fever dreams

Do you lie awake composing prose, or is it poetry you write in the middle of the night?
If I speak of prickly flesh and fever dreams, do you know just what I mean?
Does free association make you spend lost hours still, awake?
Can you say with certainty if yesterday was a dream or reality?
And when your open eyes glimpse the morning light, can you say with certainty who you were last night?

Budgie's Lament

Waiting for the bus in Saint Patrick's Square on Nicholson Street, I spied a swarm of pigeons and hovering seagulls alighting upon the top-floor window of a flat across the street from where I sat. The pigeons pecked and poked at some foodstuff, taking it in their petite beaks and shaking violently, as the seagulls swooped in and retrieved large pieces of the mystery substance. A symphony of caws and coos rang out over the bustle of mid-afternoon Nicholson Street. Suddenly, a frantic movement from behind the top-floor window caught my eye. It was an avian out-of-place. On the other side of this busy window perched a parakeet, pacing madly from one end of the window-sill to the other, bobbing its head and occasionally taking to flight, flapping impotent wings against the unyielding glass.

I could find only one explanation to satisfy my curiosity. The owner of said frustrated budgie must have sprinkled foodstuff upon the window box before freeing her (I assume it is a her, an older woman in a flowered housecoat) charge from the confines of his (I assume it is a he, a young and pampered bird) cage. She will have sprinkled foodstuff in order to lure the wild city birds, so that they would alight on her window box and provide her young and pampered parakeet with an afternoon of entertainment. I say frustration, but I'm quite convinced she would say entertainment, or at least amusement. My conclusion is thus: Birds are funny, and so are people.

intro rising action climax conclusion

I have a night, or a week of nights, wherein the plot is lost, as some might say. I try to regain the plot, but busy days and intoxicated nights pull me further and further away. I have glimpses in the day, moments where I realize how far I've traveled from objective reality, but try as I may, I cannot seem to get it back. I need to sit down and write things out, plot things out, work things out, but day turns into week turns into month, and the knot in my stomach grows, and the scowl on my face, and the impatience and the confusion and the frustration, and nothing is resolved. Finally, walking home in the rain, I say to myself, I am ill, I mean I am unwell, I mean I am depressed. Things are not right. So I come home, and do some painting, and do some drawing, and write some email, and listen to some music, and finally it is time, and so I sit down to write.

Things are good, things are very good, for the solitary me. Work is progressing, friendships growing, food and drink and all is good. And for all the time I say to myself, this is all I need, right now this is all I need, suddenly it is not. Because, because lust is not love, and it is only a sometime temporary substitute, and as time passes by the illusion dissolves and I am left, once again, craving love. And now I see, I do not know how to love, anymore. The word strikes fear into my heart, the thought of the deed renders me frozen stiff. Things I was convinced I had overcome I have not overcome. Ghosts return to haunt and hunt, tease and taunt, complicate. The sour taste of sweat from his neck after a bottle of vodka is a sense-memory best left forgotten. The sickly-sweet smell of alcohol perspired in the night turns things on their heads, summons cruel and unnecessary dreams.

Peering through my skull's portals with mistrust, gazing into the minds of others and seeing only vast universes of electricity and anxiety, these things make it difficult to focus on the tasks at hand. There is something I'm missing. There is a trick of understanding I have not yet figured out, a trick of surviving that is eluding me. How do you love again?

The Scottish Grand National Festival is Decadent and Depraved

Red-faced men in fancy dress dig madly in their sporrans for bills to wave in my face. 'Give me three pints of lager, love, a lager tops, and two lager shandys.'

Valium-infused women in sequins and rhinestone incrusted sandals hobble to the bar, requesting, in their best impressions of a posh accent, 'one vodka with lemonade, one vodka with blackcurrant and lemonade, two gin and tonics, one vodka soda and lime, one vodka lemon and lime, a brandy and lemonade . . . do you have any white wine?' while the feathers adorning their disheveled hair give them the appearance of so many poorly-plucked hens.

Two men lock arms to legs and tumble across the carpeted floor, knocking their heads on the beams.

A group of men in kilts and women who have long-since kicked off their shoes put their arms around shoulders and sing along to the band covering 'Wonderwall' at the top of their lungs, before toddling rapidly back to the bar for another drink.

Pods of women sans shoes, with dresses half-unzipped, are strewn across the carpeted expanse, clutching vodka mixers and going on about sales on the high street, as their makeup runs in horror from their faces and the feathers do a desperate attempt to fly off their heads.

'This is a fucking freak show.'

It is a big race day at Ayr Racecourse. The ponies are running. The Scottish Grand National Festival is decadent and depraved.

Stop Making Sense

I've been re-watching the Talking Heads concert film today. I put it on once while I did other things, just to listen to the music and I was quite satisfied. But, I've been meaning to re-watch it recently, both in the hopes of learning something, and in the hopes of figuring out how to quantify its awesomeness. So I sat down to watch it properly, and for the umpteenth time my mind was blown. I often site 'Stop Making Sense' as the best concert film ever made, but I should also be siting it as one of the best films ever made, without qualifications. It's a bit of unfettered cinematic genius -- pure visceral joy. David Byrne is utterly mesmerizing, and no matter what your opinion of the Talking Heads (though if you have a poor opinion of the band, I might suggest you are out of your mind), you cannot deny Byrne's hypnotic power. While one expects a lot of quick cuts from a concert film, Jonathan Demme rightly sticks to long sequences of David Byrne that do not cut away.

In addition to Byrne, of course, the film is absolutely beautifully shot. It deviates completely from standard concert film tropes, coming on more like an art film than a long-playing music video. There are shots utilizing a long lens to flatten depth of field that are utterly mind blowing -- beautifully composed frames of band members, lit in monochromatic grays or blues, stacked upon one another, all different sizes, all playing their requisite parts.

(too bad about the Tom Tom Club interlude, but hey, nothing is perfect)

It's a great fucking movie, a brilliant film, an amazing concert, a fantastic band. Yeah. Makes me want to go out and film things.

beginning of the end of innocence

I loved you for your mind until it seeped from your body in whisky sweat and beer shits. I loved the way you could turn a phrase, and then the phrases turned against you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was hiding under my bed. My child's logic had convinced me that the cover of bed would protect me from the impending world's end I had been warned about the day before.
"The world is gonna end tomorrow at two pee emm," Eric had told me, quite matter-of-factly, as we sat on the lawn playing with trucks and wooden blocks.
"How do you know?" I had asked.
"My dad told me."
In my three year old mind's eye, the sky ripped open from one end to the other. The sun turned a cold white nothing as clouds of black locusts swarmed to engulf us. "Oh," I muttered.

"What are you doing under there?" It was my father. I had been discovered. I peered out from behind the pink dust ruffle at warm blue eyes, crinkled softly at the corners. He was on his hands and knees, smiling jovially. I wrinkled my brow and sniffled. "Jana? Why are you under the bed?"
I shrugged and looked away. So, he doesn't know. Oh, how could it be possible, not only to be lashed to this heavy burden of knowledge, but now to have to break the news to my darling father. I couldn't bear it; I couldn't stand to be the harbinger of such terrible news. I squeezed my eyes closed tight against the sobs pushing upward.
"Sweetheart, what's wrong?"
I crawled further back into the confines of under-the-bed, curling into a tight ball and hugging myself against the impending disaster of nothingness I could not dare disclose. I sobbed uncontrollably for a moment, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong." His soft eyes had grown wide with concern. "Did you hurt yourself?"
My only response was a choke of tears. How, how could I tell him the awful truth?
"Jana?" he asked again, tugging gently on my arm. My tears continued, unfazed. He gripped my arm harder. "Jana," he said, his voice becoming stern, "come out here and tell me what's wrong." He was serious now. Fragments of understanding darted in and out of my head. Was it more important to obey my father, or to protect him from this tragic news? I could not figure it out. "Jana!" He raised his voice and gave my arm a firm tug. I slowly unwrapped myself and crawled toward him, emerging soggy and red from beneath the bed.
"Now tell me what's going on."
This must be a cruel joke. Surely if Eric's father knows, my own father must. Fathers were infallible, as far as I could tell, and they shared a common knowledge unknown to little children. Why would my father play such a mean joke on me? "Don't you know?", I asked, turning away to cry.
He just wrapped his arms around me and held me close, rocking me gently. "I can't read your mind," he laughed softly, "you have to tell me what's wrong."
I pushed him away, annoyed and confused. "The world is going to end!"
He huffed, hiding a half-smile. "What?!"
I spied his amusement. He must have known all along, and now he was laughing at me. I pouted flamboyantly.
"Who told you that?"
"Eric did, yesterday." I paused, waiting for an explanation, but he only looked on, so I continued. "He said the world would end today at two."
My father smiled and looked up. How could he smile at a time like this? Didn't he understand the implications of what I was telling him? "Oh honey, Eric's just been teasing you."
"No, his dad told him!" Why wasn't he taking this seriously?
"Well, it's five to two now, so we'll just sit here together and wait, and if two comes and goes and we're still here, we'll know it wasn't true."
I gasped and hugged him tight. Five more minutes and everything would end. This beautiful world that I had only just begun to discover would be torn from me. A vast, impossible nothingness waited coldly on the other side of two o'clock, baited breath blowing hot and sticky over the back of my neck. "What if it's true?" I whispered.
"It isn't true, sweetie."
"How much longer?"
"One minute."
I held my breath. In my mind I pictured my mother, glowing in the afternoon sun. She was smiling and waving at me, wearing a white dress with tiny blue flowers, her hair tumbling down her back in loose curls. She called my name, her face warm and beautiful. She was the most beautiful thing I could imagine. I would never see her again.
"How much longer?"
"Thirty seconds."
I tried to remember what a second felt like. I knew it was less than a minute, but how much less? I wished my mother was in my room with us, wished we could all welcome in the end of everything together. I thought of her, alone somewhere, unaware of the fate that was nearly upon her. How cruel, how awful and unfair.
"There, look." My father held his watch up for me to see. 2:00 blinked black against the gray background.
"But . . . "
"It's two now, and we're still here, and nothing has changed. See, Eric was just teasing you."
"But maybe it will come in another minute." Eric's father couldn't have been wrong about this.
"No, sweetheart, it isn't true. Eric lied to you. Remember how the prayer goes? 'World without end, amen.' Eric was just trying to scare you."
"But . . . why?" My mind danced in a thousand different directions. He was my friend, my best friend. The word 'lie' tumbled around my head, bouncing to and fro. A lie was a sin, and a lie was something you could be punished for. A lie was something that bad people told. You could lie on a bed, and you could also lie on the floor. You could lie down or you could tell a lie, but these were two different things. I understood how to lie down on something, but I couldn't figure out how to tell a lie, or more importantly, why to tell a lie. What was the point of something like that?
"He was just teasing you, because he likes you."
You lie because you like someone? Oh, I thought, I give up. People don't make any sense.

I forgot to learn not to forget what I learned

pearls of wisdom from the jana of one year ago:

Yes, as far as I can see it, the more you learn, the less you know. Truths that seemed so concrete dissolve before your eyes. Values you held so dear become trite and confused. The very fabric you thought held the world together turns out to be nothing more than a glare from the sun, and it comes and goes as the earth turns in orbit. The search for knowledge is futile, and yet, YET, it is our ultimate nature to keep searching, even when all hope seems lost, even when any concept of TRUTH becomes just another hidden message written in disappearing ink. Search until the day we die, and maybe, maybe in that final moment some illumination is provided. Or if we’re lucky, learn before the end the ultimate truth, the one that hints itself at us our whole lives but that we are much to logical of creatures to ever believe – this world is chaos, there is no understanding, no KNOWING. I guess, as long as we can keep the journey as fulfilling as possible, that’s really the key.

Inland Empire

Before writing about Inland Empire, I thought I'd listen to Mark Kermode's review, because I was sure it would be a terrible pan and it would give me something to react against. Turns out that Mark Kermode loved it, reconfirming the fact that Mark Kermode is the most brilliant film reviewer working. If your movie taste is at all similar to my own, I highly recommend checking out Kermode's podcast, which is informative, often dead-on, and very entertaining in a posh british sort of way. Good stuff.

But yes, back to David Lynch's magnum opus. Inland Empire is three hours long, shot with dv, more or less completely lacking a coherent plot, and it's fan-fucking-tastic. If you expect your cinematic experiences to 'make sense,' 'tell a coherent story,' or 'follow a three-act plot structure,' then I'm afraid you might find Inland Empire a bit of a disappointment. For an aspiring filmmaker like myself, this film was, in the first, a testament to the fact that you don't need high production values or fancy equipment to make a great film. Of course, this fact is also apparent in the early work of directors like Robert Rodriguez and John Cassavetes, but it is quite rare to see a successful and established director take the skills acquired from years of filmmaking and apply them back to a super low-budget format. The results are . . . inspiring, to say the least.

All of the classic Lynch tropes are there -- powerful sound design, strange and deformed characters, red velvet curtains . . . and the themes of changing identities, the distance between what you see and what you think you see, etc are continued and explored further. In a David Lynch movie, and especially in Inland Empire, 'continuity editing' is often just a ruse, and you are made constantly aware that the normal assumptions the brain automatically makes to link shots and scenery together simply don't apply. As this is something I'm quite interested in exploring in my own work, I find it incredibly exciting to see such a fascinating and established director playing in these ways.

Perhaps one of the greatest things about a Lynch movie (made more so by the incredibly scope of Inland Empire) is that, upon leaving, there are several hours during which the entire world looks like it has been cut straight out of one of his films. He has an eye for the bizarre that surrounds us, the strange that emerges readily from the mundane it hides so loosely behind. Part of the appeal of his films is that they give us the chance to see the world through his hyper-sensitive eyes, which make the every-day so exciting and strange.

No, it is obviously not for everyone. If you haven't liked his previous work, there is no way you'll like the new one. I expected overindulgent nonsensical ramble, and would have been happy with that. I was surprised, however, to find the film much less overindulgent and nonsensical than I had anticipated. Still, for three hours without a coherent linear plot, you have to be a fan to start. Which I am, and made more so now. It's good fun . . . the dance sequences are amazing.

The excitement for me, is this: I can watch The Last King of Scotland and be amazed, and say that's a great film, fantastic, incredible. But the actors, the production value, the on-location shooting, all mean it is only something I can watch and enjoy. I can't imagine being a part of anything like that, or, obviously, making something like that. With Inland Empire, not only is it fantastic, beautiful, good actors, multiple locations, etc . . . but it is not so out of reach either. It isn't just amazing, it's also inspiring. It gives me some ideas to work toward. Which is why, though I would say that Last King of Scotland is a better film, I am more grateful for having seen Inland Empire, because it offers more nourishment.

winter: fade to black

I should really stop writing so much poetry... Look for a discussion of David Lynch's new 'Inland Empire' coming shortly. Until then, a little poem about spring:

The Ides of March are burning
and the North Sea tide is turning
The evening sky still glowing
over wind and showers blowing
over rivers heavy flowing
The temperature is rising
which is not at all surprising
for the Ides of March are burning
Yes my darlings, spring has come.

lay down your arms, it's christmas

relaxation.
the marathon of work and stress ends. i am fulfilled, i am alone.
my mind tells my body it is time to rest. my body responds by shutting down.
we drink in a pub and listen to fiddle and mandolin, we break two glasses, we laugh and hug, we sing.
my mind tells my body it was only fooling, we cannot rest because the work in not finished. my body responds by shutting down.
fever dreams of sped-up worlds and anxiety and love making. fever dreams of absent lovers. tossing, turning, sleep paralysis, phantom pains. hallucination, psychosis. fever dreams.
my heart is singing, he says to me in gaelic. my heart is singing.
a weight lifted creates an absence. nothing survives in a vacuum. another weight is added to compensate for the one lifted.
never good enough, never good enough, the dishes are never done.
it is better this way because i get more work done, i tell her, that's what i tell myself, to keep from minding about being alone.
but it is nice to feel something so strongly, i tell her, even if it isn't always good.
but it's more productive the other way, i tell myself.
she feels the knots in my shoulders and gasps.
my mind speeds up, my body shuts down.
count to ten. breathe. relax.