Two ponds conjoined and a boy stalking their edges, gig pole angled to strike. His name was Brian but the larger name he was born into, the lineage he advanced, simply surviving nine months to draw breath in a maternity ward, it’s gone, not strictly “lost”, but selected out as unimportant. He would catch and torture frogs, that’s why I remember. “Psycho Brian”, “Brian Frog Killer.” Once he brought to a friend’s driveway a full-grown specimen in a shoebox; inserted thumbs forcibly into the corners of its mouth; wrenched its innards out. Inside-out, he’d turned it like a t-shirt…for the shortest while it lived twitching and writhing. I hated him for it, but only with my eyes. I was too scared of what he might do if I insulted him.
No. That’s not right—
Or wait, maybe.
Slight
adjustment, try again—
In this thing I live for, or that lives for me (a bit
of both, maybe, the involvement and reasons for the involvement mutual), there’s
often an instinctive switch of perspective, a turn, a volte-face inspired,
I guess, by an aversion towards what has been for so long deemed by broad consensus
relevant or valuable: I notice why I’m prone to notice certain things, and this
pinch of meta-recognition is enough to shut down interest entirely.
No again. Too abstract—
Doesn’t take much to spot the stylings of someone who lectures for a living.
Turn it inside-out—
No mistake I make my living otherwise—
A therapist; instead of lecturing, I'll listen.
Third attempt, then : the approach taken by the cinematographer Müller when sorting a landscape for Jarmusch’s camera, framing shots for a black-and-white Western, Dead Man. Find a striking bit of scenery, Müller insisted, then turn the camera away, the opposite direction. What had such sights caused them to turn their backs on? Usually something less aesthetically pleasing, charmlessly naturalistic; and for that reason more subtle, unconforming to type. The land and the characters moving before it and within it, of equal size and emphasis. A dramatic canyon, a cinematic mesquite: that’s how the West was won; maybe it was time to lose it. Distract the viewer from what’s visually important, repeat. As a strategy of challenge and resurrection, it’s not without disadvantages. As a film Dead Man’s inexhaustible but every time I sit to watch it, someone’s forever on the couch next to me nodding off. Its muted moves put people to sleep; but then that begs the question, “What had them tired in the first place?” For purposes of this little piece, what’s worth noting is how as a friend and viewer I take the Müller approach: I’ll watch it through to the end for both of us, despite their dozing through the credits.
No again. Too abstract—
Doesn’t take much to spot the stylings of someone who lectures for a living.
Turn it inside-out—
No mistake I make my living otherwise—
A therapist; instead of lecturing, I'll listen.
Third attempt, then : the approach taken by the cinematographer Müller when sorting a landscape for Jarmusch’s camera, framing shots for a black-and-white Western, Dead Man. Find a striking bit of scenery, Müller insisted, then turn the camera away, the opposite direction. What had such sights caused them to turn their backs on? Usually something less aesthetically pleasing, charmlessly naturalistic; and for that reason more subtle, unconforming to type. The land and the characters moving before it and within it, of equal size and emphasis. A dramatic canyon, a cinematic mesquite: that’s how the West was won; maybe it was time to lose it. Distract the viewer from what’s visually important, repeat. As a strategy of challenge and resurrection, it’s not without disadvantages. As a film Dead Man’s inexhaustible but every time I sit to watch it, someone’s forever on the couch next to me nodding off. Its muted moves put people to sleep; but then that begs the question, “What had them tired in the first place?” For purposes of this little piece, what’s worth noting is how as a friend and viewer I take the Müller approach: I’ll watch it through to the end for both of us, despite their dozing through the credits.
Almost; not quite--
A bit closer--
One more turn—
Take it; ask permission later—
Something my father said long before retirement; we were walking far out on a country road, miles beyond the house, towards a crossroads. I was younger then and in one my more effusive modes. The wind split by telephone wires and high-pitched, the fields disced and expansive, cut into far-flung farms every direction around us. It must’ve been beautiful growing up around all this, back when you were a kid, I was saying, to which he responded with his usual indifference. There’s something you have to understand, he said, as if explaining to a child, when I look at this I don’t see anything but work. Back then we didn’t have time to look around and see anything; dawn to dusk, we were working. That’s the most he had to say for it, but all more effective for its brevity. A shift, I went with it. An admonishment that took me by the shoulders and turned me.
Take it; ask permission later—
Something my father said long before retirement; we were walking far out on a country road, miles beyond the house, towards a crossroads. I was younger then and in one my more effusive modes. The wind split by telephone wires and high-pitched, the fields disced and expansive, cut into far-flung farms every direction around us. It must’ve been beautiful growing up around all this, back when you were a kid, I was saying, to which he responded with his usual indifference. There’s something you have to understand, he said, as if explaining to a child, when I look at this I don’t see anything but work. Back then we didn’t have time to look around and see anything; dawn to dusk, we were working. That’s the most he had to say for it, but all more effective for its brevity. A shift, I went with it. An admonishment that took me by the shoulders and turned me.
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