A Blank Little Post

Now, this is what I was waiting for: a blank little post, a clean, in other words, overcrowded slate of mind. Too many things about which I cannot write, reaching the fringes of a weblog…

No, the movie didn’t end. The movie never ends, the movie takes a break and we break for our daily chores to come back to the movie again and catch it when we get it: the frame which never stays. Thoughts are wavering away, let me catch one fast! And here it is, shivering dense like live butterfly-wings between my fingers. I press it harder and the powdery wings give away, the thought limp-flies to fall beyond my lazy reach. Ultimately, life is more precious than a flight. I caught one a moment ago: what communicates better — the face, or the words? The words, written or keyed in — in other words, flowing or faceless? (Through cinema’s filters) the image of the face? the image of the words? The personal image of the words in longhand? The impersonal image of the fonts? Or the sound of the words? I am, obviously, not interested in communication studies …

When her words reach me through bytes, I lose the music of a voice. When she speaks through the skies, I lose her face. When I look at her face, she seldom speaks it out. Words are things to be wasted, words are overflows, words are the only means to hide what you mean, words are things which help me to lie. Words connect nothingness with nothingness; or words are not to be blamed, mobile phones keep ourselves connected, from nothingness to nothingness. Lear asked her to enumerate how much she loves, a question which can only be formed in the dawn of modern money: how much do you love. “Nothing, my lord” was the radical utterance of refusal and the ultimate articulation of love. I am talking of Cordelia’s ‘nothing’ness, something which refuses to communicate but conveys the meaning, the aye’s and the no’s.

Something which communicates, something which cinema can, theoretically, never use/record: the touch. The way the touch conveys. Ultimately that was the ur-language, the language before language was. And social language, the voice, the written words, the words typed in, the glance and the look, all try to displace, replace, substitute that vehicle to mean: the touch. Not because touch has become impossible, but because touch has lost its magic. Therefore sick chats, sicker phone-sex, nauseating scraps and mails … all try to convey a kink which the touch is supposed not to be able of triggering; no, if words or ogles are meant to be a means to the end of the touches, one finds that the touch is ultimately as cold as frozen maggoty meat. But once upon a time touch was a language. Can you remember how the shivers in the water-envelop told you that mom is happy with you inside her? Or dad’s first nervous trembling grasp? And all those things which we never tried to remember because we never thought that we will lose them. And now, each desperate kiss is to be recorded, the hand grasping the hand is firmer so that one does not forget and one day we cannot recall a touch, differentiate her from her, isn’t it as nightmarish as forgetting the face whose name we can recall (the other way round is always more irritating but less disturbing)?. But how many unique touches assigned to unique people do we remember?

And you know I am not talking of that over-touch you are thinking of. As Godard said: “The tragedy of sexual relationships is the virginity of the souls”. Talking of something beyond where skins meet. Talking about sad souls dying virgin, ravished but never consummated. Just like the breeze, when you feel it, it is gone. Just like the cut between two shots, which you never see, but notice it after it is gone (grab the remote and try to pause in a cut, its always a momentary lapse of vision …)