September 2001 Archives

Worlds collide, or at least intertwine:On the bus this afternoon going up Bowery, I overheard three early 50's women, daytrippers, talking about the WTC. Apparently, this was their first trip into the city since the 11th. "I just wanted to be a part of it," one confided, perhaps without realizing just what she's said. As immediate danger and fear and tragedy recede in CNN's rearview mirror, people are starting to seem apprehensive that their own experience may not have been sufficiently grave enough, weighty enough, historical enough.

Are we all required to have a sufficient answer to the question, "Where were you when...?" Most of the world was in front of a screen, watching, but ultimately, not yet directly involved. Mediated experience has become the norm; unmediated, personal experience is discounted and dismissed. The documentary film pioneer Albert Maysles once said, "The more you move them, the less they want to be moved, and the more they want to see movement on the screen."

He said that after a screening of Salesman at the Film Forum in New York, (it was 12/1/1997, according to my Palm, where I feverishly graffiti'd my notes) Maysles spoke long and well; it was almost magical. He said how real life is so full of stories, why, just that morning on the bus, he'd witnessed a scene--some characters, people interacting--if only he'd had his camera with him...

This guy [note: scroll down to the second entry], Hugo Perez, was apparently also in the audience and was also inspired by the bus story (so much so that he made a short film called "Albert Maysles Rides the Bus"). Perez includes this quote from Maysles, which goes to the very heart of what I'm working toward with my film:

"Most people never get the chance to have themselves truly represented and thereís nothing that they'd rather do than have people. . . somebody, and in the odd circumstance a filmmaker so much the better, pay attention to who they really are, to give them that recognition. It becomes a sacred duty."

This article from the NY Times about Verizon looking into how to preserve voice mail messages from people who died reminded me of this extended article from the Washington Post this summer, which I'd saved:

"Once, many months after my father had died, we had an electrical storm that knocked out the power in my house," writes Lisa Valentine of Reston in an e-mail. "The answering machine in my room was blinking furiously when the power finally went back on. I hit the 'play' button and heard my father's voice:

" 'Lisa, it's Dad, give me a call.'

"Needless to say, I kind of freaked out until I realized the tape was playing old messages that I thought had been erased forever.

"It was nice to hear from my dad again. But he didn't leave a number where I could reach him."

The Sundance Channel currently has a "Cinema Verite" month, including this documentary history, "Cinema Verite: Defining the Moment," by the National Film Board of Canada (gotta love those Canadians). Finally, I found this page on Sundance's site with information on the whole series and some relevant links. Time to call the web usability experts.

ANNALS OF AVIATION/ Malcolm Gladwell/ SAFETY IN THE SKIES/ How far can airline security go?
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON/ Nicholas Lemann/ THE OPTIONS/ After the morning of September 11th, the Presidency changed, too.
DEPT. OF NATIONAL SECURITY/ Joe Klein/ CLOSEWORK/ Why we couldn't see what was right in front of us.
LIFE AND LETTERS/ Louis Menand/ HOLDEN AT FIFTY/ "The Catcher in the Rye" and what it spawned.
DISPATCHES/ Jon Lee Anderson/ A LION'S DEATH/ The assassination of the Taliban's most important Afghan opponent.

More poems, this time from W. H. Auden, whose work also turned up with noted frequency. These lines, set a few blocks from my house, could have been written last week, not in 1940:

The unmentionable odour of death/Offends the September night.

The script: Some people have asked if Iíll post the script here, and I feel a little odd to tell them there really isnít one at this point. Itís not really a matter of saying, ìItís a documentary; there IS no script,î because plenty of documentary films are scripted, or staged, or laid out before theyíre shot. When I worked on a documentary for Japanese public television right after graduating from college, I got self-righteously indignant before interviewing an expert when the director told me I needed to get him to say something very specific. ìIsnít that dishonest? Itíd be more ërealí to let him decide what he says, and we'll just capture it,î I protested. Of course, I quickly found out that the reason we were even considering interviewing him was because heíd expressed exactly that view in an article somewhere. Earlier, a researcher had found this expert and scripted him in. (Writing this, Iím reminded of the Simpsons episode were Bart became annoyingly famous for saying, ìI didnít do it.î He's a guest on Conan, who tells him, "Just do the line." Same thing.)

Anyway, two years ago, when I conceived this project, I had the general idea of telling the stories of my grandfathersí lives. The standard elements of that production were obvious, if critically unexamined: interviews with them, their family members and friends; ìtoursî of important places in their lives, family photos and memorabilia, historical documents and footage, etc. Journal writing and family history are strong principles of the Mormon tradition and teaching where my grandparents live, so it should be easy to pull the raw material together, I automatically thought. In fact, the project itself could be explained rather nicely within that context. The narrative structure was originally, then, chronological biography. Interesting, perhaps, but also understandable when it sat on the back burner for a couple of years. Making an episode of A&E Biography (still) doesnít interest me.

Not that my grandfathersí lives arenít a great story. Thereís just a difference between the documented life and the examined life. I hadnít been prepared or in the state of mind to examine their lives or to delve into their examinations of their own lives. As many journalsóMormon and otherwiseóand weblogs attest, itís not enough to just make an account of what you did or where you went, what you bought, who you met. At the other end of the spectrum, reflexive analysis of what you think or feel or intend can be just as unsatisfying and specious, especially at the time, and especially if itís done for ìposterityî (a family history [note: that link is a 1976 church mag article.]) or public consumption (Biography).

So. The project came back to the fore after I had developed some questions I wanted to examine and answer for myself. The most immediate medium for exploring these questions is my family, my grandparentsí lives and experience. Some of these questions have already been referred to in this log; others I plan on NOT posting, because I feel they could potentially obscure the experience of making and watching the movie. And in some cases, I still donít know the questions, much less the answers. Itís an iterative process, which is extremely well suited to digital video and, I hope, to weblogs as well.

"The Smoke of Thought": For the third night in a row, at around 10PM, the wind shifted, and the faint but unignorable smell of burning reached the upper east side. Searching on Google for "smoke" and "smell" brought up two interesting poets: AE Housman and Philip Larkin. I've seen Larkin quoted several times in the past week. Here's an excerpt from Housman's "A Shropshire Lad":

Today while I am master still,
And flesh and soul, now both are strong,
Shall hale the sullen slaves along,

Before this fire of sense decay,
This smoke of thought blow clean away,
And leave with ancient night alone
The steadfast and enduring bone.

Larkin's poem, "The Building", contains a description of people in a hospital waiting room that could just as easily apply to New Yorkers lately: "They're quiet. To realise/This new thing held in common makes them quiet..."

For the record, I hardly ever read poetry and know basically nothing of poets or poetry. I guess I considered it superfluous--irrelevant, even--to the practical, "real" world I saw. Sometimes it steps up to the plate, though, and nails that same reality more cleanly than 150 hours of continuous media ever could. Economy of expression.

Like other friends who regularly add to their websites, I've been reticent to post during the week. From the standpoint of this site, it was a fairly easy decision; this journal is meant to document a film project I re-started in July. From a personal standpoint, it's been more difficult. After the quest to find out whether people you know are alright or not, the events of the last few days gave me pause, causing me to question the value or importance or priority of the things that occupied my time and attention. An architect friend wrote of being told architects weren't needed right now; Fran Liebowitz just mentioned on NPR that she's a "luxury item," unneeded in a situation like this. How needed is a documentary about farmers and rural small businessmen? Finally, the reality of the last few days made the question of posting moot; any idea of watching my footage was displaced by watching the news. Any attempt to think about the film was thwarted by thoughts of more immediate surroundings, people, and things.

That said, architecture, writing, filmmaking, art--these are inextricable elements of the culture and civilization we live in; the desire to participate in this culture, to contribute to it, to create something that will connect with others and extend/live beyond us doesn't change in a day. In the Times this week, more than one image of the rescue operation reminded me of the work of photographer, Andreas Gursky. The ephemeral work of Gabriel Orozco also came to mind, specifically this photo of the NY skyline. [Note: read the review linked there, too. interesting] The types of activities that may momentarily seem superfluous may also be the ones that gauge the health of the civilization we enjoy and (now) defend.

The primacy of family, friendships, inter-human relationships also survived the events this week. Exploring these ties and what shapes and forms personal relationships take both subject and object of the film project I'm working on. If anything, the experience of searching out friends and colleagues, of responding to messages and emails from concerned people around the world, and the unexpected generosity and awareness New Yorkers show each other on the streets all steel my resolve to continue the film project. Stay tuned, and thank you again for your concern, feedback, interest and questions.

11:00AM (EST) I'm fine, family in NYC are fine. my wife's stepmother was at work on Broad Street, and is fine, temporarily out of contact.

Email now set to download every minute. the last people we had on our first list from church- the ones who live in Battery Park City and work at the WTC- turned up in New Jersey. Most of the afternoon spent coordinating blood donors and helping set up a shelter at the church gym; it seems under-used, as most people have found a way home or a place to stay. I've read it in other places, but AIM was the lifeline for us to find out who was alright and to let people know we're alright, too.

Other than that, the thing I don't hear or read is how odd it was that everyone was walking all over the city today. Few cars, and every street looked like a concert or major event had just let out down the block. Very civil, yet somehow very unsettling; something was definitely not right.

While on vacation, we took a weekend trip to Venice to see the Biennale, a sprawling exhibition of contemporary art. With some exceptions, the art was a tremendous disappointment. Chicken & egg, I don't know, but most of the work either strained to stand out and provide some immediate, breakout, experience right then and there; or else it required time, consideration, and contemplation which the festival format inexorably discourages. In this oppressively large exhibition, the apparent subtlety and understatement of two installations appealed to us greatly: Robert Gober's installation in the American Pavilion and a cafe project/installation credited to the artists Olafur Eliasson, Tobias Rehberger and Rikrit Tiravanija. Understatement is problematic, though, and in ways that concern me as I try to make a documentary that is, itself, unpretentious yet affecting and lasting. Also, these works made me even more aware of how important/complicating are the expectations/experience a viewer brings with him. Let me explain a bit:

In each room of the Jefferson-esque pavilion, Gober carefully places a few objects or assemblages that appear to be found or flotsam, but which turn out to be meticulously hand-crafted re-creations: styrofoam blocks, plywood, an empty liquor bottle. In the corner of each room, there was a white, plastic-looking chair. Were they part of the piece? Gober's certainly done chairs before. [see an image] [read an essay] We debated, looked for evidence of the chairs' handmade-ness (which we found), but decided they weren't. (Clue: they weren't lit like the other objects. Sure enough, they were for the guards.)

After walking ALL over the two main exhibition venues in Venice's August heat, we took refuge in the "Refreshing Cafe," which was credited to the three artists above. The cafe was a series of tables, some white lacquer columns/stools, and a counter/bar under an overturned swimming pool-like form propped up by pistons. It was a rare and welcome retreat from the heat and from the overwrought video art of the show. It wasn't really clear what the contribution of the artists was, but an improvised cafe with a few mod-looking furniture pieces certainly seemed in keeping with the other works of these artists. Just last night, though, I ran into one of the three and complimented him on having made one of the few pieces we liked in the whole show. Turns out that not only did the three of them not really do anything with the piece, what they did do had been completely altered by the exhibition authorities, calling the existence of the "work" into question.

SCENE: Bedroom. Night. Streetlamp right outside the window prevents total darkness. Awareness of my feet piercing the plane at the end of the bed. No comforter? There's a sheet, and it's tucked in. Something alights on my toes. Brushes against them. A butterfly? No, of course not. Damn you, Vladimir Nabokov... No, an Other's toes. We're sleeping close enough to brush toes. The mattress doesn't have a giant seam running right down the middle. Time? Four o'clock in the morning. I'm wide awake. The role of the Bad Dream in this scene will be played by a thirteen-hour trip from normally-six-hours-away France. Well, at least there's a DSL connection here. Vacation's over.