Birth
Some
reels are born
Giant
spools
Lower
them into amniotic fluid
The
camera pans
Much
like a loving father
Across
the pitch-black incubator
Its
blackness
As
empty
As
the films it bathes
Still
untouched
They
are but mirrors
Reflecting
no light
Butman’s
imagination
Built
to preserve
To
alter reality
To
withstand time
To
mock death
And
to defy its permanence
To
overcome the transience of nature
These
reels are born
Unanimated
matter
Yet
creating life
Over
And
over
Again
Annotations to Birth
In my poem on
the third minute of Decasia, I tried
to convey the mood of the picture with words. Although I am not sure if this is
how film reelsare industrially produced, the intro scene undeniably reminds of
birth, especially in terms of the anonymous hand reaching into the black fluid
to examine one of the reels. Upon watching the clip, I was under the strange
impression of attending childbirth through the eyes of someone, maybe the
father, who seeks to preserve this moment with a camera. Morrison’s choice to
begin Decasia, a film about the decay
of film, with the manufacturing of brand new reels is most certainly not
coincidental.
The birth-like
situation, however, is only half of what this third minute invoked in me while
watching. Another very dominant feeling was indeed quite opposite to the joy
usually felt when around newborns. The monotonous coldness of the giant spools
at the very beginning are a somewhat loathsome sight and underline that this is
no organic matter being produced in the batch. Hence, I chose to point out that
the reels were „inanimate“.
The first part
is concluded with the single line „But man’s imagination“, as I proceed to
further elaborate on the quality and ability of film to serve as a portal to an
alternate reality and to withstand time (at least for a certain period).
Paradoxically, the technically lifeless product’s main function is to incite life in its beholder: I assume
that motion pictures are particularly used to invoke feelings in the audience,
be it a narrative, documentary, or, like Decasia,
an experimental piece of artwork. Thus is its notion to affect the lives of
others and although ist content might be blurred, fuzzy, unrealistic, sketchy
or random, it becomes real the very instant it has taken an impact on the
viewer. In addition, it is a repetitive medium: the sequence of images can be
replayed at will.Hence, I finished with the (a bit cheesy) stanza: „Over/ And
Over/ Again“.
In fact, Decasia tries to mess with this very
condition: it emphasizes the decay of an initially preservative medium.
Ironically, this effort is conservative itself.
Joseph Möller