Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)
"During the memorable winter of 1781, when the snow was heaped up in the courtyard of Brienne College."
Waking up from the dream I'm left with a feeling of 'at least I still have [insert noun here]' and then the soft, fuzzy realisation comes over me that I don't have [insert noun here] at all. It was just a dream.
Instead I find myself trapped into the treadmill of the real. I need to get out of bed, and it's cold. There's a hole in the window that I still haven't fixed, and instead of fixing it I take a roll of thick, waxy paper and smear glue over it, and place it carefully onto the wooden frame of the window and cover the hole. The rain and wind continue outside, but for the time being that's where they stay: outside. Eventually the paper will probably tear, and nature will resume its place in the bedroom, but for the time being I am the master.
I light the belly of the stove and place a pan on top. It will take some time to heat up, time enough for me to now find food to place into the pan before the pot dangerously hot. It's hard to put finesse into food cooked with this kind of equipment, but it would be a mistake to say it's impossible. Impossible is not a word I recognise in my language. There are those who would insist on the finest of utensils and ingredients. But these people are missing what can be achieved with intention. It is not the materials which make greatness, it is the designer.
Having said that, I manage to burn the food. But it's not my fault. There is a huge amount of commotion going on outside. The landscape of the country, both politically and geographically, is changing on a daily basis, and this change has run through the blood of the citizens, making they bray like beasts. I put a hand to a weapon, lest they crawl in through the window, but then stay my hand and keep a vigilant watch instead. It seems like a more prudent course of action. It is during these moments that I become aware of the burning food. Instead of throwing it into a sack, or out the very window and onto the cacophonous residents in the street, I take my frustration out on the pot, and knock it from the stove. Dashing the food across the floor and denting the pan in the process.
This is what it is to be in the real. A decision made on the spur of the moment creates consequences that one has to live with forever. It's important to remember this, but no matter how hard I try I find myself making errors like this repeatedly, and then having to deal with the consequences both in the short and long term.
There are many of these such consequences, and perhaps we can wander through the silent museum halls of your own life and witness the history of your own unwanted consequences: broken cups, holes in walls, unkept promises, missed appointments. The corridors here are long, and the glass cabinets that contain these objects seem to go on and on forever, like a trompe l'oeil. Really we should be grateful to the curator for maintaining this collection, because the minutiae of it all builds to something far grander than the sum of one person's life. And the question of whether that one person was significant or not becomes completely annulled by the size of the collection.
That kind of question is addressed by the existence (and now non-existence) of Vivian Maier. Maier lived her life as a person, but took a huge amount of photographs. She never told anyone about any of this, and when she died nobody knew. But then the library of her photographs was found, and now we have her work, and there are curators and experts, and the existence of what she did will continue into the future. This doesn't change anything about who Maier was, or how she lived her life. She had that collection regardless of whether or not she was fated to fame in the future. And you have your collection regardless of what the future holds for you.
But, you might argue, Maier continues to be with us now, and *that* is the point of the collection. That, you continue, is the point of *any* collection. To bring immortality to someone's memory. And you know what, I can't really argue with that. But then how long does that 'immortality' last? In the 1920s and early 1930s Stefan Zweig was the most popular author in the world. Translated into more languages than any other writer of his time. Then came the latter half of the 1930s, which turned out to be disastrous for the Austrian born Jewish writer. Zweig's name and fame went up in flames, both literally and figuratively. Like one of those biscuit wrappers that you roll up and set fire to at delicious Christmas parties; the flame catches, builds, burns green and blue, and the wrapper is carried into the air, before floating back down as a skeleton of ash.
Now, sure, Stefan Zweig is currently going through a renaissance, and we're reading him again, and we're able to drop his name into conversations and people know what we mean. But is this forever? Recent history would probably suggest that it isn't, and that eventually a wind will blow and Zweig's name, just like your name, will be carried off into the ether.
These are the thoughts that swirl through my mind as I consider the food dashed across the floor of my garret room, and the dented pot as it rocks gently back and forth.
Just then, something else comes to mind, and my eyes turn to the window. The paper I placed over the cracked pane is the map to my own museum, a collection of my own follies and victories. The paper is thick, and waxy, as I mentioned, but if I leave it over the broken glass for long enough the rain and wind will eventually tear their way through. What do I do? Do I take the map down from the window, in a vain attempt to ensure my own immortality? Or do I leave it there, and provide my existence with a little more warmth and comfort than it might otherwise be afforded?
This is not a metaphor. This is not a dream. This is really happening.
Waking up from the dream I'm left with a feeling of 'at least I still have [insert noun here]' and then the soft, fuzzy realisation comes over me that I don't have [insert noun here] at all. It was just a dream.
Instead I find myself trapped into the treadmill of the real. I need to get out of bed, and it's cold. There's a hole in the window that I still haven't fixed, and instead of fixing it I take a roll of thick, waxy paper and smear glue over it, and place it carefully onto the wooden frame of the window and cover the hole. The rain and wind continue outside, but for the time being that's where they stay: outside. Eventually the paper will probably tear, and nature will resume its place in the bedroom, but for the time being I am the master.
I light the belly of the stove and place a pan on top. It will take some time to heat up, time enough for me to now find food to place into the pan before the pot dangerously hot. It's hard to put finesse into food cooked with this kind of equipment, but it would be a mistake to say it's impossible. Impossible is not a word I recognise in my language. There are those who would insist on the finest of utensils and ingredients. But these people are missing what can be achieved with intention. It is not the materials which make greatness, it is the designer.
Having said that, I manage to burn the food. But it's not my fault. There is a huge amount of commotion going on outside. The landscape of the country, both politically and geographically, is changing on a daily basis, and this change has run through the blood of the citizens, making they bray like beasts. I put a hand to a weapon, lest they crawl in through the window, but then stay my hand and keep a vigilant watch instead. It seems like a more prudent course of action. It is during these moments that I become aware of the burning food. Instead of throwing it into a sack, or out the very window and onto the cacophonous residents in the street, I take my frustration out on the pot, and knock it from the stove. Dashing the food across the floor and denting the pan in the process.
This is what it is to be in the real. A decision made on the spur of the moment creates consequences that one has to live with forever. It's important to remember this, but no matter how hard I try I find myself making errors like this repeatedly, and then having to deal with the consequences both in the short and long term.
There are many of these such consequences, and perhaps we can wander through the silent museum halls of your own life and witness the history of your own unwanted consequences: broken cups, holes in walls, unkept promises, missed appointments. The corridors here are long, and the glass cabinets that contain these objects seem to go on and on forever, like a trompe l'oeil. Really we should be grateful to the curator for maintaining this collection, because the minutiae of it all builds to something far grander than the sum of one person's life. And the question of whether that one person was significant or not becomes completely annulled by the size of the collection.
That kind of question is addressed by the existence (and now non-existence) of Vivian Maier. Maier lived her life as a person, but took a huge amount of photographs. She never told anyone about any of this, and when she died nobody knew. But then the library of her photographs was found, and now we have her work, and there are curators and experts, and the existence of what she did will continue into the future. This doesn't change anything about who Maier was, or how she lived her life. She had that collection regardless of whether or not she was fated to fame in the future. And you have your collection regardless of what the future holds for you.
But, you might argue, Maier continues to be with us now, and *that* is the point of the collection. That, you continue, is the point of *any* collection. To bring immortality to someone's memory. And you know what, I can't really argue with that. But then how long does that 'immortality' last? In the 1920s and early 1930s Stefan Zweig was the most popular author in the world. Translated into more languages than any other writer of his time. Then came the latter half of the 1930s, which turned out to be disastrous for the Austrian born Jewish writer. Zweig's name and fame went up in flames, both literally and figuratively. Like one of those biscuit wrappers that you roll up and set fire to at delicious Christmas parties; the flame catches, builds, burns green and blue, and the wrapper is carried into the air, before floating back down as a skeleton of ash.
Now, sure, Stefan Zweig is currently going through a renaissance, and we're reading him again, and we're able to drop his name into conversations and people know what we mean. But is this forever? Recent history would probably suggest that it isn't, and that eventually a wind will blow and Zweig's name, just like your name, will be carried off into the ether.
These are the thoughts that swirl through my mind as I consider the food dashed across the floor of my garret room, and the dented pot as it rocks gently back and forth.
Just then, something else comes to mind, and my eyes turn to the window. The paper I placed over the cracked pane is the map to my own museum, a collection of my own follies and victories. The paper is thick, and waxy, as I mentioned, but if I leave it over the broken glass for long enough the rain and wind will eventually tear their way through. What do I do? Do I take the map down from the window, in a vain attempt to ensure my own immortality? Or do I leave it there, and provide my existence with a little more warmth and comfort than it might otherwise be afforded?
This is not a metaphor. This is not a dream. This is really happening.