Joan Retallack, Memnoir
(The Post-Apollo Press, 2004)
Jeremy
James Thompson
RE:view
I
watch hundreds of movies, sometimes up to twelve a week. I go
to movie theaters, & maybe you do too. With Memnoir
in mind, I now go self-conscious down the dark aisles. At the
movies, I rarely consider what's going on behind me. I'm more
inclined to fear the killer, hold back tears, &/or snicker
at someone's clowning around. Maybe we laugh at the same
jokes. Maybe we join the chorus of gasps, startled by a sudden
shift in expectation, prompted by the cinematic magic of an
angle change (i.e. camera #2 just before she screams).
This
demonstration of language, this Memnoir, often compels
me to talk about the massification of audience: how we all go
in & come out, witnesses, sometimes feeling complicit,
sometimes at odds. What I learn from my role in the
movie-watching scenario is that many people watch movies,
& since there are more people than movies, it follows that
there are more types of people than types of movies.
Furthermore, within the movie-watching scenario, there are
many movies to watch, bracketed by a seemingly shared
understanding that there are many types of movies, but less
types of movies than movies. The movie-making &
movie-watching scenarios depend on the religious social desire
to claim only things categorical, or to make things otherwise
categorical as such. Often, in the movie-watching scenario,
the proliferation of meaning is an incision that can only be
made by the audience, the audience being anyone, but only one.
But, not to worry, those taking part in the movie-making
scenario have taken this into account, often pre-perforating
select scenes, readymade to open wide into a particular world
of exact emotion(s). Incidentally, the Dada movie-making
scenario often entails an impenetrable screen (from either
side). Incidentally, incidents occur, but never incidentally.
Right?
In
the Dada Noir people just keep smoking. A woman asks for help
with elevator buttons because there are no buttons like
elevator buttons. There's at least one incident of people
smoking in the wrong office. The movie ends while he's out
buying cigarettes.
i.e.
the box contained but the squirming matrix of habitual
value-laden self-perpetuating practice (aka can-o-worms)
all but invisible until something dramatic but goes awry is
in fact but the continuous present of and or of either or
experience of e.g. history
Cue:
it means what the movie is like. I mean movie syntax; all the
cuts mixed & matched make memory make sense (?).
Everything makes sense so long as someone remembers it e.g.
history i.e. genocide is just a cloud shaped like a mushroom.
Before you knew it you have memories. Remembered? I think
Retallack suggests that movies make sense*.
*You
make sense. When you say things, you make sense. Once you
make sense, people talk about that. That makes
sense. You make sense and then that sense makes
sense. I get a sense of what you're saying. You say things,
& I get the sense of what you're saying. Saying makes
sense. That makes sense. This makes no sense if
you can't make sense of it. Only you can make
sense, since your senses do the making. You see
what I mean.
//
Advance //
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