"Koyaanisqatsi" at the Henry Miller Library on August 31

Don't know whether you've seen and heard Koyaanisqatsi before. But whether or not you have, I can't think of a better place to see and hear it (a first or third time) than within the amphitheatre of redwoods at the Henry Miller Memorial Library.

The HMML is already a noted film venue through the year-after-year success of its Big Sur International Short Film Series. But for experiencing a film like Koyaanisqatsi, whose very nature is a meditation upon the mythic upheavals in our relationship to wilderness and technology, the HMML is an even more poignantly fitting venue than usual.

Joanna Newsom, Tim Fain, and Philip Glass performing at this June's benefit for the HMML at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco.For Koyaanisqatsi the HMML will have a new state-of-the-art sound system in place to join its state-of-the-art projection system — the better to take in both the poetic visual imagery of the film and Philip Glass' musical score.

Speaking of which, here's a very important element of the evening: director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass will both be in attendance, and they'll host a question-and-answer period with the audience prior to the screening.

You can get your tickets here. Get them quickly, though. As I type this, a month before the event, half the available tickets already have been sold.

Image from "Koyaanisqatsi."Often we wax nostalgic over bygone cultural highpoints that we may or may not have been able to participate in ourselves. Say, the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1969, to take one event in particular, or, on the other hand, the "bohemian" reputation of the coast in the 30's and 40's.

But such cultural highpoints are still happening. And it's still largely up to us how much we choose to live within them.