Or The Way Where
The other day there was a storm gathering over the lake.
The sky was a curtain of slate, more mineral than meteorological and the lake itself was a luminous turquoise with a periphral glazing of lead-grey. It was stunning. Even the red light at the intersection was a perfect chromatic contrapuntal. (There is a well-situated stoplight where you emerge from a tunnel on a downward slope and are face to face with the lake.)
I briefly considered sitting out the green to see if the orange worked as effectively as the red but reconsidered, as it would likely have meant sitting out a few cycles, since the orange isn’t near long enough to judge properly in one pass, not to mention doing a fair degree of explaining to those stuck behind me.
Later on I was able to pull over and watch properly for a while.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a fully functional (well, more or less) and operational adult with most of the regular features and options, and the rational part of me holds the fort convincingly while the other portion is out admiring sunsets, musing over the shape of pebbles or the angle of falling rain.
Now, all this is well and good, but I’m sure the world is filled with like individuals. Thus, I have decided to take action. I’m getting some t-shirts made. On the front: “Fully operative, relatively normal adult…” and and the back “…but admires sunsets, muses over the shape of pebbles or the angle of falling rain”. (Or something of that nature – my slogan needs some work, but that’s the idea. I draw the line at bumper stickers, by the way.)
I’m already imagining an altogether informal and fluctuating community (t-shirts do require washing occasionally, and one is not always in the right frame of mind) of sunset watchers, pebble shape musers and rain angle measurers, sharing passing nods and knowing smiles. Exchanging top-secret vantage points for heightened appreciation of landscape, trading hints on where to best watch a good storm or tips on standing in the ends of rainbows. (In-the-end-of-rainbow standing requires two people and cell phones, but can be done, albeit vicariously.) No fomenting of revolutions, no plotting what’s best for others, no dogmatism, sectarianism or other unsavory -isms, nothing but a little mutual reassurance on a few fixed points in an unstable universe. A sort of Foucault’s Pendulum for the discernable compendium of the sublime.
I recently stumbled across a CD entitled “The Return of the Wanderer” by Puirt a Baroque (I say “recently stumbled across” because the majority of my music purchases subreptitiously migrate upstairs to my son’s lair; I of course entirely forget I bought them and they are rediscovered when they unexpectedly reappear in the car stereo) which contains an admirably lyrical and deeply moving eponymous track in Gaelic composed by Cape Breton singer/songwriter Archie Alex MacKenzie (1907-1995) the night before he left for Scotland. This “return” to a land he had never seen was a lifelong dream.
So suddenly I thought, well yes, that’s what this business of making pictures is all about. Returning home, not only to places which one has never seen, but which don’t even exist. Pushed by the same essence of nostalgia exiles feel, but for places from which one was never banished. Nevertheless, every act of creation is a step on the return voyage to where one has never been, and where it’s likely impossible to arrive. All the things that stir some emotion on the way ( get a t-shirt, we can talk about it if and when we meet) are signs that the path chosen is the path choosing. Nothing geographical, chronological, or even simply logical, just the urge to keep finding one’s way.
Today the lake was the same incredible turquoise, with a wash of grey and salmon. See? There’s no time to dawdle.
ON THE AIR
Have recently participated in a couple of radio and TV shows, an exercise which I enjoy, especially the days following the recording, where I think up ALL the things I SHOULD have said. (I am currently lobbying for the implementation of retroactive hindsight and the rescinding of linear time in certain circumstances.)
The shows are all in French, so of limited interest to a non-francophone public (especially the radio show) but here are the links:
LES DICODEURS
A totally hilarious and difficultly describable 1-hour show that airs on the Radio Suisse Romande la 1ère Monday to Fridays from 11 a.m. to noon.
The first broadcast: May 28th – so you’ll have missed it by the time this is sent out, but you’ll be able to listen to it
here.
SINGULIER
Singulier is a half-hour filmed interview in, well… a most unusual setting.
It will be aired on TSR 2 (the second French-language Swiss television station) some time in June.
Otherwise, you can see it on line here after the broadcast date.
