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- in
living color -
Gone from
the movie-watching experience is the clattering of the projector.
To recall that sound now evokes memories of summer nights when we'd all
be crammed into the longest room to watch the latest
reels. The films were made without audio, of course, but the
company that made the transfer to video laid on a soundtrack
of elevator music, one long loop of royalty-free orchestral
classics. Watching them now is almost surreal as
the A lot of
the footage copied was dirty and scratched, and once I got past the vertigo-inducing pans
that were so popular with the photographers, I came away with a powerful affection for the human endeavor called
Family. It happens every time. Nothing yanks on the heartstrings more than old film of
folks you knew, now long gone, returning for a ghostly cameo appearance.
This is
memory viewed through the patina of 1950's Kodacolor at 24 As I watched I was torn between seeing the icons of my youth -- the big huge infallible adults, the aunts and uncles and grandparents great and otherwise, being themselves just as I remember -- and seeing them almost as strangers, just plain normal-sized folks flawed and fearful, brave and willing, living in an age that is now almost fictitious. The result
of having watched these movies is that I feel more connected, and yet I
keep my hesitancies close as if I still could be tricked by dead
relatives into Much
as I'd like to somehow remove myself from a lot of the circumstances
and conditions that soak my clan to the bone, running the home movies
reminds me that extraction is absolutely out of the question. An uncle's gesture, a cousin's grin, they
dwell in
me somewhere, and in my daughter now too. There is a living line
snaking through us
all, an unbroken physical thread, double-helixed, and we are the
loud, anguished, joyful vessels of that odd destiny. I called Amy in to watch some of the footage with me, to see the array of distant relatives and the places they lived. In the flickering light I saw some kind of fusion going on, an incorporation, the family beast extending one loving tentacle, embracing her, and bringing her a little closer to who she is. ***** One of the family traits I may have inherited is weak ankles. This morning, on my usual run through a branch of the Santa Monica Mountains, my left foot landed wrong. I heard the little crunching-tearing sounds and felt the pain at the same time. Not good. So this afternoon I'm doing a lot of laying around, putting my feet up, taking ibuprofen, and watching TV. Since it's about 100 degrees outside, this is completely doable in a guilt-free fashion. I feel crummy about the ankle though. Just when I'd settled into a good exercise routine, blang, injury, thar she blows. All indications are this is a minor setback, however. I'll hit the trail again on Monday for a test run. _____________________ |
today's
music:
"Seguro Que Hell Yes" -- Flaco Jimenez -- FLACO JIMENEZ today's wisdom: "Every man finds room in his face for all his ancestors." - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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I spent
most of yesterday with my extended family, half of them
deceased, revisiting old haunts and reliving the events recorded on 8mm film by various relatives
over the years. My grandmother had the bulk of the family home
movies transferred to video before she died and for some reason I am the
guardian of this historical record.
visual sequences have nothing to do with the music being played, and
occasionally a musical phrase or a mood evoked by the score will take
what you're seeing to some other level of absurdity. I'm not sure
what it is, but seeing a bullfight played out to Brahms does something
weird down around the medulla oblongata.
frames
a second. Videotape can never match the emotional
impact of film,
the digital re-creation is too precise, too contemporary, but celluloid
and memory burn with equal intensity, fuzzy at the edges with colors
impossibly rich.
making a fool of myself in full view of the family. We were a
rousing uproarious group back then, with a jukebox in grandma's garage
and laughs you could hear for probably a mile down the railroad tracks
on a hot night. I have a strong sense of a romantic past because
of that demeanor -- the hard-drinkin' tamale-eatin' mariachi-dancin'
times are the foundation that says family to me. It comes at a 