Christopher Arigo
A film difficult to make
0. For a short while grief absolves
anger. Then the film resumes and
pans a wrist striated with breath-blue veins
pans along an avenue of misplaced things.
For a short while images absolve
response.
1. Loss needs its own words subsumed.
From the air gardens are emeralds
in concrete settings. Walls covered with acetylene
graffiti. Cracked by sycamores and ginkgoes
sidewalks upheave. Your toy boats float through
a flooded culvert— the setting for scene one.
2. More than survival is at stake
here. Who will say the by-now-rote lines?
Minutiae perish or abide.
Myths perish or endure.
There are no victims. Right?
The terminal scene remains unrevealed.
3. The city effloresces with explosions.
Protagonists chased by villains.
This is a template. By now we can fill
in the blanks— with buzzing with a sense
of uneasiness and elation— gratitude
about us not being them
4. Absence is metamorphosis is myth or
lost transmissions from the cutting room. The audience
asks why why why and builds immortal bodies from
oddments and skeletons. Once there was…
And then they lived… Twice there was… …a man that…
…a woman who… how true how true however
5. A ravaged face. A ringing bell. A survival bell
to remind us to remain in motion. Call me your beloved.
Call out a moniker not yet sonant.
The stills taken from the film
are too ill-lit too inchoate to discern
any recognizable convention.
6. Call your tongue set. Your lips
actresses. This is a film about God
without belief in God. A story egresses
as fast as words accrue. Minutiae
perish. We must protest— not at the climax
nor at the conclusion but during brief pauses
between monologues.
7. The equation resembles stock footage.
The film reassembles more stock footage.
A collage of mirrors. A body can
subsist on less than you think— sufficient
fuel to ensure that cameras roll. The script
thus far is a sheaf of unsullied pages.
8. We must protest. It is useful
to believe in aggregates of miscellany—
that they make something. A thing that
is the sum of its parts. A machine
we can love. A warm machine pulsing
with something that mimics love.
Our protest is a sum apart.
9. Miscellany is the working title. Myth
the ulterior plot. The first scene opens with
a ringing bell. The last scene:
a ringing bell. Maybe More Than Survival is the title.
When the actors and actresses return home
the film continues.
10. The audience applauds itself. You applaud
the players and your mouth the stories
you articulate— the names the grief
the minutiae. What they really applaud is
the world itself to staunch that grief.