“I” is the English familiar name by which an unspeakably intricate network of colloidal circuits– or, as some reason, the garrulous temporary inhabitant of that nexus– addresses itself; occasionally, etiquette permitting, it even calls itself that in public. It lies, comfortable but immobile, in a hemiellipsoidal chamber of tensile bone. How it came to be there (together with some odd bits of phantasmal rubbish) is a subject for virtually endless speculation: it is certainly alone; and in time it convinces itself, somewhat reluctantly, that it is waiting to die. –Hollis Frampton, from “A Pentagram for Conjuring the Narrative”
Here I am, frantically trying to conjure up something intelligent to say in film class, which seems to remain difficult for me no matter how much preparation. Maybe I am held back by my memory of an inability to speak, a paralysis that presents itself like narrative, my own personal mythology. Nevertheless, I relate to and enjoy Frampton’s theories, though I’m having trouble directly articulating how they work in his film. (nostalgia) presents photographs out of sync with the narration, so that, in the words of P. Adams Sitney, “words anticipate the pictures, the pictures recall the words.” Makes us hunt memory for context, which will be imperfect… also makes us maybe project what we are hearing onto the images? No. The point is the one he is making about the image… what we see will “triangulate” between what we retained of his description and what is actually projected on the screen. How does autobiography come into this– there’s a certain irony to it, considering Michael Snow is reading Frampton’s recollection of events (not strictly Frampton recalling them)….wait, the discontinuity of the narrative of becoming a filmmaker– we CANNOT see what he sees– filmmaker’s vision exists at a distance from the film-product.
(Sidenote: still seduced by idea of art as a way of living, a way of catapulting revisions or destructions of narrative into life…)
“I” represents a different…set of coordinates each time it is uttered. Kind of covered in the Michaelson article, which I found impenetrable. The destruction of the images in (nostalgia), the reverence for the cells of the body replacing themselves, represents the tenuous relationship between the “I” who took the photographs and the “I” who is writing the narrative.
(Question of “how factual the vision”– fruitless. Expressed much more clearly through the film than anything Lionel Trilling ever said about authenticity or sincerity).
Poetic Justice– more about the language issue– language as a clarifier of seeing– represents the film script, the written plan that employs language, as a link in the whole filmmaking process. The idea is not that Brakhage is wrong, but that he limits himself to something he can never fully access because he HAS language and this effects his vision. I don’t fully understand the link to autobiography/ the glove at the end, but this might be because I didn’t see it– I fell asleep. The pronoun trouble is compelling, though– the shifting signifiers. In this way, it can become a film “about you…”
Riddle of Lumen- VISUAL riddle as opposed to verbal riddle in which we are supposed to discover that light is the protagonist. I was more compelled by the patterns– even duration of shots (well, movements, in the case of Brakhage), the repetition of certain colors, the moment with the child’s primer (genius!) Did not get the point at all until I read about it, and I’m still unsure what exactly Sitney means in his reading.
What does this blog do in terms of continuity? It has a continuity of subjects. Do I want to represent myself as continuous even though I am aware that I am not? A recent theme in my poems of late has been the problem of nostalgia that cannot be relived, the problem of defining oneself through past desires. I did not consciously set out to write poems “about” this.
(I = at this moment, as far as I can conceive of myself in language.)
Shouldn’t ever-shifting conceptions of self facilitate a conscious change to a way of life that accomodates this temporality, to the best of our ability, while somehow still acknowledging that some don’t/can’t/won’t think of the individual in these terms? How to exist in this tension? (This has to be enacted, real, or else it’s just rubbish)
How can this be empowering? Is it, innately? Rather than achieving a dominant narrative, achieving a mythology, existing in conscious (& possibly unconscious? though everyone must exist in unconscious…) tension with it…
