notes on some films that will show tonight

Feeling uniquely today the jute between Chagall’s mule and star. Ginsberg’s half-buried angel. Off to shoot sky mixing into animals. All of this is in that line between branch and sky. Pulling images out of that horizonal space. With some exurbia mixed in.

This is, perhaps, a poorly wrought metaphor, but it will do: In reaching for a visual image, a hand outstretches from my hand and finds, diagonally across, some observation about poetry. Reach for one, find two. The mind delights in contrasts, and working in two mediums gives both forms a scaffolding (so you don't have to half-nelson fellow artists to see what you're doing).

Totally captivated by this idea –which I return to—that one of poetry’s functions is to find and experiment with logics, or why things connect to one another. All different kinds of rationales purported—personal, symbolism, surrealism, dada, cubism, etc. Why things are connected, which has everything to do with motivation.

The poetic line works within this context of close, meticulous attention, which is why it is well-suited for looking closely at why certain words connect to one another. Poetry is a laboratory for logics.

But here’s the difficulty: So much of a poem must be manufactured, which is taxing and the process is susceptible to blockages. (Found lines, yes, but they get so unwieldy and keep your portals shut on a day when you want all your egresses to be open.) So, the benefit of working with multiple logics is tempered, or challenged, by the need for manufacture.

Film and video, in contrast, supply images. There is the challenge of keeping extraneous details out of the frame. But, like a poetic line, a visual image forges a connection between disparate things. It makes a statement about why things are connected. Each image can present one or more logics. Framing is your diction.

Chance courses through the image either as a conceit or partnering logic. In exchange for that underlying basis for connection, and supply of images, time and space get torqued. A viewer knows, when watching film or video, that she is somewhere in a hall of mirrors, even if the image stream appears similar to her daily perception.