Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 Catastrophic Jack-O-Lantern (2010) From a novel unpublished by the women of London. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 Oedipus Maximus : a Reboot Note : This play follows line 862 in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. ___________________________________ Jocasta and Oedipus. Daytime pillow-talk in bed after sex. JOCASTA : I’ve been waiting for us to speak. OEDIPUS : About what? JOCASTA : What we know, and fear to say, even in a sigh—for the slightest breath might bring disaster upon us. OEDIPUS : And so you would have us speak of this now? JOCASTA : Just now we’re safe here inside our knowledge. No one can hurt us. OEDIPUS : What knowledge? JOCASTA : I think you know. OEDIPUS : I don’t. JOCASTA : Be a man! OEDIPUS : As opposed to your child? JOCASTA : You do see. OEDIPUS : Today I see. JOCASTA : And so? What shall we do with this new knowledge? Destroy ourselves, or fight? I for you, and you for me. Together we must fight for us! OEDIPUS : As mother and son? Or husband and wife? JOCASTA : I love you all in all. I cannot discriminate my passion. Not now. As sweet as it is to know my son is alive, sweeter still is the loving touch my husband gives. This, I think, is what I would suffer most in losing. OEDIPUS : You would have us love as husband and wife before the eyes of the city? JOCASTA : Nothing was said that those people would understand. OEDIPUS : But Tiresias— JOCASTA : The old man who revealed his apathy for the city? Loftiness in the low is derisory. He won no supporters with his words. You came away the victor. OEDIPUS : Yet he said— JOCASTA : The truth only we three know! And no one will believe him. OEDIPUS : Only three? And the gods? Do you not think of the pestilence? JOCASTA : Inside the house, or out? OEDIPUS : What are you saying? JOCASTA : I’m saying your skepticism is infuriating, in husband or son! You see the truth yet would deny your responsibilities. You have a marriage to protect, and a parent. Yet you fret, like a child. OEDIPUS : When one knows what one is doing, responsibility is the good guide. When one is lost, responsibility is a tangled maze. JOCASTA : A maze? Who better to navigate a labyrinth of thought than you, Oedipus, known to all everywhere as master of men in mind, champion of the Sphinx! You heard that horrible priest—he kindly reminded the people that you required no help from them to find the solution. You have the people’s love. You impress them. OEDIPUS : Yet they’re dying and beg for help. JOCASTA : I beg you, show me no more weakness! Rats enter into even the least opportune gap. OEDIPUS : You speak of protecting ourselves? Do we even have the right to go on? JOCASTA : You speak of “right”? What right have you not to protect us? OEDIPUS : Shall I say it? JOCASTA : What we know is inconsequential. Everything is permitted—if we allow it. OEDIPUS : Is this love you defend for me, or for yourself? JOCASTA : You mock the love of a mother for her son? OEDIPUS : No. But I’m skeptical of the love of a wife for a husband. JOCASTA : If we stay firm we shall survive this. OEDIPUS : But you spoke before the people of summoning the witness of the king’s murder. Soon they’ll learn I’m the reason for the city’s sickness. JOCASTA : What I said before the people is inconsequential! What else do you say before the illiterate mob but empty promises? You and I shall ask no further questions about our past. You shall seek out no further clues. As for Creon, the theatre of sending him to Delphi allows us a pretext for punishment. Call it lies and sedition. OEDIPUS : Not even your own brother escapes your hand? JOCASTA : Would you rather we sacrifice ourselves to Creon? OEDIPUS : Who won’t fall before your glorious lies? JOCASTA : If lies keep us living, why obey deadly truth? OEDIPUS : You put me in three minds at once. (to himself) I must focus on the most vital question. JOCASTA : You mean, How do we get away with this? OEDIPUS : (hesitating) Yes. JOCASTA : You see? Our thoughts are still each other’s. This proves our love remains strong. OEDIPUS : As mother and son? JOCASTA : No more of that! What do you want? To persuade me to hang myself? This is how we were meant to be—as man and wife. Now that we’ve faced facts, now we must protect ourselves. To do anything otherwise is imbecilic. You’d sacrifice ourselves to morality, when no one knows the truth? OEDIPUS : Three people know. And the gods—that’s one side too many. JOCASTA : And if there are no gods? Then no one can stop us. Enter CREON, with sword. JOCASTA : How boldly you step, my brother! What motivates this audacious intrusion? CREON : This is how I greet a man who would have me dead. JOCASTA : Rubbish! Take no notice of chatter in public! CREON : You would have me ignore a death sentence given me? OEDIPUS : Leave us. CREON : Would you rather I speak my mind before the ear of the city? Oedipus rises from bed and stands before Creon. OEDIPUS : Speak what? CREON : I come armed with the truth, which will protect me. JOCASTA : What does he want? Enough riddles; speak out clear! CREON : I know the man in my sister’s bed is the plague killing the people. OEDIPUS : What is this? CREON : Abusing me with threats of the word “traitor” came, I think, from fear. Of what? OEDIPUS : Not of you. That sword sharpens your tongue. Careful. CREON : Oedipus, how perverse is the humour of the gods! Delphi spoke plain to us! μίασμα χώρας, I was told. Think of it : χώρας is Thebes. You are Thebes. The oracle’s message was so simple you missed it clear in front of your eyes! For your sake I explained nothing to the elders. Oedipus, I come not to hurt you. I come bearing a sword to say I held my tongue for you. OEDIPUS : A drawn sword is no requirement to speak your mind. CREON : I will not lift it without provocation. OEDIPUS : Have I reason for that? As it is, you deliver no news. I heard the truth as you spoke it. CREON : You admit you killed Laius, yet sleep in his bed beside his wife? How solid is the blood inside you! This shameful union may be lighter than the prophecy you fled from, but is questionable. JOCASTA : Questionable how? Say what you mean. CREON : The king promised the people that the murderer of Laius must leave the city. As Jocasta speaks, she rises from bed and stands before Creon. JOCASTA : The city’s heard riddles from oracles, nothing more. Speculation is plentiful, rendering all words useless. CREON : Hence my sword? Don’t fear me, sister. OEDIPUS : We don’t. CREON : What have you decided? Everyone in Thebes must die so you two may live? JOCASTA : Would you rather we die? You may live, too. CREON : I live yet! OEDIPUS : You live now. CREON : You said you would summon a slave from the fields for questioning. Why? OEDIPUS : Creon knows all else yet asks why? CREON : Okay. The place where three roads meet. The roads coming in from Delphi and Daulis. Why is that spot so important for you to think on? OEDIPUS : You question your king? CREON : Not the king—my sister’s husband. OEDIPUS : You said you would not raise your sword. JOCASTA : Creon, you well know that spot was where my first husband died. CREON : It’s where Oedipus killed him. OEDIPUS : All know the story by now. I was defending myself. CREON : A second time you admit you were there! OEDIPUS : The king died there. Now say your words and go! CREON : If you were there, at the place where the three roads meet, why do you seek testimony of that bloody work from the mouth of an ancient slave? Oedipus, master of mind, pauses. JOCASTA : Creon, what is your concern here? The king speaks to placate the people. Here in Thebes, crooked words straighten things out. CREON : Crooked words—in this room, too? OEDIPUS : Enough! What do you want? CREON : The pestilence is punishment for some other atrocious act, isn’t it? Some other shameful work of yours. What other reason is there for you to root through the past, except that you’re searching for some other answer? JOCASTA : What of it? OEDIPUS : I would speak to him no more, dear wife. JOCASTA : He has angered me. (to Creon) Aren’t you ashamed of that spectacle before the people, begging those imbeciles for their faith, as if honoured to be among them? Perhaps you wish to be their foremost man? CREON : Forgive me, queen, but your husband is our foremost man. JOCASTA : Speak your desire! CREON : I have one question to ask— OEDIPUS : Whose side you’re on? CREON : I take no side. I defend truth. OEDIPUS : (smiles) Uncle— CREON : Uncle? OEDIPUS : That’s the truth. In an instant Creon is writhing on the ground, mouth gushing blood, his tongue severed. JOCASTA : My brother! OEDIPUS : His lack of loyalty has left him at a loss for words. JOCASTA : He writhes in agony! Creon! You lost your way in the maze of the city, when all the time your home was here, where you would have been safe. But you were a blind boy. OEDIPUS : It’s done. He shall breathe out his treason no longer. Darling, while my hands worked, a thought entered my mind. The oracle that led me on the way to where the three roads meet—said nothing of this. Perhaps the oracle reaches a limit of dark, as we do, beyond which nothing is clear. How is it I have come to know this only now?—The world I live in is mine to create. Nothing that is not my own shall have dominion here. And the bright light here shall be of you, Jocasta! JOCASTA : Come to me now, on the body; this warm soft foundation. OEDIPUS : Ah, the blood! Kiss me! JOCASTA : Mmmm, to be fucked as gods! Let them all rot! Let them die in their filth down to dust! No one left here but us! The whole city, our own palace! Ah, son! Our love has made us stronger than Fate! Time has bent to our will! We’ve won! Darkness. CHORUS O may I convey what must be heard seriously, in all my words and in all my acts; to set before all the laws of high-footed Heaven, whose duration is forever, there where solitary father lives. Our nature must not be a forgetting. We shall not be a place of oblivion where one passes the night. Let me instead enter into the completion of Divinity. Confidence is the parent of tyranny. Confidence, when overstuffed idly with nothing beneficial, high in the head moves forward into a sheer fall from compulsion into anguish. There, one is subject to unstable footing. I pray that God does not undo our city. I know I must not fall, but preserve and protect fairness always. No one must keep me from preserving the Word. Please may I enter the completion of Divinity. May the unrighteous know Justice; otherwise why stand by in patience and pray? But faded in the air is the ancient knowledge. The living fail to see value, and the god-words are followed nowhere. Gone is the worship of the Word. But may I enter into the completion of Divinity. Oedipus stands at the window by the marriage bed. JOCASTA : Come back to bed, son. OEDIPUS : Soon. JOCASTA : Look how your chest hair sticks to your sweat on my body. When we’re making love you remind me of your father. You’re as strong as he was. Stronger. How happy I am! You’ve taken the hands of silence from around my neck. I breathe free again. OEDIPUS : Free? JOCASTA : What do you mean? OEDIPUS : (turning to another subject) We must remove the dead from the palace. JOCASTA : Listen. You shall tell the city that Creon went to consult the oracle a second time. He’ll vanish along the way, never to return—just as Laius. OEDIPUS : Were you born so treacherous, mother, or did life teach it you? JOCASTA : You would have me apologize for showing a survival instinct for my family? OEDIPUS : I myself might feel shame for a heart colder than stone. JOCASTA : Says the man who murdered my brother! I say you should think me warm indeed. Did you not feel it inside of me? OEDIPUS : I wonder. JOCASTA : We must stop this bickering! Consider what’s next. OEDIPUS : When I sharpen my eyesight everything blurs. JOCASTA : What’s that doublespeak? OEDIPUS : Tiresias lives. JOCASTA : But who would brag of listening to him? Those who don’t scorn him show him ridicule. He’s chosen to live outside the city, so why would any citizen lift a finger to protect him? Who loves the person who insults them? No, son, Tiresias cannot hurt us. Why do you speak of him? OEDIPUS : (silent) JOCASTA : If you love your wife you will lift that sword and run it through the old fool. OEDIPUS : I wonder how a man may sneak up on someone who knows he’s coming. JOCASTA : How aimless you sound! OEDIPUS : My eyes are sharp. JOCASTA : Mind your mother! OEDIPUS : Mind your husband! JOCASTA : Darling. What would you have me do? OEDIPUS : We must know what the old man knows. Till then what we know is nothing. Tiresias is there, led by the hand of his young daughter, Manto. TIRESIAS : I come to answer your plea. OEDIPUS : Which one? TIRESIAS : “Save me, save us.” JOCASTA : You’ve limped here on your cane to help the murderer? TIRESIAS : I would say the “motherfucker”. (to Oedipus) Do I hit the mark now? OEDIPUS : What help can you offer? TIRESIAS : None to Creon. Did I not tell you he wasn’t your trouble? OEDIPUS : What help? TIRESIAS : Hear the deaf begging to hear! OEDIPUS : Healing is needed here, but of a different sort from the city. JOCASTA : (to Oedipus) Why do you say that? TIRESIAS : (to Oedipus) You see now I’ve no care to be you? OEDIPUS : (pauses) The king agrees. TIRESIAS : Ha! To how many people am I speaking? JOCASTA : What is going on here? TIRESIAS : Oedipus, mother calls you. OEDIPUS : You said this day would be destructive. I’m sure you didn’t come here to watch. TIRESIAS : You need not reach for that sword. OEDIPUS : Speak then! What on your tongue is so pleasurable to my ears? JOCASTA : (to Oedipus) I demand to know what’s happening! TIRESIAS : (smiling) Who may obey quicker—son or husband? JOCASTA : I cannot abide the man. I am burning down this bedchamber after this. The air has been poisoned today. Silence. JOCASTA : I am utterly lost. OEDIPUS : (to Tiresias) You didn’t answer the Sphinx’s riddle because you wanted me here. Why? JOCASTA : What? OEDIPUS : Stop talking! TIRESIAS : You’ve schooled yourself since morning, but you’re still an imbecile. JOCASTA : This is unbearable. OEDIPUS : Tell me then—you blind bastard—what don’t I see? TIRESIAS : One answer. OEDIPUS : One answer? TIRESIAS : The one answer to three questions will answer yours. Darkness. Oedipus alone. OEDIPUS : What does that blind bastard see? Three questions, he said. Why didn’t Tiresias answer the Sphinx’s riddle himself? He left it for me to solve, and thereby win the kingship, who had no care for it (let the gods be my witness!). I am sure of the second question, too : Why did she give me up? Mother didn’t want me—but my wife does. Is there any solace at all in that? Ah, gods! Why must I speak aloud, as if to an audience? What is happening? Who of me is speaking, and who is listening? Then there is the third, the third open eye, who watches the other two, and sees the split. And there are three of us : I, Jocasta, Tiresias. What is going on here? Continue, Oedipus, continue. What is the third question, the question you must ask yourself? Approach the problem in a different way. Which one answer answers the two questions I now know? The answer to the second is clear : Mother gave me up because she had no care for me. And the first answer may be just as clear : Tiresias didn’t answer the riddle because, simply put, he didn’t care to. So the answer to the three questions is “Care”. (pause) So what is my question I must ask myself, the question that answers everything? Darkness. Jocasta is there, in bed. JOCASTA : My king, you look unhappily lost in thought. OEDIPUS : No, mother, I found my way back—after you gave me away. JOCASTA : Yes, you came back to me. OEDIPUS : Earlier you celebrated an empty heaven. I say shudder at it. For which is more absurd—order or coincidence? It doesn’t matter—either one brought us to this. Confidence makes us a motherfucker. JOCASTA : My goodness, this is the longest day I’ve lived through! So what if gods populate the sky. Are they worthy of us? There’s nothing to them but self-interest. And they take pleasure in our idiocy! OEDIPUS : They may yet take pleasure in our punishment. JOCASTA : Punishment for what? OEDIPUS : For anything. JOCASTA : You rave on like that old fool. (pause) Do you know the answer he spoke of? Oedipus gets into bed beside Jocasta. OEDIPUS : I’m getting closer. (kissing her neck) The answer we seek is “Care”. JOCASTA : Mmmm. “Care”. What do you think that means? OEDIPUS : I don’t know what thinking is anymore. JOCASTA : (pushes him away) Then here’s a word of education for you. How long did you think it would be before the news that you sought out one of our fieldhands was heard by all? Did you think the one we wanted would have stayed silent about what he knows? OEDIPUS : What does he know? JOCASTA : Nothing. He’s dead. Along with the shepherd I gave you to. OEDIPUS : Whose tracks are you covering, exactly? JOCASTA : For one so lost in thought you’re terribly thoughtless! OEDIPUS : Am I? You gave me to a shepherd, who gave me to a slave, who gave me to my foster parents, Polybus and Merope. Is that thought strong enough for you? You made me fear them. My entire life, I feared what was kind to me, while everything I desired was poisonous! JOCASTA : I made? I say it was your questionable interpretation of the oracle that decided your fate. OEDIPUS : Questionable? (puts hands around her neck) My fate? JOCASTA : Stop that! Let me go! OEDIPUS : Let you go? Go where? Where do you want to go? JOCASTA : Son! Husband! Oedipus! Stop! OEDIPUS : First tell me I fuck better than father! It dawns on Oedipus, breathing hard, that Jocasta is dead. OEDIPUS : (loudly) Servant! SERVANT : Yes? OEDIPUS : Bring the children here. SERVANT : Yes, sir. Darkness. Oedipus What is this life that I am living through? What plan works through me, decided long ago and meant to motivate generations to come? If this is true, what is a person worth if there is no idea where it all leads, regardless of a concentrated gaze? So what is it to be responsible, when everything known is wrong from the start? And Destiny? No matter what direction I took, my route would always have ended here? So all my vaunted intelligence are indeed thoughts of an imbecile. But now I’m awake, and my eyes are so wide they’re liable to fall out. Don’t make me do it. Who says that inside me? No, no. I don’t know. Now you know you never knew. Destiny took me where I had to go, for obscurities I will never know. So we the living sacrifice ourselves for a future we know nothing about. I’ll show you how much you care, you bastards. Oedipus blinds himself with Creon’s sword. Oedipus Ah! Now I have rooted out the poison from my body—the light of the sun, gone! Now I’ll educate myself. I will grope my way like a very Tiresias until I learn to see again. Inside of me something cared enough to use me to live, and it lived on light. It’s dead now. Known to all, understood by none, Oedipus has left this body vacant, and is gone. This have no name; “I” was lost with the light. This now goes haltingly to start again. Destiny wants This alive. To do what? For what thing in the world is This to—care? Perhaps the one saviour we have to save the powerless from Destiny, is Care? When I learn what care is, I will know This. Darkness. A spark of flame. The Chorus and Tiresias stand by the burnt wreck of the palace. CHORUS : What happened? TIRESIAS : The truth caught fire. CHORUS : Have all the living burnt to ash in this abominable pyre? TIRESIAS : See here, the children of the former king stand with me. Earlier I led them to safety, before the flames consumed the marriage bed. CHORUS : Is our king dead? TIRESIAS : The king is gone, and has taken the pestilence with him. Do you breathe easier? The air is clear. CHORUS : O good king, you who loved the people, come back! TIRESIAS : (smiles) Oedipus is not coming back. He’s learned to care. End. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 Dorothy Mackaill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 (edited) Barbara Stanwyck Edited February 23, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 Rita Hayworth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 (edited) Marion Davies in Show People (1928) Edited February 23, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 Christopher Nolan's Production Company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 (edited) Nolan Wellesian The storytelling technique of introducing vital points casually is a "go-to" technique for first-rate storytellers. Examples of this technique were given above, including a number by Welles. These early shots of Dunkirk, I would argue, fit into this category. A war is on, bullets are flying, the planes are in the air, soldiers are dying, yet the storyteller chooses to intoduce all this amid a quiescent village atmosphere. The contrast is strong; and the most colossal story fundamentals of all are contrast and conflict. The greater the contrast, the greater the conflict : we heard this earlier in the context of the ancient Greek plays. (I haven't forgotten reversal. We'll leave that concept for later.) Here, in Dunkirk (at 2:28 and 4:32), contrast between activity and locations is strong : obviously first-rate storytelling. Edited February 23, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 Nolan Wellesian (2) We're over ten minutes into Dunkirk, and the storyteller is refusing to allow an audience to make an easy connection with its (apparently) significant characters. Instead, the audience is left stranded, as it were, looking in from the outside. By this point the audience desperately seeks someone to root for. (This is the ideal situation for any story, not this story exclusively : it goes without saying.) But the storyteller frustrates this desperation, making the entire phenomenon even more desperate than it already is. This technique harks back to the Newsreel's Capitol scene. Who are these people? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 23, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 23, 2023 (edited) Nolan Wellesian (3) (22:53) This is a complex moment. The audience aware of the storyteller knows his storytelling history. Here, this history is unambiguously cited. The character stranded atop the fragment of sea-vessel visually evokes the powerful heroes of past Nolan stories : this character, however, will not be that. But the discussion here is not about interpreting this character's selfhood. The point to be underlined here is that the audience is of two minds at this moment : the audience is "with" or "in" the film Dunkirk, but the audience's mind is also outside as well, collating this film with Nolan's others : he forces the audience to do this at this point. He forces the audience's mind to expand. We'll get to this in Welles. But because I cannot help myself (how many times can I say it?) : EWS, 1:08:16. The Rainbow Fashions sequence incorporates references to most every movie Kubrick ever made. This is no indulgence, but a Terrible Truth for Dr. Bill : he thinks he's a man of Free Will, but actually he's inside a phenomenon that we, the audience, the gods, can see the outlines of, but he cannot; he is lost inside the maze. So he screws up at Somerton and is taken down a peg or two, for life. Larger point : It has just been remarked that the introduction of the stranded character in Dunkirk is a complex moment because the audience uses extra-textual material outside of Dunkirk to contribute to a processing of this character. Now what if you did this at every moment in a movie? In other words : What if you were in many minds at all points of a movie all the time? Maybe not the first time you watch a movie : that experience will be in the manner of uploading data. But by the fourth or fifth time, or the hundredth, the brain ideally will be operating at speeds to break the sound barrier while making connections during the absorption of the film experience. Edited February 23, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 (edited) Slave Plantation, Virginia, 1794 Ouillah had her arms outstretched;—as if shouldering—embracing—the lush heavens;—or fast against a crucifix—clinched ecstatically—abandoned;—thrilled eyes skyward, palms up. Her skirt was hiked stark over her waist and pinned there, exposing her bristly female part unburdened by undergarments. Ouillah’s head, her clean-shaven dome enriched with a knotted cloth of cerulean and ochre threads, began to rock, to undulate atop her willowy shoulders counterclockwise, a cryptic cycling right to—left— “Auntie you crazy!” Unheeding Ouillah’s head swiveled rhythmically on its axis, the fibers of her throat tautened, muscles strained to spring to a new shape, new action... ! She was standing barefooted balanced on legs audaciously spread thin as laburnum branches. Visible through the open collar of her smock were her breasts, once high and full, but now tired, they drooped slack like open envelope flaps; they never were the same after all the births. Whirling, face blurring, rapture tugged at the tips of her lips to tease out a smile there. Around her voices clanged—witchy cawing. “Hi! You! Ha! You’s clear-crazy!” “Mbuki-mvuki! Mbuki-mvuki! Mbuki-mvuki!” “Ha! Oofus!” Lost to wanton motion gathering exhilarating acceleration Ouillah—spinning away—gained—liberation. Her eyes shut, on flexed hamstrings she inhabited bright darkness. A fantasy tambourine rattling in her ears. Though shut, her lids didn’t block vision. Wonder of wonders! A wide-open vista her closed eyes revealed to her: a palatial ambience wherein she could drift free, carefree and changeably, flung into a realm of melting abutments, shifting effortlessly the conceit of her bodywork into new dream builds. Spinning outrageously, broken in upon membranous innerspace, Ouillah’s selfhood evaporated, was reconstituted, as—cusps of polychromatic light whirling; an insect twitching in a borehole; live wood; a pennyroyal leaf tasting of mint; a hatchling’s weak cheep;—as—a twinkling icicle; a striated crag; a thunderhead bellying with lightning and rain—she was the charged atmosphere entire, the whole cosmos, everything in it, in her, mingling in her to the color of thoughtlessness. Ever and always was she the percolating throb of red blood racing: racing: always her vision protracting towards an ever-receding horizon. Inside outside. Blessed a mercy! how the velocity emboldened her body, how its supersensory touch pressed her pleasurably! Dancing! to the play of bamboulas drowning in the turbulent amplitude, escaped there, surrendering to its abyssal noncoherence, its hypnotic cyclicity, to the joy of boredom collapsing and constraints flung away in the gush of such an amorous awakening—! Ouillah—decentered—corkscrewing into visionary white light—! Becoming what she wanted to be! “Ha! that chick-a-biddy’s gone bone-gaga!” “Ha! dinge!” “Ha! Numskull!” Ouillah stopped cold, her head fixed upright at the summit of her body, lips agape and shining with spit. She resembled a hoodoo priestess at the highwater mark of a ritual, standing plunged in a paroxysm of stillness, elbows cocked, fingers splayed hovering at her hips, her nut-brown flesh a high-tension sheath glimmering with perspiration. Her necklace of colorful fetishes hung limp between her slack breasts; her racing respiration kept trembling upon her chest this thread strung through with curiosities: seeds, dry cocoons, polished milkteeth, bits of eggshell and snakeskin: charms which when worn initiate catapults to divinatory thresholds—so Patty the root-doctor had said when she traded it to Ouillah for the gluey entrails of a rabbit Ouillah had herself snared and gutted. Her heartbeat racing inside her statuesque rigidity, the fetishes were moved to needle her. Eyes all the while rolling agitated under their lids.—Stopped cold—but the centrifugal drag produced by her exertions shoved her spirit violently through the panoramic darkness opened up behind her eyes. To keep her balance as she made dizzying headway peaking breakneck through indistinct space she leaned in upon her left foot then, lowering gracefully to a half-squat, the seam in between dilated and on show, she shifted sidelong to lean in upon her right, her arms all the while remaining outspread as if she were a bird cresting an aqueous waste. Ouillah? Experienced herself: ascending? Direction nonsense now: Submerging? Into a phantasmagoria: superimposed one upon another, invocatory tableaux, transpiercing her: hawks’ feathers juddering around a jungle fire, beards on a peak chiseling heavy stone tablets, a lady in a nightdress struck wide-eyed with knowledge, naked flesh stalking amid blasted desert rubble, a Bible preacher wringing his hands entreating rattling stars, a shaman gone berserk after a meal of fresh wet shrooms stuffed with maggots up under the caps. Thick-crowded with ghosts Ouillah stood inhabiting an incandescent intracranial space where seers and sages and visionaries—each and all having severed themselves from imbecile rule—joined from across time and space to enjoy an identical delight and desperation and exaltation. Intoxicated with this communion Ouillah acquired an emptiness which was—emancipating. Floating free, changeably. A miracle of words she overheard emplacing themselves in her head: I’s found and I be what I seek— I’s my own utt’rance— I’s the fruit of my labor pains! I’s allus on the verge—! She began to feel as warmly content as a baby blissed on her ma’s breast. She was glad, she yet had life, dance. She felt—superior. And she thought: As frog sez, “I’s hav nuthin, but I’s sures hav m’hop!” Her balance, lately flaring like a blown taper, stabilized, stilled. Visionary prospect receded, white light melted away. She was one again, a symphonic oneness, behind dark eyes. Hoots and haws aimed at her theatrics continued to sound around her in the broiling Virginny morning. “Jess so! Ouillah woman, jess so!” Ouillah stood at rest, balanced, relishing the stimulus of peace, her arms little by little lowering back to the sides of her lank frame. Her denuded legs she brought chastely together, her height aspiring an inch or two as she did this; and as if arising from a night of refreshing sleep her eyelids lifted and a gorgeous glowing omneity overfilled her sight, a spectacle drawing from Ouillah a benignant smile for the sum of all sensible things. As if for the first time Ouillah enjoyed loving beauteous tangibility. She was standing midst the gang clumped like dried-out fronds and shrubs, in a cluster of the gawky and infirm marooned amid a panorama of acres of rows of stalks of wheat standing bristly and remote under an adamantine sky. Sandy-gold, the colossal fields resembled an endless shore. The slaves sat stranded, dry-mouthed, deadlocked in vegetation, anonymous as a clattering of grackles. Waiting for the pickled pork and hoecakes at midday. Listening for bells. As Ouillah passed her gaze over the marvel of good Massa Page’s plantation stretching superabundantly in all directions farther than eyesight could travel she became aroused by the intimacy of a homely bond of ownership. As Ouillah saw it, the ravishingly fertile plantation was a possession that was hers. Dust tickled the backs of their throats. Every once in a while locusts surprised the eyes, darting intricacies, some fresh from eating their own faeces, hopping forwards further into the dense joust of awns, the effervescence of slender stingers the wheat radiated like sparks spuming from a fizzgig. Truly she was proud of her plantation, it could be much worse for them all, they could be farming rice in Georgia. Truly she was proud of good Massa Page and good Mistress Rose, how could she not be? Mista Page was what the learned called educated, a filaughasir, chillingly civilized in his linen shirts all ruffled-like and gleaming knee buckles and tent-sized apple-green greatcoat. Lordy! let the wireworm tickle her backside if Mista Page didn’t have more pairs of colored hose than Ouillah herself had breaths in a day! Every time she clapped her peepers on Massa—which wasn’t often, with malefic Grimball running things—she saw him aged just that much more, his face just that much more drawn, two sacks depending under his eyes, grey hair flanking his ears, a vein in his forehead feverishly peaking, dewlaps emerging under his chin. She felt for him. While the Missus seemed to be the very emblem of immortal beauty with her sympathetic eyes, her pallor flushed in spots with a raspberry red, gliding along in silks enwrapped in dainty scents, nosegay prim at her nostrils, always realizing the proper course of action. A candied confection, a gentleman and lady of quality, a momma and a dadda who supported their babies, and by Jingo! were they rich! A mosquito incised her hearing, its whine amplifying shriek-loud in her ear then dying away, this happened every so often. Seven days earlier good Massa Page when he had clipclopped by on Bessie his horse had praised the shape and sheen of Ouillah's bald head, and oh! how she's been warm with esteem and smilingly ever since! The asymmetrical ears of wheat reached Ouillah’s neck when she was out in it all; she was six feet tall. Of age Ouillah was anywhere between twenty-eight to thirty-three, she couldn’t be sure, no-one was certain of age. Hot summer was here, mercy God, a sweltering morning! You could carve the humidity like a loaf of smoke!—This much was certain : her first grandchild was only weeks away from coming into life!—Another embodied soul infiltrating the fantastic on the roundabout way back to timelessness. from : HT ( novel ) , 1998 ; a section of 66 pages. Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 (edited) Pittsburgh, 1799 No, it didn’t take much doing for Daniel O’Fallen’s attention to wander from his work. How stimulating could it be, after all, to print innumerable losing lottery tickets; personalized cards for nits and mimps; invitations to entertainments he would never be welcomed to; and suchlike flummery, day after day? Once a child of the ample Carolina wild, now Daniel was confined to a low dusky Printing-House, wherein flies buzzed snared in spiders’ webs. Mr. Cresap, the Master-Printer of the establishment, was away at leisure this—September?—afternoon; so when Daniel caught the sounds of a commotion on the street outside, he readily turned his back on the grim handpress (shaped, he reckoned, like a guillotine), wiping his ink-stained hands on his apron; and stepped, squinting in the daylight, to the front door, where a wooden plank, bridging a puddle of foul water, led from the jamb to the dirt track of Market Street. A gorgeous late summer’s day, lingering at the intersection of Market and Third. Stolid frame buildings tinged with honey-yellow sunlight. Caught up in central Pittsburgh, one block from the town jail, a crowd was jostling smack in the midst of the street: gentlemen in broad-brimmed hats, massing in a rough circle; feisty women, hauling babies and grocery sacks in their arms, straining to peer over the shoulders of the menfolk. Mouseabouts! At the drop of a hat townspeople stop and gawp, anything to smother their boredom. A dirty white puppy yapping and scurrying amongst the feet of the jostling band of jean and corduroy, calico and silk, jerking about in a fit, taking agitated leaps, caused Daniel to smile—that little pup sounded so defenseless! The crowd looked to be a dozen strong and growing. “Who’s the hapless sap they’ve caught?” Daniel O’Fallen watched with his bloodshot insomniac’s eyes. His interest was piqued. Townsmen, when united, can become quite a destructive force. Facing Cresap’s Printing-House, directly across the narrow street, was the needly shape of Mr. Perkins, perspiring in the doorway of his own poky shop. Peering at the fray, a hand shading his eyes, he was a sorry sliver of a citizen, who like many a townsman would grow old pacing the floor of his place of business, measuring the hours by the occasional customer. His livelihood, deadening. The borough of Pittsburgh comprised only a couple thousand customers, small pickings compared to the volume of traffic of Philadelphia and Boston. Fifty years back, mid-century, the locale had been an uncleared riot of thistles. Wrangling between the French and the British eventuated with Fort Pitt substituted for Fort Duquesne; eventually the site was claimed for that new breed of man called American; and a trading post sprung up upon the ashes of the abandoned fort. Not twenty years back, by Revolution’s end, the site of Pittsburgh had been a sparse place out in the hinterland. Many a man spelt it ‘Pittsburg’; many another pronounced it ‘Pitts-burrow’. Mr. Perkins’ signboard simply said DRY GOODS. Once a fortnight he managed to rearrange the inventory displayed behind the sheet glass of his shop window. Daniel already knew the latest knackeries on show: dice, playing cards, corkscrews, pins in a cushion, glassware, bar iron, spurs; and three books: Lyrical Ballads; Interesting Memoirs, by a Lady; and the Life and Adventures of Venture, Native of Africa. For weeks Daniel had been intending to acquire the deck of cards, to play solitaire. Suddenly the voice of a man inciting the bustle in the street. “If Negro were not Negro,”—superciliously spoken—“Irish would be Negro!” This irritated Daniel O’Fallen. Who was so lowdown that he’d gush such bile? Born of Irish parents, Daniel doubled his hands into fists; his hands which, daubed with indelible black ink, he could never get clean, not even with the most manic scrubbing. It had been years since Daniel’s rustled up a fight. He planted a step in the middle of the wooden plank and bounced into the street. A voice seconding—“Hey bitty bitty I’m chock full of fight!”—A boy’s, twangy, dominating the din of the mob; Daniel hesitated with amazement. He felt he recognized—improbably!—that voice: an Irish brogue with Carolina color to it. “You Yankeefied varmints! Stay back I say!” The crowd swayed, oohs and ahhs vibrating through the scuffle. A third voice howled, “Hang the rowdy!” Well now! Let God strike him dead on the spot! When Daniel elbowed his way through the confusion of townsfolk his eyes saw the singular figure and manner of Egan O’Fallen, his younger brother, as the cause of all the mayhem! In height a gangly six feet, his face conspicuous with freckles and capped boldly with a mess of pumpkin-colored hair, it was his brother and no mistake, Egan O’Fallen outstanding in front of him as if it hadn’t been half of forever since Daniel bade farewell to pa and ma and his brother and sisters way back at Asheville in the fair land of the Carolinas. Only two years since? Departing from all that hand-in-hand and happy with Becky, his sweetheart, his ecstatic young bride. Only two years since that gay midsummer farewell? Well-intentioned, and looking to the future. Egan O’Fallen was assing about in the center of the crowd, poised to lash out, his wiry arms up in front of him waving threatening fists. He was a riotous disreputable sight; his clothes—open-necked bottomless shirt and trousers, both of coarse undyed linen—were ragged and filthy, fit only for a slave; yet the boots he wore were fine, span-clean; elegant French soldier’s boots, they rode up to the knee. When the eyes of the two brothers met a shiver quavered Daniel’s backbone. Egan’s eyes were as he remembered them, green, only now they looked—icy green, indurate with crazy courage. Ganny was seized with a fury radiating off him like heatwaves from a conflagration. It was a look that could take the air out of you. “Is that really... ?” Daniel began, then faltered. The blood drained from his face, his thickset body went slack. His throat was constricting so that the words couldn’t get into the open. Daughter’s head too big for Becky. Baby butted Becky’s birthing bones. Screeching, clawing, till no more movement. Then let out a breathy sound between a laugh and a sob. Egan answered in a real easygoing drawl, “Danny! ’Tis the real me, bro.” Eight-and-ten in years, he was six years Daniel’s junior. Jawing through a wet chaw, enjoying the calamity, “My neighbors are partnering up for a Virginny reel.” The older smiled, a stricken smile, watching with disbelief, and alarm, and blinking away tears, as Egan with impudent pep bumbled with fancy-loose footwork through changes in a flip tavern song. “You game?” A peremptory gentleman in a peagreen longcoat stepped forward, a Mr. Roland Contrecoeur, Esquire, by name, inquiring of Daniel, “Sir! Know you this young man?” He gestured to grab hold of Egan’s arm but Egan sliddered backwards, then held his ground, taunting the shorter Mr. Contrecoeur with a smirk. Egan’s attitude suggested, Try it again. The man hesitated. “Maybe I do,” Daniel said dryly. He lived among these people but they were strangers to him. Egan cackling, “You dirty dog!” “They’re brothers!” a woman bellowed. “They’re as samey as stones!” “This brother of yours,” Mr. Contrecoeur began orating in a broad voice as if politicking, “this rogue, tried to pass these in my tavern, the Fox and Duck!” Mr. Contrecoeur, prissy with indignation, held aloft for public discernment two halves of a silver coin. “Called ’em two half dollars,” turning the fraudulent half-moons fussily in his fingers, “but I weighed ’em!” The crowd murmuring. Moving in for the kill, Mr. Contrecoeur leveled a stubby finger at Egan, a look of repugnance distorting his face, charging, “This backwoods trash is nothing but a fraudster!” Daniel began feeling mighty uncomfortable standing there, stark in the dusty street, having to endure the crisis of faces swiveling back and forth from Egan to himself. Fixing him suspiciously. Fresh blood. “Hang the Godless cheats!” “Hain’t never heard of no such thing!” Egan responded, punctuating with a nasal sneer, staring down the rapt fingertip of his accuser with withering confidence. “I done got me those out of town!” He went on to say, sounding now desperate to be believed, performing to the stern and dismissive crowd, “If you hurry you ought to catch the guy who gave me them blamed things!” Then, inexplicably, he spat at Mr. Contrecoeur’s square-toed shoes. “Bring ’im to justice!” All at once indignant townfolk were squealing, erupting with odious epithets. Sand-hiller! Dirt-eater! Piney-woods laggard! Spotted animal! Cracker! A busybody in a blanched straw hat approached brandishing a skein of clothesline from Mr. Perkins’ dry goods store, as if all Godless Cheats were about to be bound and incapacitated. Egan leaped this way and that, his fists swinging viciously. “Stay back I tell you!” Little ones agog at the action muscled into the tightening knot of the crowd. Drivers steering coaches just in from Philadelphia slowed to spectate, their horses jangling through the intersection. “I’ll jump down yer throats and make chitlin supper of you-all!” Daniel knew better than to credit his brother’s fandangles. However it was all resolved in an eyeblink and out of Daniel’s hands. Egan’s fist punched the life out of Mr. Contrecoeur, his nose audibly snapping at the bashing; the skimpy gentleman’s knees gave way, his stub of a body, lost in its peagreen longcoat, slumping into the appalled arms of onlookers. Pandemonium! Red blood lurid on skirts, shrieking women fainting in the dust;—Egan giving the yapping puppy a decisive kick, point-blank and terrible, and the puppy yelping, contorted yards away, crippled. Enraged townsmen attacking to grasp and grapple— “Run!” Egan bawled, “And Devil take the hindmost!” It was something hardly to be believed! Daniel found himself shaking off the handigrips of the mob, smacking gentlemen in the face, kicking women in the shins, blazing a path out of the crazed gang of folk, breaking free of the thumping and thwacking of arms and legs to find himself running behind his brother outdistancing the vile self-righteous scattering rabble. The pair, believe it under God, were laughing. “I’ll bacon you-all like range hogs!” Egan hollered back, emphasizing with abominable hand-gestures. “See if I don’t!” from : HT ( novel ) , 1998 : about to travel down the Ohio River for 242 pages Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 (edited) Salem, Massachusetts, 1789 In the April of General George Washington’s inauguration as President of the Thirteen Free and Independent States, Benjamin Shattuck underwent a religious confirmation by way of waking to the immanence of the Inner Light. It happened in the following manner. He was strolling over the cobbles of Wharf Street in amongst drayhorses hauling carts of hogsheads hither and thither from warehouse to windlass to hold, the rattling barrels diffusing aromas of Cuban coffee and Iberian prunes, Sumatran pepper, Muscat dates, Cantonese cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves from the Moluccas, in the open air seasoning one’s dress as in an opium den. This oasis was Salem, seaside town in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, Salem being, in this year of 1789, the flagship of Capitalism in America. Here at streetside were sea-ships riding at anchor, a score and more of them, their figureheads projecting eagerly ahead, with men—levers, plankers, joiners, pumpmakers—dropping belowdecks and crawling up ratlines, fiddling with thingamabobs, making everything sound and seaworthy. Canvas sails hung bunched up high in cordage. The voluminous hulls rocked on the waters of Salem Harbor’s swells and knocked rhythmically against the woodplanks of the wharves—Orne’s Wharf, Beckett’s Wharf, Crowninshield’s Wharf, the Ingersolls’ Wharf.... The thicket of spars and lines recalled to Benjamin’s mind a phrase from Milton’s Paradise Lost: Ten thousand Banners rise in the air With Orient Colours waving: with them rise A Forest huge of Spears: and thronging Helms Appear’d, and serried Shields in thick array Of depth immeasurable. Rum-drunk seamen were lurching ’twixt clerks and supercargoes, stumbling to drinking clubs, their voluble tongues cursing in a hodge-podge of languages, Chinese, Javanese, Portuguese; there were chandlers ringing bells hawking spermaceti tapers by the hundred-fold; Irish servants steering pushcarts heaped with the latest household goods; fishermen dropped nets spilling iridescent fishes onto the docks. All about Benjamin bustled indefatigable industry, the murmurous stir of profitable maritime life. And a rage rose in Benjamin for this multitude of chattering citizens hurrying helter-skelter as if their earthly errands insured themselves against utter and unalterable damnation. One could say that the people around him were full of knowledge, yes, their heads were full of it—just as glass jars held assorted gewgaws. Knowledge, to know something, this in itself is not an activity but is rather stasis. People tethered themselves to things, Benjamin would untether himself. This very hour Benjamin determined to rid himself of the flimflam of knowledge. He was willing himself to enter again into new doubtfulness, what would be tantamount to a second birth. Enemies to his mind were all Established thought, philosophy, system, creed, profession, temple, rite, propaganda, metaphysic, liturgy.... He would scour clean the arena of his mind of all quotidian drudgery and build its infrastructure anew. He knew that this—Spiritual Upgrowth—was the only journey worth its salt. Whereas the longest journey to the farthest land brought you right back to yourself, which had never left itself, the journey inside, however, creates someone new. We, all of us, can be more than what we are, yet—“These ships—” Benjamin adjudged, “these ships can amass but frippery and superfluity to serve unregenerate bodies!” “Well well,” thought Benjamin, flustered, “it is surely true, yes, it can’t be denied, my father hath two vessels which made our name a small sum as privateers during the Revolution. The Shattucks, they too, have been imprinted by the oily thumb of Mammon. But—unlike this rabble, my father balances his civic obligation with piety and scholarship. Or,” frowning, “at least he used to.” Benjamin knew exactly then that he had already decided to reclaim the Ideal of Spirituality—a Visionary Conscience—for his family name, as for the modern day, which had lost its way amidst the tumults of its small-minded capitalist scrum. Benjamin was young, he was seventeen years old; he has spent the last seven years enjoying a disciplined mania for study. He was among the Children of the Light, a possessor of the Quaker faith, which had always been a Thoughtful one. Indeed, some of his fondest adolescent memories were of the revelations great writing had actuated in him. Infinity, when all things it beheld, In Nothing, and of Nothing all did build, Upon what Base was fixt the Lath, wherein He turned this Globe, and riggalld it so trim? Such lines as these from the Bay Colony poet Edward Taylor fixed Benjamin’s imagination on Celestial things, on otherworldly landscapes the mind’s eye only can disclose; such visions set in diminishing perspective earthly matters. He had sought out documents aiming to refocus the sensibility away from the limitations of the close-at-hand. For years had he pored over his father’s collection of volumes written by the Publishers of Truth when this country was yet New, reading, unto memorization, such sapient works as the Journals of George Fox, and pamphlets, piously collected by his grandfather, by such luminaries of the Quaker faith as Penn, Burrough, Penington, Howgill. If Benjamin’s father kept to the customs of this accursed world, by removing his hat as rank and amity compelled, well, so had the great and grave and venerable William Penn. If their home on Union Street contained more than one color of furniture, or if his mother was becoming increasingly ensnared in ribbons and silks and his father in excessive buttons, then this show was attributable not to an unmannerly Pride or Excess, so argued his father, but to the duty of the family to reflect the class whereto their name is bound. Correct? Alas, at this very moment Benjamin realized that he could no longer justify any rationale. Just like that, he was lost to his family. Lost to his family, who had borne him into this world, ladening him with a debt unpayable—yet it was that easy, as if in the snap of a finger, for Benjamin to disengage himself from the grip of his clan, for he was aware that the Visionary Experimenter seeking Enlightenment must impose a stringent single-minded monastic individuality for the purpose. He must alienate himself from any and all Influences and Manipulations if he was to attain, at the far end of a dedicated inner journey, his most Authentic Self. Though as yet unthought, Benjamin already felt—he felt it as a hollow opening in his chest, as if his heart was holding its breath—he was lost, lost to his family and to his home. Now and for the first time was he all and entirely alone. “It is surely true that the malady of wealth is general over Salem these days,” Benjamin groused. The old New England virtue of Thrift, a guiding star since Colonial Days, has in latter years become hidden under a film of dust. “There is more reading here of the American Genealogist than God’s own words!” Almost to a man, Benjamin’s childhood acquaintances have fled study to follow their fathers to the sea, risking all for ostentatious prizes, fleshpots, £sd. These sea-ships, some fresh from the yard on Becket Street, were relics of once flourishing forests; each vessel equaled three hundred trees. These floating forests of the sea bespoke thousands of acres of sylvan woodland ransacked, all lushness spoiled, for pennies. As the rich got richer the world would become more and more barren. Even pious Penn himself, that fiery visionary, had sought to style Pennsylvania as landed property whereby his tenants were to pay him quit-rent! But was not this the same William Penn who had urged, Come out of it then more and more, out of the Nature, out of the fruits, out of the Fashion of the World! They are all for the Fire! The Day of the breaking-up of Nations is just at the door! At this exhortation from a hundred years back, Benjamin, his blood roused, felt compelled by the force of his certainty of his Inner Light to raise his voice over the creaking capstans before him, to remonstrate publicly with Mammon, to rend Man’s baubles, to accuse even his own family of avarice, but he hesitated, unsure of his talent for oratory and persuasion. For him to be a promoter of the way to Enlightenment would take words few and savory and seasoned with grace, as George Fox’s words had been. Benjamin mused, “I have an inner thought, which is more a feeling, a seed of meaning, and then I have to find the right words to express it aloud.” Musing thus, some of the wind was going out of his sails. “This is a ponderous way of communicating, rather than a resplendent way, such as the glory of the rich spontaneous profusion of Dante’s thought, which was pure poetry, or Milton’s magisterial cadences. Effortlessness is the trick it might take a lifetime to perfect.” But then a twinge of hope tickled his fancy. “But when the most proper thoughts and the most proper words are sealed at birth, that is a pretty relief. Would that it would happen all too often and I would convert the world entire to Spiritual Growth!” However—The knocking of the shipbuilders, the women flinging saucy rhymes from upper floors, the hubbub of periwigs and frocks streaming over the thoroughfare compelled Benjamin to keep his peace and retreat inward, retiringly, in the silence of his judgment. from : HT ( novel ) , 1998 Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 Entering Philadelphia, 1794 Through the overlay of dawn mist Adam Getzendanner was just able to keen the promontory of Newfoundland. He mustered a smile, chilled and bone-tired as he was, a yearnsome smile, his eyes glassy with tears; and he whispered, Dies ist Himmel! It is Heaven! His heart beat fast. The craft buoyant on the Atlantic under his feet swayed side to side riding the current to windward. Adam expected a lot but didn’t know what to expect. By the time the two-masted brig of emigrants, a passenger vessel the Optimist by name, had left the Rhine for the North Sea, sixty long days earlier, having threaded its way from the Fatherland through the interior of the Netherlands, Adam, meek and retiring passenger, was already marveling at the luxurious spread of the world, the titanic size of everything, and how piddling he was out in it. Depths unfathomable in every direction! It had taken most of the rough and fearsome ocean odyssey with its endless time for introspection to shake Adam from a homesickness which was more fear of the unpredictable future than sentiment for the monumental past. As he, determined pragmatist, saw it, the fury of the sea presented itself as a trial to strengthen his character in preparation for assiduous industry in America. On the unstable welter, bottled up in the oppressive air below deck, while on the other side of the hull were lurking, just north of the ship, floating terrors, islands of ice, he had set to spinning round himself webs of abstract thoughts appealing for understanding of his all-powerful Creator and the World He created. Adam Getzendanner had grown up an inattentive initiate in the Lutheran church, so his religious reveries, when he had them, were by and large fantastic and dramatic tableaux. His ruminations were inspirations conjured from the memories of woodcuts he had seen on broadsheets and in blockbooks, such as: Christ in the Winepress; The Seven-Headed Papal Beast; The Diabolicalness of Folly; The Wheel of Fortune; The Ship of Salvation. As a boy he had learned his Bible stories by poring over suchlike woodcuts and Bilderbogen, comic-strips. On the Atlantic Adam thought of the world as it was, as a visceral realm which people, God’s brethren, have mastered; and he wondered what he, God willing, could achieve in it. This would be the extent and conclusion of his philosophy: the world was what was seen, and what was seen could be manipulated by the shrewd for effectual ends. There was nothing mystical about Adam; his curiosity for the wide world would remain in the manner of a peephole he kept narrowed on what he could handle with his fingers. In the event, never had Adam thought so much of the ‘World’ with such intense personal interest—he was eighteen years old—until well into his lonely journey asea. On the sea the recognition of his individuality, a sober yet intense awareness of fragility, was hammered home to him, and he would appeal to God if God could be an asset, if God could aid in his protection. Somehow. While the auroral morninglight burned the greater part of the surrounding fog away,—sky intensifying with a lemon-yellow light,—by slow degrees was revealed to starboard bow as the ship emerged a spectacular highlands landscape detailed with jagged precipices and steep drops. Waves assaulted the landfall;—hydrokinetic detonations clashing with the strains of the hull and the twanging rigging. Surmounting the uplifted rock in places were deep-green pyramidal spruce trees. Beholding the wilderness of shaggy crags projecting majestically over the decks where cheering passengers were parroting “Land! Land!”, Adam made a compact with himself: In America he would strive to make a fortune! As wealth reflected the privilege of God’s sanction, so would he toil in the GREEN COUNTRY TOWN OF PHILADELPHIA (so the advertisements went) for fiduciary success. Thereby he would become able to pay for the passage hitherward of his family he had left behind in tiny Klein Schifferstadt on their humble few acres of farmland and meadow. When the barn had blown down in a howler in the same season their corn had failed, with their father only recently dead, and then the rent increase, it was decided by family meeting that Adam would join the perpetual German pilgrimage to America to find for his relations a more fortunate home. Alone in the wide world for the first time Adam knew he could be sinful or he could be good. He would be good. Wouldn’t make a show of himself. Wouldn’t hurt anybody. He certainly wouldn’t act like those passengers, those half-dozen strapping lads from Bonfeld, who, when approaching the ship in port, had sung too boisterously through the streets, overawing even the bluster of the brass band seeing the emigrants off, teasing the land-locked villagers with damn-fool fantasies of fortunes and miracles just waiting to be grabbed in America. At the time, when the fluxions of over a hundred strangers boarding and scurrying for berths, among them weepy women and shrieking babies, had compounded his agitation, Adam had stood quite abashed that those drunken pioneers could slander the Fatherland with such disrespect. Sixty days of salty winds slashing them had dulled their tongues somewhat but the landfall before them crystallizing through pearlescent mist resurrected the old boisterousness. Gulls soaring, keeping pace with the ship, suspended among the masts, looked to be dangling like porcelain mobiles. The steady wind was blowing off-shore and was warmer than the sea air, promising favorable climes ahead; what fog remained was at length dispersed;—It was a sharp and perilous coastline revealed. Riding on a starboard tack the Optimist kept a good offing. Because if the wind suddenly changed? There was but one miserable lifeboat, for them all. The dour grey lee shore was rugged with indentations,—where the fragments of many a shipwreck lay buried;—inlets treacherous with tidal ledges where sandpipers and harp seals gathered; desolate white-pebble beaches; coves of boulders, their surfaces battlefields where dogwhelks bored into hard mussel-shells.—All the while high breakers wildly smacking the rock and breaking up like fireworks displays, granite eroding under the impact, the wind swooping the crashing seaspray higher still into the air,—and then the auscultatory surge of the seawater convulsing back into the volatile ocean churn. The mighty reach of uplifted rock for high Divine sky compelled in Adam similar lofty aspirations. Standing on the sea-salt-pickled plankings of the quarterdeck, this time Adam welcomed celebration and joined in, a baritone, with the rest of the emigrants to the song passed on by the American captain, a jaunty tune, Yante Dudel, as Cabot Strait was entered. Yante Dudel—fich dich vor, Man will dich berfuhren... The brig cut sharply athwart the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence where various currents converged; ahead and to port were gyres swirling counterclockwise pushing bottom water turbulently up to the surface. It was a close-hauled course the Optimist was making, as high to the wind as possible, full and by, all sails sheeted in, riding—for more than one fraught moment, surfing—the choppy tide rip of the currents intermixing. A smallish, no-frills ship, the Optimist was bandied by the fury of the sea, the ballast of pig iron shifting dangerously about the hold;—Passengers groaning cooped up in the windowless dungeon belowdecks, two hundred of them, uptight faces of privation and want illumined by dangerous candlelight; those of the kids immune to seasickness occupied themselves by scampering on rat hunts among the two-tiered bunks;—The two hatchways, the only ventilation, were often shut to keep the seawater out;—While the one water closet of the ship was down here, contributing woefully to the bog of expectorated breath and scores of unwashed bodies crowded in the steerage.... The sea eventually evened out as a current that the Optimist could make diligent headway against. The bell at aft struck three times at 09.30, breakfast, Adam drinking his morning allotment of a mug of salt water, just barely stomaching the oatmeal and the weevilly biscuit. Passengers came abovedecks if only for the weekly regulation dry-scrub. Meanwhile the surly crew at intervals relieved themselves of rum over the taffrail. Dunes along the bleak southern coast would be scattered by a sou’wester only to reform themselves further down the shore. Frenchmen in beaver-pelts were out there fishing for sea cat and turbot off the coast of mud flats and dune fields. The Optimist’s captain purchased a barrel of cod and a barrel of mackerel, to the mighty gladness of everyone aboard. Islands of granite sticking up out of the water clear-ahead had to be navigated around;—Finally the ship entered down into the green-water corridor of the St. Lawrence River. By this time the order to Heave To had been given, ten of the brig’s sails were lowered;—the ship was sailing under bare poles except for the topsails;—keeping carefully to the fairway. For the rest of the journey, ten days or so to go, most of it a pleasure sail, Adam Getzendanner would sleep right on the deck in the fresh air under calm skies. Traders on hogshead-heavy flat boats rattled stones in tin cans as cheerful greetings as they drifted by. The surrounding landscape looked to Adam fruitless, and monotonously rocky, but all the same he was cheered, the merry spirits of the clanging habitants (Americans?) were infectious.—Great hope braced and energized him. But his nervous stomach would relax, only to then constrict again. Gradually the river began to narrow as the ship moved upstream. Acclivities gave way to valleys; prodigies of trees burgeoned, broad-leafs and needle-leafs; and the land leveled out, supporting vast plains of lumberwoods. Ah, here was the New World of his dreams, a panorama of tree-filled flatlands oversupplied with milk and honey;—To either hand an awesome inflorescence of spruce—whole libraries of paper pulp upstanding a hundred feet high. Slim arrowy firs dropping purple cones in the quietude; with pine and cedar resining the air; and the mellow plash of the kingfisher dipping its head underwater.... Ah, these virgin lands,—just waiting to be broken! Such variety, such promise, after the boredom of the transatlantic passage was almost too much excitement for Adam Getzendanner to bear. Passengers pointed out, here a lynx, there an elk, on the quartz-encrusted riverbanks. The Optimist endeavored upstream, making ten miles an hour. Rude log huts interrupted the virgin landscape, set among modest fields of wheat, and scrub cattle, and hogs. Religious shrines stood along the river, wooden crosses decorated with icons of saints (St. Clement, St. Michael, St. Nicholas). There was a road down which a dog-drawn, two-wheeled caleche was seen to be rolling towards a post-house. This was what thrilled Adam most to see: mankind mastering nature, mankind taming nature into co-operating with civilized mind;—A balance of power; a sanctuary. And room enough for all. The ship’s passengers applauded at the sight of a settlement of farmhouses.—Only humble stone dwellings, their windows covered with paper, but there was cropland flourishing on the low hills beyond. Maple leafs crowded in to decorate the eyeline for miles and only at intervals were broken with curiosities: an iron-forge; a stone windmill with sails turning on its cone-shaped roof; then, set behind fences, a larger establishment, decorated with galleries and glass, what could be construed as a mansion! The Optimist, hugging the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, entered into a tickle known on the chart as the Traverse, a hazardous maze of shifting sandbars and rocks, the seamen, their arms a-tangle in the frayed rigging, eyeing circumspectly the depth-buoys the English had put in place;—Dusted by the spray from a waterfall to starboard, approaching Quebec while the river continued to contract;—Quebec was a magnificent sight, a prettiness of white-washed buildings low-lying on a bluff projecting into the river, with the spire of the Jesuits’ Seminary prominent among a skyline ornamented with cupolas and tin roofs and silver crosses,—a haven of toys!—with the hump-backed Mountain Hill hemming everything in from behind. Here the river was busy with crafts moving in and out of landing places. A smell of burning tar fragranced the air. On an esplanade lined with butternut trees parallel to the water walked snappily-dressed gentilhommes with young women in short skirts revealing bare leg from the knee downwards! Ah, in Quebec there was time even to dawdle;—such a seductive prospect of leisure it was! Then came the massive sight of an oaken frame of a ship half-constructed in dry-dock resembling the rib cage of a giant. A long boat came up alongside and a harbor-master and health inspector came aboard for a short spell,—the ship’s papers gone through;—the health of the passengers sounded.—Given the all clear and carrying on, the Optimist encountered a hilly desolation, bare slate cliffs, earthquake country, the crew warned; veered down into the Richelieu River; thence sailed into Lake Champlain and found the headwaters of the Hudson. Here were a multitude of ketches and sloops sailing to and fro, the busy industry making the German passengers eager for a chance in the bustle. They waved to sailors and clapped their hands; birch bark canoes with dexterous oars maneuvered close to the ship. Wooden towns appeared, with fields of running horses and kids pushing dung barrows, and Americans haymaking with hand scythes, or else peering from pier and beachfront, pointing and waving, sunrise and sunset now humid and rustic, fresh air enlivened with birdsong. Occupations multiplied in Adam’s mind: wheelwright, cooper, cabinetmaker, cobbler, glass blower, hand-loom weaver, locksmith—to which would he be bound as apprentice of the art? He demanded of himself that whichever employment turned out to be God’s will he would learn it fast. A new world where all were equal, with equal opportunity, a Meritocracy!—This amorous thought heartened Adam and filled him with confidence. The luxurious scenery changed from woodsy banks and rolling hills to spectacular steep peaks, picturesque highlands tinted roseate early, saffron later. Such a pleasant asylum,—the land of liberty!—of equality! The long-traveled ship threaded its way into the Delaware River. Here the air was mild; the riverwater, fresh and steely-blue. Drifting with the ebb tide. Smoke, rising from hills all round. Barking dogs, penned a mile off. On a Durham boat hauling many barrels, two crewmen jammed poles, eighteen feet long and iron-spiked, into the river bottom, pushing steadily upstream. Mud banks breeched the water-line; and stray logs rode the relaxed current alongside the Optimist. From cultivated shoreside a cowbell clanked, clarion-clear. Adam relished this serenity, worshipping the American soil, his elbow on the deck rail, chin in hand. Then he spied the prospect of Philadelphia. Five spires spaced in intervals throughout the flat town towering over giddy multi-masted wharves. Brick buildings glowing salmon-pink. The Optimist raised its harbor flaggen at the fore and mizzen. Noisy swine and cattle were riding lografts into port beside timber floats and barges and brisk skiffs and arks with chimneys, all overawed by grand three-masted merchantmen of three hundred tons copper-sheathed and lacquered, exhibiting up-front exquisite figureheads;—such as burly-bearded Neptune or solicitous maidens done up in primary colors,—their pointed bowsprits, resin-coated white-oak spikes, jousting with the iridescent waterspray. The thriving docks covered over a mile of coastline. American flags, dozens of them, snapped and rippled among merchants’ burgees and tapering pennants. A brilliant morning, early June, full of sunshine. Under the lee of the land Adam breathed in on the breeze: aromatic tobacco, roasted mocha, ship’s paint, manure. Church bells rang eleven. Little people were swarming colorfully on the riverside streets. He heard shouts, Americans talking! One huge army of commerce! —as far from his home as could be. The Optimist’s captain, anxious to find new employment among merchants at the City Tavern on Walnut and Third, steered the brig into Walnut Street wharf.—The breastropes were belayed to the bollards at dockside;—the anchor was let go;—It was one among the two dozen or so vessels to land at Philadelphia USA that day. from : HT ( novel ) , 1998 : Author pushed back the St. Lawrence Seaway some years as artistic license. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 Cherokee Children, 1790s Hidden in the branches, quiet as light, Rainstar reached her arm carefully into the deep cavity of a tree-trunk, seeking her quarry. She was ten years old and high up from the ground. She opened her hand as wide as possible then let her fingers close quickly round two bluebird fledglings. Their little bird bodies were so adorable that Rainstar was sorry to have to do it, but Real People had to take from nature to live; her father Hanging Axe had taught both children that lesson. Startled awake, the feathered parents set their wings flapping, furiously cawing, beaks pecking at the air. The young Cherokee predator scrambled down the tree-trunk and quick as a deer bounded off through the wood while both male and female flew after her. The little fledglings were trembling in her fists as she hurdled deadfall, dodged branches, the sunlight all the while flashing through the trees. The child was right at home in the wild, nothing in her way would trip her. She had a thick braid of black hair that thrashed at the air as she ran. The feathered people gave chase for a time and there was blue murder in their voices but luckily for Rainstar they hung back, loath to attack. Running flat out the girl emerged into a bright clearing crossed by a creek. Waterbeetle her brother was there. He was kneeling by the pit in the earth with a knife of bone in his hands, rapt in his work, trimming the ends off of hollow stalks of green cane. The pit was a sinkhole three feet across that their father had introduced to them; it was an enchanted spot. The creek rolled along burbling its name until it poured itself plumb into the sinkhole and gurgled down into the darkness out of sight, filtering down through the channels of the soil toward the Underworld. Rainstar, out in the open, rushed toward her brother and with a cry of excitement leapt up, her arms swinging high into sunlight, jumping over the pit. Dropping on the other side she turned to behold the edge of the tangled wood and saw that the bluebirds had given up the pursuit. Panting triumphantly, she held up her trembling fists for Beetle to share in her prize. “What have you found?” Beetle asked. “I did not find,” Rainstar answered. “This is my prey.” Her brother placed his tools on the ground and without a change to his stern expression stood himself upright. He was eight years old and as tall as his sister. She let him open her fingers to take, gingerly, one of the frightened fledglings into his own hand. He twisted its head, broke its neck. Its death-sound made Rainstar shiver : a stick snapped by a footstep. Dying was that easy. Death was an unpleasant idea but Rainstar was not to be outdone. She made to quiet the other one in likewise fashion and was sorry to have to do it. This little being in her hands, who had never hurt her, had a heartbeat that she would extinguish forever. But its spirit, not dying, would transfer to Rainstar who would grow stronger thereby. It was the Way—The freedom of the creatures of the wild was outweighed by the needs of the Real People, who, while being of nature, had to break-in upon nature in order to dwell there. Rainstar apologized to the spirit of the innocent fledgling in her power and held her breath as her fingers did their work; then, with a pang of regret, she dropped the body into one of the fiber baskets they had brought with them. As she looked up to her brother she was trembling from the heat of her kill, both thrilled and affrighted by it. What affrighted her was the violence and aggression stored up inside of her. She has learned to control this aggression—but if control was lost? Beetle, the younger of the pair, watched the modulations in his sister’s expressions with intense interest. The boy possessed the brave impassive face of a warrior, what has become his common face, but even so he could not hide his envy at the dexterous catch—Rainstar saw it alive in his eyes which would widen then recede as he took his breaths, his thoughts in his head like a windstorm bundled up in a cave. “Rainstar has won food for the soup,” he said, flatly. Sullenly he flung the dead thing in his hand into the basket after hers. Life more than death mesmerized Real People; and so the pity of the kill would be burned away in the eating of it. from : HT ( novel ) , 1998 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 Amazing Nolan Lens Effect : water? flares? both? (1:02:34) The water droplets on the lens, refracting the light, look like telephoto effects, such as (for example) : EWS (58:40) but these phenomena are on the lens. Aren't they? They come and go, as lens flares do : yet the large white circles look like water droplets on a microscope slide. As if through magic, these phenomena exhibit different sizes and colors, and go through many changes. What is happening here? Theory : this is the first lens effect quite like this one. Consider wine collecting. This Situation is the finest wine there is. My humble theory is : both water droplets on the lens and also lens flares mixed together. The entire effect conveys the growing anxiety of the pilot. Such is the thematic use of the rainbow dots throughout EWS. With this effect we add Christopher Nolan to the filmmakers who experienced the so-called "EWS effect". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 Sparks. (1:04:49) (1:01) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 (edited) The "EWS Effect" on Spielberg West Side Story (2021). When the lovers first meet, the film frame is ablaze with striking lens flares of a density and duration never before seen in a Spielberg movie. (The lens flares share the screen with the two principals from 38:43 to 41:21.) Then all lens flares virtually disappear for the rest of the film's running time. Then, near the end of the story, at 2:21:06–2:21:38, when one lover is searching for the other, and scans an empty street, those lens flares from over an hour of running time earler return to fill the sky : a visual reminder of what is burning in the character's heart. This technique in West Side Story is a thematic use of the lens flare. My years-long theory yet to be debunked : the first thematic lens flare appears in EWS. Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 The "EWS Effect" includes as an essential component a newfound reemphasis on the mediation of the lens. And using old-school craftsmanship in all cases. Hence, the EWS Effect harks back to this : Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 Art We should never feel confident that we are saying anything worth saying at all. If Welles is a first-class storyteller, enabled by his first-class crew, then he will always be ahead of us. Our confidence in moving on will only slow us down, preserving us in a status of the barely understood, regardless of the degree of our understanding. CK will always outrun our understanding of it—every structural component of it. Absorbing an artwork over time is akin to a bubble being blown; much has to cohere over a duration of time, or deterioration full-stop. So a trick here is to keep the mind as wide-open as possible, in order to remain suspicious of confidence and perhaps make new connections. But a work of art is infinite, so there will be no way a mind can be as open as that. The mind may theoretically be able to arrive at everything there is to know—if an infinite amount of time was available for the effort—but such an effort would be a linear process, a duration of time. The Artwork, however, exists all at once : CK is a multiverse. We will never be able to keep up. Still, let’s go as far as we can, wherever that will be. It’s like anything else; an effort like any other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 Artful Steps On our passage through CK we must proceed slowly. There is no need to understand Art too quickly. To understand CK we have all the time in the world (until we’re gone). In fact, as in so many enterprises, the slower we proceed along the process, (hopefully) the more careful and considered the outcome will be. Creating an artwork is akin to sitting at the Blackjack table. I may be stacking up a nice amount of chips now, but who will win at the end? Will the feeling at the end be a bleak one, or triumphant? Art is a labyrinth with yourself at the center. The deeper you move into the artwork, the deeper you move into yourself : all the more do you reveal what you know, what you think you know, and what you will never know. Where you arrive in your journey of Art reveals more of yourself than the artwork : since the artwork is Infinite, and your understanding of it is a reduction, a personal stamp on the product, so to speak. In this sense the maker of Citizen Kane is whoever is watching it. The artwork is not the destination, the artwork is the guide. To where? To the understanding of the self. Who must do the heavy lifting of understanding, as it were, if the artwork is to work as it should, as an engine for Revelation? The Spectator. What artwork do you want to make for yourself? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 (edited) Recapitulation of Newsreel Structure Up to Now Section I 1–2 title 3 subject card : “Obituary” Section II 4–44 Xanadu, the building Section III 45 the day of the funeral 46 world reaction to his passing Section IV 47 subject card : introduction to a person named Kane Section V 48–55 aspects of Kane’s financial empire 56–60 the Colorado Lode Section VI 61–63 childhood 64 Colorado Lode : recapulation shot. Section VII 65–76 political complexion of Kane : Communist? Anarchist? American? WHO WAS KANE? Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jeff Bernstein Posted February 24, 2023 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 24, 2023 OOPS Looks as if I added an extra shot number to the Newsreel by accident. The Newsreel is composed of 127 shots, not 128. P.S. Note the filmmakers in the eyeglasses. Which recalls, for example : The Shining, 35:26 Persona, 1:21:57 EWS, 22:35 and 22:39 A Lesson in Love (1954), 17:41 Coming Home (1978), 2:03:23 That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) : the film blows up at the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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