The Wind #1

Pour le mistral - Joris Ivens, 1965, 35mm

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Coal Face - Alberto Cavalcanti [uncredited, for the GPO Film Unit], 1935, 35mm

Scholarship #2

2. Near the end of his life, impersonating himself just this once more, Marcel Duchamp said that he did not like to work; that he preferred living, breathing, to working. But living is something we never stop doing, whether we work or not. For the autobiographer in words, though, it doesn't feel that way. As I write these words, locked in a room, far from home, I feel that my life is all outside the door, even as I know that I'm in here, alive, and nothing is outside the door. Nevertheless I can hardly wait to take my life back, out, into everything. So, I don't write. To feel that one is not alive is sufficient reason for not doing anything.

3. Brancusi said that creation should be as easy as breathing; and his beautiful and perfect works attest to the depth and ease of his breath. But sometimes the breath comes hard, in choking spasms, and sometimes it is reduced to the merest sibilance. Creation is just as uneasy as breathing. With inspiration, we draw in breath. In the end, we expire. While the breath runs, we feel moved, mysteriously, to conspire, to share breath. Of all the arts, none responds more fully and intricately to the flow of the breath of life than does film, nor does any other give itself so freely to the sharing of breath, unless we take inspiration from Ovid and look to an Art of Love, in which closest of all conspiracies we conceive, and were conceived.

4. Film is much spoken of as a way to teach, and not enough as a way to learn. Much of what I have learned - both what I value and what I have not yet learned to value - I have learned from film, which is to say, from its makers. What we try to learn, all our lives, is how to live. The last time I saw my grandmother, she said to me: we just barely learn how to live, and then we're ready to die. Then she cried a little. I wanted to cry too, but I couldn't. I hadn't learned how.

--Hollis Frampton, "Mental Notes", Buffalo, March 1973, from On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters, ed. Bruce Jenkins, 2009, p. 255.

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Poetic Justice - Hollis Frampton, 1972, 16mm

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RECONCILE THESE ANTAGONISMS: The oestrus of a dry season in Rangoon, and a dilation of old brandy in Vienna. Pungent chicken cooked with own guts, and escargots with vin gris. Dried pyrethrum and rampant lilac. An inkblot on a knuckle, and a lapis cabochon. A repellent lotion, and a remant of ambergris. The faint whisper of a kerosene lantern, and the subaudible drone of a carbon filament. An insectile whine at twilight, and a streetcar rumbling at dawn. Susurrus of a racing pen, and a rustling of defended thighs. A forked, magenta tongue that hears, and a pierced, ivory ear that tastes. Diamond scales tiling a serpent's hood, and lozenges in a mullioned window. Its momentary posture, and a thesis of Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty. Its characteristic markings, and a keepsake lorgnette. A droplet of toxin, and a tear of distraction. Accidental stains in the margin of a page, and faint punctures near the ulnar nerve. Breath released in satisfaction at the anticipated expulsion of a precipitate, and breath indrawn in confusion at the unexpected miscarriage of a response. One who writes and one who reads.

[...]

COMPARE THESE COLORS: a powdery azure, brushed with scorched fat, and a cyanotic custard, scummed with diachronic yellow. They are identical ... but separated, at the alleged horizon, by a band of stale mist, within which, or beyond which, an escort of battle cruisers surrounds us on every side. The deck of our barge, big as a meadow, of the hue and texture of a baby, is punctuated by the prisoners' nondescript shelters. Somewhere beneath us, a thermonuclear device that may be armed and exploded by remote control is our only warden. Daily, at noon, our parcel of food descends by parachute; we rip and knot the tough cords and pastel silk into canopies, trapezes, parasols, and a burlesque of bridal finery. There has been no rain for thirty-six days. The stern rail is crusted with shit and vomit. Below the Plimsoll line, slowly, something pumps or throbs. We are becalmed.

[...]

The colony seems more distant, now, than the panopticon we were offered as an alternative. I have five friends, here; or, rather, there are that many personages with whom I have engaged in behavior that I, at least, do not consider hostile. None of them can talk. Two are confined, by a kind of stocks clamped around their strange heads, in barrels set flush with the deck. One has a skull shaped like a bowling pin, and drinks milk through a hose, and whistles: the other is a churning mouth, pointed at the zenith, crammed with hundreds of dirty molars, from which it dangles a weak, achondroplastic frame. The eyes are like those of a calf; it groans happily when a stew is poured into it. In order that they shall not drown, I siphon off their excreta. They do not object. Nearby, a pair of midget twins squats, sips tea, plays chess with men of chalk and jet, squeals and giggles. Brother and sister, they are otherwise identical; their immense, didactic genitals, and her breasts, tinted copies from Maillol, are the envy of us all. But their red umbrella, a careless display of the prerogatives of former wealth, has bred ineradicable distrust. Finally, a pudgy woman in middle life prowls incessantly, stumbling, cursing and slapping the cloud of greenbottles that follows her everywhere but dares not land. Her flesh and uniform look like varnished zinc; a soiled placard bears the legend: "The Filthy Nurse."

--Hollis Frampton, "Mind over Matter", Paris/San Francisco/Ponce, 1976-78, from On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters, ed. Bruce Jenkins, 2009, p.316, 318, 319.

Distance(s) #3

Black and White Trypps Number One - Ben Russell, 2005, 16mm

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La natation par Jean Taris, champion de France - Jean Vigo, 1931, 35mm

Forests #4, or: St. George's Hill, 1649-50

We panted our way up the slippery sand-and-heather coated slope and surveyed the surrounding countryside. I expected a cluster of housing estates and pylons but I misread Andrew's triumphant expression. The view from the top was exactly the view the Diggers would have seen from the top of St. George's Hill. A panorama of virgin countryside; a windblown heath bisected by rough paths, a lake and rough woods extending to the horizon. You could hear cars and an occasional aircraft, but shut your ears and the scene was hallucinatory. Here we were, a mere hour and a quarter from London, confronted by one of the last sizeable stretches of unspoiled and unenclosed common land in England.

--Kevin Brownlow, Winstanley, Warts and All, UKA Press, 2009, p. 22-23.

There's always a pool of blood somewhere that we're walking in without knowing it... It's your blood that feeds the earth. It's you who fatten the servants of lies.

--Jean-Marie Straub

Winstanley - Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo, 1975, 35mm

An aside, or: words

For better or worse, some words of mine about Frederick Wiseman's La danse: Le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris are up at The Auteurs.

Forests #3, or: The Village

Travelers among Mountains and Streams - Fan K'uan, c. 1000 A.D.

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The town of San Diego lies almost at the shores of the lake, amid open fields and rice paddies. It exports sugar, rice, coffee, and fruit, or sells them wholesale to the Chinese, who take advantage of the simplemindedness of the workers, or their vices.

When boys climb to the topmost vault of the church tower, which is covered in moss and climbing vines, they burst into exultant cries at the beauty of the panorama unfolding before their eyes. Each knows how to find his little house, his small nest among that cover of thatch, tile, zinc, and palm leaves divided by orchards, and gardens. Everything serves as a sign: a tree, a tamarind with its sparse foliage, a coconut palm with nuts like Astarte the goddess of fertility or the Diana of Ephesus with its many breasts, the swaying cane reads, a bonga-pine, a cross. There lies the river, a monstrous glass serpent asleep in a green carpet; from time to time in the sandy bed, rocks strewn here and there jut up to roll the current. There the riverbed narrows between two high banks, and naked, twisted tree-roots cling. Here the river flows down a soft incline and widens and eddies. There, in the distance, a tiny house, built into the ledge, defies height, wind, and the abyss; its thin posts make it seem like a giant mosquito stalking the reptile it is about to attack. The trunks of palm or other trees still bear their bark though they shift and roll as they connect the banks. If they are poor bridges, at least they serve as wonderful gym apparatus on which one can practice one's balance. Young boys bathing in the river take great pleasure in watching nervous women pass over them, baskets atop their heads, or old men, who shake violently and drop their canes into the water.

But what always draws attention is what one would call a spur of forest amid a section of tilled earth. It is an ancient stand of hollow trunks, which die only when lighting strikes the upper canopy and sets it afire. It is said the fire turns back on itself and dies where it began. There are boulders, which time and nature have attired in a pelt of moss; dust has left layer upon layer in their hollows. Rain holds it there 'til birds sow seed. Tropical vegetation grows liberally. Thickets and underbrush, tangled one and another like woven blankets, flow from one plant to the next. They hang from branches, cling to roots and to the ground and, as if Flora were still not satisfied, one plant grapples with another. Moss and fungi live on the cracked bark, while hanging plants, such gracious guests, entwine their arms with the leaves of the hosting trees.

The stand is held in great awe. Odd legends swirl around it, the most realistic of which and, hence, the least often believed and understood, is the following.

When the town was still a miserable pile of shacks and grass grew wildly in the so-called streets, in the times when deer and wild boar wandered about the town at night, there appeared one day an old Spaniard with deep eyes, who spoke fairly good Tagalog. After visiting and touring parcels of several areas, he asked for the owners of the wood, where various thermal springs flowed. A few men came along pretending to be the owners, and the old man acquired the land from them in exchange for clothes, jewels, and some money. Then, without anyone knowing how it came to be, the old man disappeared. The people thought he was bewitched, and when a fetid odor began to emerge from the forest, it drew the attention of a few shepherds. They followed the trail until they came upon the old man in a state of putrefaction, hanging from the branch of a baliti tree. When he was alive, he struck fear into the hearts of men because of his deep, cavernous voice, his deep-set eyes, and the way he laughed without making a sound. But now, dead, and a suicide to boot, he disrupted the women's sleep. They threw the jewels into the river and burned the clothing, and ever since the corpse was buried at the foot of that banana tree, no one was willing to venture near it. One shepherd, who was looking for his animals, told of having seen lights. Young men wandered by and claimed to have heard lamenting. One lovesick young man, in order to draw the attention of his would-be lover, vowed to spend the night beneath the tree and wind a long bulrush around its trunk. He died of a raging fever, which befell him the day after the night of his vow. Many stories and legends continue to circulate about the place.

Less than a few months had gone by when a young man appeared. In all appearances a Spanish half-breed, he claimed to be the dead man's son. He settled in the spot and proceeded to dedicate himself to farming, especially the planting of indigo. Don Saturnino was a taciturn man of violent character, cruel at times but energetic and a hard worker. He encircled his father's grave with a wall, and rarely visited it. After a few years, he married a young woman from Manila, with whom he had Don Rafael, Crisóstomo's father.

From the time he was young, Don Rafael was beloved by his workers. His farm, established and maintained by his father, developed quickly. New residents flowed in, including a great many Chinese. The hamlet soon became a village with a native priest, then a town. The native priest died and Father Dámaso arrived, but the tomb and the old boundaries were respected. From time to time boys, armed with sticks and stones, would wander in the environs to gather guavas, papayas, lomboi, and other such things, and it happened that whenever these tasks were going well or when they were contemplating the rope that swung from the branch, a few stones would fall from who knows where. Then, with a cry of "the old man, the old man!" they would run through the rocks and boulders, and not stop until they were out of the forest. Some were pale, others out of breath, and still others were crying, but no one was laughing at all.

--José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere, 1887 (trans. Harold Augenbraum, Penguin, 2006), p.62-64.

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30.12.1896

[A photograph of Rizal's execution came to light in the 1920s. Taken from a distance, it shows a man in a dark suit and bowler hat standing several paces from a firing squad, with tall, straight trees in the background. Several historians have questioned its authenticity - eyewitnesses have claimed there were no trees in Bagumbayan at the time - but it is often printed as the only extant photograph of Rizal's execution. --Harold Augenbraum, Noli Me Tangere, p.xxiv.]

Forests #2, or: the mist that hangs in the valley

The sky is full of black clouds

and the wind is blowing

you tell yourself that it's going to rain

between rocks

in the middle of a stand of trees

or on the slopes

of a hill or mountain

water has emerged from the ground

clear, fresh, murmuring...

La Vallée close - Jean-Claude Rousseau, 1995, super 8

Sharits #3, or: the retinal screen

---[original interests]

the recreation of personal feelings, stress moods, anxiety – experiences of bleakness, non-linear, temporal suspension, loss of “objective” mind set

---[attraction to home movies]

(grey, grainy, claustrophobic – highly filmic, a black and white landscape)

attempt to realize these emotions in EVENT (1963)

narrative-dramatic emphasis since, at this point, the experiences emerged from those systems. later, with RAY GUN VIRUS, “drama” is, hopefully, created rather than recreated, direct, empty, intense, non-humorous, non-serious feeling (what concerned malevich ... his “desert”) the mundane rather than the dream or fantastic.

---[non-psychodramatic]

(a "feature" of the psychedelic experience is the immense strangeness of the everyday object & situation.) my idea has been to charge the ordinary thru editing, to create something that is, as a whole, very different than any of its single parts, to make something out of nothing.

---[reading eisenstein in 1963]

differing from "montage" of eisenstein insomuch as he felt that the emergent images arising from juxtaposition must relate directly back to the films' literal narrative content. i would have liked to have had the "emergents" as the whole of the film. this was never accomplished although i believe it was approximated in EVENT. STORY was quite narrative, but the narrative was of very simple, slight value. in it i wanted to simply find kinaesthetic and imagistic metaphors of what was occurring literally, in WINTERCOURSE: machine to bare tree; trees to human; machine to sex act; automobile orgasm; etc. past continually in the present, penetration of the past with the present; blurring of past and future (i.e., the NOW line of division) results in no time, or presence, even though summer is counterposed to winter (warm - cold ... obvious symbolic values), i was concerned that this relationship be (imagistically, concretely) filmic, rhythmic; tonally the doubleday book of interior decorating albert kornfield all inclusive guide. illustrated in color. (pub. edition, 11.95).

---[this is being written under the influence of pot. the reason for this is to enable myself to write in the present. intercutting all relevant data leaves float. directness is established, disjarring of temporality, recurrence, departing to nowhere, just what i would like of my films. this then is relevant and will get to the REALITY & HEART of the situation: i am not being anarchistic. honest.y]

when i made the first three films i was involved with "non-objective" painting & sculpture. the films were more meaningful to me because i was not non-objective by nature.

---[experiential directness (and directness of media projection tangible "form")]

so the films, since it was necessary to do them, were more reflective of me, i was reading about zen & wanted to make haiku movies. i saw other persons' films; started film society; an image does not have a tangible, rather sensible ... no it is sensible ... "existence" - it exists in someone's nervous system ... memory cells is its physical analogue.

---[simultaneity]

simultaneity

an image could be defined as a non-referential symbol. combine what does not make sense if you want an image. but do not reveal to the viewer the senselessness of these combinations. what is more invisible than a relationship? conflict of mundane content and senseless relationships. editing was, until recently, supreme. with the new work the program for structuring the system becomes ultra-supreme; then art is free to be not-art but actuality. it would be whatever it might just be. john cage and his random music are very important at present. but also burroughs who does not live in "the happy land" - this leads to a conflict that needs to be resolved not by dissolution of the problem, or by choosing one or the other, but to synthesize both into one. that is mondrian. and i also feel what mondrian felt. tibetan art is of great interest to me; however, they, like fellini, only literally hint, represent the energy flow, matter-antimatter, plus-, siva-sakti, yab-yum, the many and the one, yogic films.

---[herman greer askren]

burroughs is in happyland only thru cut-up, cut-in ... but not happy thru chicken liver.

---[re-edited IMAGES]

8mm sketches of color flicker with and without image. this is post-lsd. that world cannot be described. everything and nothing have changed. colors that are pure light, are made up of levels of other colors - molecular, atomic, electrical. time : present. ILLUMINATION ACCIDENT TO HAPPEN TO AUDIENCE. i would like to have total nonunderstanding and its consequence - involvement. mental orgasm.

---[reality visions]

nerve ending music/"tranart" (leary): does what everybody has tried to represent.

---[IMAGES AGAIN]

change to remove redundancies; to penetrate with white light; to physiologicalisize. deepen gap or effort to do so. burroughs does it - he takes you on a wave trip: in-out, thru, beneath, etc. ... but in waves of slowness & you lose location. the lose location is presence. when you lose location you become Located. and re-located; very quickly; it is over when you are finally able to

---[phosphorus 37%]

(mis)understand it. to happen before one can see it happen because they are happening with it. this THE TRUE PAUL SHARITS STATEMENT.

---[riboflavin 5%]

this writing becomes a movie ... paper movie. lash out at the old sentimentality program by slash.

---[iron 30%]

lite slash. actualize the auditorium showing everyone where they are at. n:o:t:h:i:n:g (in progress) is very involved with the programming stage; models are from "mandalas", "mantras", majikwheels, "yantra movie."

---[vitamin b1 11%]

to stimulate the audience nervous system into disslocation. the retinal screen. i wanted to see how the visual fugue form would work visually so here the necessary procedure is not to know what you are talking about but to keep thinking as you go further out into non-knowledge and not resolve thoughts as this is dangerous and "maya."

---[niacin 45%]

dual screen and extremely rapid cutting creating mental afterimages of thought syndromes. not a uni but a bioverse. there is too much to talk about too many levels word language is dead language a tired language. speak between the words and you have presence. having presence is exactly like not being present. nirvana is everyday life. splice those meanings together without film and project it on emptiness and you know what is being said herein. typewriter is a language before it types words. "all out of time into space" says hassan i s.

now it seems that everything that can be said has been said.

--Paul Sharits, "Movie Cookbook", 1966, Film Culture 65-66, 1978, p. 109-112. Formatting tweaked a little.

T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G - Paul Sharits, 1968, 16mm