benny loves killing (ben woodiwiss, 2012)
"Those days are long gone."
Back when I was an undergraduate student my colleagues and I got into a discussion about a cinema that would get close to the 'real' experience of life. What we came up with (through group consensus) was the idea of a film that was all executed in one take, through the eyes of an observer, and included blinks. This shows, if nothing else, what a waste of space undergraduate students are.
Because, of course, that's not how life works. That's not how memory works. And that's not how language works.
Editing is a part of life. That might seem up for debate, but it's not. If you go over your memories, even memories of one particular event, they will be broken into pieces. You'll have focused on the parts that interested you, removed the boring/inconsequential bits. You'll have done this so well that you won't even be able to find most of them. The journey you made to reach whatever point you're at as you're reading this will not be one you can trace in its entirety, like the Bayeaux tapestry. What's more, we've been doing this for a long time. Millennia, in fact. We know this because people have been writing stories for millennia, and using expressions like '...and the next day...' which are the linguistic forms of cuts, dissolves, fade-ins to shots of the sun rising over misty forests. And so on.
Which isn't to say that editing is everything. On the contrary, sometimes what's missing is one's inability to stop editing, and to simply be in the moment. We say this a lot: 'be in the moment.' And then we're given the opportunity and we decide to cut to the next scene as soon as we can. But what happens if you don't? How long do you stand in a gallery and look at a painting for? 20 seconds? 40 seconds? What's the right amount of time that lets everyone around you know that you're clever and are appreciating the art as much as possible? Is it possible to hold that moment for longer? To really be in the moment? To listen to everything around you and to take it all on board as being part and parcel of that moment? Not a distracting series of sounds to become annoyed with or distracted by, simply running through the setting in the same way that a river runs through a forest. The almost incomprehensible sounds of the couple standing near you, the repeated babbles of the baby in a stroller, the rain tapping against the glass from outside, the hum of distant traffic, the various voices chattering at low levels in other rooms: all of these are wrapped up in the time that you spend looking at the art, enjoying it (if that's the right word), and knowing when to move on.
And then there was the inconsequential: what is it that means so little to you that you can omit it in its entirety? You might answer with 'the boring bits' or 'the bits where nothing happens,' but then I have to question the idea of 'nothing happens' as it seems like most of life involves 'nothing happening' but so much of that 'nothing' is pleasant, whereas the 'events,' or the 'exciting bits' can sometimes hit you like a sledgehammer. Like the Futurist artist, hit by a car, flying up into the air and thinking 'At last! Something is happening!' So instead you might say that omission is more about selection, that we choose what we consider to be the most important or relevant sections, and arrange and weave them together into a cohesive narrative that makes sense. And I would decline to mention the idea of making sense of the experience after the fact, and would instead simply say 'yes, I think we do,' and then I would move on to stories.
People say we need stories, and that we learn through stories, and that storytelling is a part of life, and this all sounds great, until you get to the part where people say 'this is a story' and hold up a picture of one, and anything that deviates from this image isn't a story. They talk about the correct form for a story, the necessity for the inciting event at the correct place, the removal of the inconsequential. They say that language *is* story, that the two are inextricable from each other. That civilisation *is* a story. But sometimes I'm not so sure. I think we're forgetting about actions, sensation, texture.
Witness:
When I was growing up we didn't have heating. We had a fireplace. We bought coal, sure, but most of the time we used wood from skips. If you don't speak British English, a skip is a big metal container, about the size of a very large car, which is filled with debris, often from houses. And skips often contain wood. So at night we would go around, looking for skips, and taking old bits of wood back home to burn. Because I grew up in central London, in an area with a large number of hotels, there were always always always skips filled with wood nearby. And so we could heat the house (well, one room) for free. But the wood was usually in large pieces or planks, and so you would need to use the saw or the axe. Let's face facts: saws suck. They impose their will on something, and you can really feel the resistance that the something being sawed has to its lot in life. On the other hand, the axe is persuasive, particularly with wood. It finds the grain. It splits wood the way it wants to be split. There is no resistance as the axe and the wood work together, they hold hands. Now chopping wood is not only an action, but also a deeply satisfying one that seems to make sense of everything around you in a moment. I spent a great deal of time chopping wood when I was growing up, And I remember it well. The smell of the wood, the annoyance of splinters, and the relentless endlessness of it all. You're chopping wood forever, but for some reason you don't mind. Chop wood, carry water.
Is the above a story? It doesn't really go anywhere. Doesn't have a beginning, middle, or end. It has no hero, no villain. It doesn't follow Joseph Campbell's myth rules. There's no punchline. It doesn't follow any of the seven basic plots. So what is it then? And does it even matter whether this is or isn't a story? Instead what I'm doing above is remembering actions, feelings, textures. And that's how a lot of my memories work. There's no real point to any of them. They're just memories. They don't go anywhere. But presumably I hold on to them because they have some meaning for me, some value, something I can learn from. You might say 'that's garbage' but how would you answer the quandary below:
You own three pictures: one you made when you were a child, one your child made for you, and a third which is worth money. Not a huge amount, but some. There's a fire. Which picture do you save? Do you save your own (hi)story, that of your children, or do you save the money?
Some things are instinctual. They make sense. And you don't need to discuss them internally, you can choose very quickly. But not everyone picks the same option. Some people want to hold on to themselves, some to their descendants and their lineage, and some to value. Value. Now there's a world of debate. I own a book signed by Quentin Crisp. Its value is £5. If you gave me £10 and asked me to burn it, I wouldn't. Now what the hell kind of sense do you think that makes?