Think about it. What if you could store your soul away when it became too heavy to bear, what with all its entanglements and complications? What if you could suck your soul into a shiny air-tight jar and pack it away on ice until such time as you felt the need to experience its sorrows, joys, fears and epiphanies again?
Now imagine being the storage company running that racket. “Soul storage special! Just $9.95 a month! Let us lighten your load!”
Today I read a review in The Washington Post for a Sophie Barthes film titled “Cold Souls,” premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Starring Paul Giamatti, the movie is about a New York actor in the midst of an artistic and mid-life crisis who, believing his soul to be adversely affecting his work, decides to put it into storage. He stumbles across an article about a company that will extract and store human souls at a “reasonable fee,” and looks it up in the Yellow Pages, finding it under the “Self Storage” heading. Of course. Where else would you store yourself?
Giamatti (strangely, playing a character named ... Paul Giamatti) decides he can alleviate his suffering by disburdening himself of his pesky essence, and hops on down to the storage facility. There he is told he really only has two choices under the circumstances: “re-soul the body or disembody the soul.” He chooses the latter, ultimately stuffing his extracted spirit into a tiny refrigerated cubicle.
The film is set for official release in November. Give it a view and see for yourself whether soul storage might be a good fit for your facility. After all, souls don't take up much space, and think about the marketing possibilities. You can start your own, "Store a Soul, Save a Life" program, or "Store Two Souls as One" promotion. Mind-boggling.
Click HERE to view the trailer on YouTube.