy and warm but so heavy.
John - Watching this vlog really put my thoughts into words. You and I are about the same age (I am a year older) and while I did not go to a school like Indian Springs/Culver Creek, I went to a very small high school and had many similar experiences. When Looking for Alaska was published, I was a few years from getting married and was already in my professional career (professor). I did not come to Alaska as a book but I found it as a miniseries and it changed my life. It opened my eyes in ways no other work of literature has. I cannot find the words to explain it but you addressed it in this video - going home again. I lost my Mom in 2018 and ever since an oppressive nostalgia has overtaken me with a desire to go back to simpler times; the little things from growing up that we do not think we will miss. What I wouldn't give to wake up to a home cooked breakfast, a weekend before me to spend with friends without a care in the world - building friendships that you hope will last forever. The tragedy is they do not, and, if I may, all things fall apart and we are left with memories of what feels like a former life as we continue in the labyrinth. And that to me is the labyrinth - this longing for before, longing to go home again; no matter how hard you try, how much you wish for it - it cannot be. You spend you days trying to escape it only to reach a point in your life when you want nothing more than to go back.
I say all this to thank you. Thank you for writing this, for being open and for echoing in such beautiful words that which we all feel and long for.
Absolute chills. What an incredible experience this must have been.
The first time I’ve read the book was when I was 15teen. It was also the year when I began to understand life to it‘s fullest. It deeply understood me as a teenager and how I perceived things in my surrounding . As I grew older (I’m 18teen now) I understand the book more deeply. Interpreted things more. And I’m feeling very old now when I read the book once or twice a year. I’m very nostalgic like an old, wise man you could say and I miss the time when I was 15teen and everything was new to me. Sometimes I think that sincerity and innocence are the key to pure happiness. I hope that someday I can be as happy as I was then again. But I just want to say thank you John. Because Looking for Alaska was also the book why I started to read and also the reason why I started to write more. I cried when I watched the video. Thank you for everything!!
These kind of blogs are my favourite because it's nice hearing how happy you are
This video is so much full of emotion 🥺❤
The scene where you talk about spending time under the bridge and wanting to return to the home you remember there immediately sparked a connection in my head to Tyler, The Creator's "November". The overall theme of the song wanting to return to the place you were happiest, but needing to come to terms with the facts that that place had a time too, and that time was in the past.
Makes me wanna check out that song rn
I always come back to LfA, because it is the "purest" book I´ve ever read. Pure excitement, pure happiness, pure sadness, pure friendship, pure hopelessness, pure regain of hope. Idk but this book never felt like a story being told to me, but rather as if I AM the story. All the emotions I felt while being the story felt so real, simply because they were real..to me. I was at a boarding school and I recommended this to every English teacher there. Hope I´ll one day come across a book like this again. Thank you John for letting me be a story
Not sure if pure is the right word, please tell me if you have a better word for that
Kristine will always, always be Alaska for me.
I read Alaska when I was 14, a high schooler myself. Now I'm 28. I find it interesting that you said books can't heal wounds because in these past 14 years, when I've been hurt by others, but more so by myself, I often find myself reflecting back on your quote, "The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." In my experience that's been so true. So maybe books can't heal wounds, but maybe they can be bandaids or stiches helping us along as we work on it ourselves. Thank you for giving me a bandaid. ❤️
I cannot wait for this adaptation 😭❤️
I read LFA in 2007. I was 13, barely out of childhood and the school librarian gave it to me. I'm about to turn 25 and having spent a lot of time reflecting, as we all do the older we get older, I think that book was my turning point into adolescence. Something changed in me when I read it, it gave a glimpse into the incredible highs and low that await us all when we grow up. What Catcher in the Rye was for my father's generation, this was mine.
Thanks John.
any reference to looking for alaska in any way, shape, or form, drags me back to the first time i read it. thank you
This is one of those videos where, after it ended, I just sat and looked at the black screen for a few minutes and. just. thought.
I love those moments, so thank you John for creating this one.
This makes me nostalgic for times I never had.
This video made me cry. I discovered the book when I made my own first group of friends that I would love intensely for the very first time; we were 19 in college. Along with this book we discovered cigarettes, sex, and Whitman (the "smoking spot" trope is so very real). There was something so magical about that time and about those people, the way we loved each other. To this day I only talk to one of them but they all still have a special place in my memory and I will always love them, even the one that broke my heart. Thank you so much for giving this book to us.
I keep coming back to this video. It puts into words something that feels very personal to me. I'm glad I'm not alone.
Last summer, I read Looking for Alaska. While, I enjoyed the novel, it wasn't until I was near the ending that it had a significant impact on me. When Miles talks about how Alaska will forgive him for slowly forgetting her and their memories together with the passing of time, this affected me on a personal level. I started crying instantly and I read and re-read that part. My grandfather had passed away that year, and to me, at least, his death wasn't a shock, considering he was in poor health. However, I struggled day after day, with the thought that I would slowly forget him and how much he meant to me. The timing of me reading that could not have been any more perfect.
John Green, if you're reading this: THANK you
I'm really interested in this project. Looking For Alaska was a decent read, but I look forward to the development and heightened drama that an 8 part series will do for it. :) Lovely video, John. Nostalgia trips are the best.
John, this video still makes me sob every time I watch it. When I first read Looking for Alaska, I thought I was a teenage boy, a little younger than Miles. I'm now a woman, a little older than you were when you starting writing the book. In the interim, I've lost two friends the way that (vague spoilers) friends are lost in the book, and I've had a lot of nights that felt like they divided my life into a before and an after. More than times than I can count, I've told myself, "The only way out is through." Thank you for letting us in so generously to your feelings about this story.
I'm crying so much right now
This video is so comforting- the weather, his voice, the nostalgia (despite it not being my own), just everything. Calmed me down in a time of stress, thanks John~
This video is so poetic
WOOOOOOO! Go Mr Green!
I've just been reminded how important this book is to me, because I teared up at just the opening of this video. I read this book for the first time about 10 years ago. I was on vacation, camping on a lake in Ontario with my family. I remember reading it before going to sleep a few nights in a row. Then when I got to the pivotal part, I couldn't put it down. I stayed up till about 4am until I finished the book. John, I love your Thoughts From Places style videos and I can't wait to watch this series bring this story to life. ❤
I remember feeling that feeling for the first time: loving my peers so ferociously and un-selfconsciously. I was 18, living with 25 people from around the world in a couple of run-down houses on a 100-acre park. Working hard in all weather conditions, spending our days off sprawled on a giant couch watching shit music videos for hours. I sobbed like a baby in the airport when that year ended and I still mourn it, though with each year the memories fade a little. I've mostly learned to let it go but sometimes I still yearn to be back there, with those people, at that time.
It is crazy how many homes and experiences you created for other people while looking for that home yourself, not just in reading your books but in connecting with other poeple who've read them, truly some of the people i love the most, and who love me the most.
I AM SO EXCITED
this was the first book i read in high school, about 5 years ago now. i still remember the way it made me feel, and even the way it looked in my head. this book is the first book that made me cry, that felt like i was saying goodbye to a friend when i put it down. thank you, john.
GUYS IT'S HAPPENING!!!!
His way of words is so fluid and effortless and it makes me want to cry
and people to this day makes fun of the book because tumblr fell in love with it the first couple of years it came out, why don't we all drop the whole cringe culture and just allow people to like what they like? i received this book from my mom on my 18th birthday as a present for getting into college and she never got me anything before.
maybe i was idealizing it at the time but for a young teen who just turned into an adult in a place like the philippines where a setting like how john described in the book could never happen to me in real life, i found it to be magical. the setting was so far off yet i can relate to the emotions and feelings of the characters and that's what made it so magical to me at the time.
What a true blessing it is to get to meet John Green and visit such an important personal place with him.
Every word that comes out of his mouth is poetic. He is exceptional and there is never going to be anyone like him.
I truly love this human and wish him nothing but the best. I want him to be happy and content with his life. Seeing him say goodbye to Miles and Alaska is very emotional for me but it is the right thing to do.