I once wanted to make a film about our school. I kept a notebook for a while where I put ideas for scenes, camera angles, places and people I’d want to include in the movie. For a soundtrack I decided on Saxon Shore, along with some of our earlier more obtuse pieces. I wanted to show that in spite of how bored I get with this campus and how mundane and ordinary it seems, there is a certain beauty in it which I would want to demonstrate as objectively as possible. It would have been something of an exercise in finding the beauty in everything: the right perspective, the perfect angle.
There are lots of open spaces at our school. None of this close oppressive atmosphere you find other places. Did you ever stop to think about how many open fields there are around the college grounds? Outside Earl Hall, the intramural field, outside the student center, the flood plains. The randomest of places! I think this would factor pretty heavily into the film. So would the library. Upstairs, looking out from our little study corner in the back. It was there that I first had this idea. I was reading an article in the New York Times magazine about Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar-wai. Things just kind of went along from there. There was a lot more. But I lost the notebook, and anyway, my particular ideas aren’t the point.
The point is: it’s difficult to communicate an aesthetic. The point of the entire project would have been a feeling, an idea, and I have a hunch that this would be completely lost on half the people who saw it. It has less to do with what I know about Toccoa Falls College then the campus itself, and that would be the hardest part. But I think I’ve got it and it would be both interesting and challenging to try and communicate this through a film.
I thought about calling Billy up and having a go at it. But these things never really get off the ground. They never even make it on the runway. I guess you could say they explode in the hangar.
I’m taking up piano again starting in a couple of weeks. So here’s a piece from Stuart Murdoch which I found relevant. Stuart Murdoch is a remarkable rock star. One of the greats. Read his cryptic but revealing thoughts by clicking
here.
Playing the piano well
Is like the ash outside my window
Is like the gorge of green which makes this view everlasting
Is something that I would like to do
In another life
At another time
Purer I would try to be
Stand up to the notes without flinching!
Sit down at the stool with conscience clean
Ready for a days work at rattling and tormenting strings
Coaxing, plucking, making up things
Playing the piano well
I mean, really well
Is like a job making coffee
Is like a lifetime listening
Is like the vocation of a councillor
Dedicated, with a couch in a room
It’s like… pick one thing
Stick at it, be good at it
Know it is your life’s work
Celebrate the keys
Praise the blessed shape of a harp laid on its side
Cased in maple
Romance the pedals
Exercise your fingers
Run the relay of your life
A paperchase for joint and arm and wrist
If you play the piano well
You need never go out again
You need never eat another meal
Your job becomes a meditation
(And that gets you off a lot a things!)
Women come to bathe you
Men to upbraid you
Contracts are thrown at you
By idealistic radio programmers
By dreamers with graveyard shows
By ether painters, with swallows for pets
Contracts lie caked in dusk though
As you play on, threatened with arthritis
Dogged by tinnitus
Left by sexual partner
Abandoned by squash doublers
Dismissed by mail box troublers
You play on
Till enlightenment
(In the form of a Chopin Nocturne)
Comes down and lets you sleep
Sleep, baby, sleep
