another journal extract
sat 15 sept 7
While watching Derek Jarman’s Blue tonight a number of thoughts occurred to me that I thought I should write down. But to do them at the time would have meant leaving the film, diverting my attention to chase them. Consequently I’ve forgotten most of them though I will attempt to remember. However a short time after while reading the paper I had a thought related to the film that I do recall. That watching the film was like meeting myself.
I had a peculiar sensation at times while watching the film that I couldn’t quite place. Only subsequently did I realise that there were times when it was like my 23 year-old and 37 year-old sleves meeting. One of the nice things was that neither self was upset by the encounter. My 23 year-old self, autodidactic, trying to get on an Open Univerity course, was listening to Blue when it was first broadcast. Simulcast on Channel 4 tv and Radio 3. We didn’t have a tv so i coulod only listen to it. My 37 year-old self now more knowledgable about film, familiar with other of Jarman’s films and his books Chroma and Modern Nature, aware of Yves Klien Blue, and living independently having had adult relationships.
I remembered the references to the Balkan wars in Blue. Remembered the news coverage of the conflicts at the time. Remembered sitting and listening to to Blue. Remembered being drawn into the words. Remembered the words more than the music. Never saw the film or the blue used until now. I remembered being there, remembered a time in the past and for once didn’t feel needless jealousy of, or nostalgia for, that person or that place or time. I was happy now, as who I am and where I am. And with who I’d been. I didn’t feel superior to my past self. He saw the piece completely new. He ha no familiarity with the text, or with the cinema of Jarman, or with any cinema for that matter. He was a lot more innocent. His experience was very different.
As I set myself to write this I had another thought. I was thinking about how to explain what I meant by ‘meeting myself’. Trying to trace it through the sensation I’d felt, and the specific moments I’d felt it, I remembered another of the thoughts I’d had watchingthe film. The part mentioning the Balkan wars, watching refugees on tv made me think ‘it was so long ago and so recent.’ Recent because it’s still fresh. Especially when some trigger brings a moment back by surprise. But also because on a personal level I still have most of the aspirations, beliefs and values of my 23 year-old self intact today. Long ago because it is. There’s no way of going back to that time or place. The world has changed a lot. There’s still war, racism, division, HIV/AIDS, bigotry etc. But technology has moved on, some global concerns have shifted, the world appears to be getting richer, whatever fuckiing value that has, and the mass murder of civilians has moved elsewhere. Which makes the next sentence look really trivial. Personally it’s long ago because although I remember good times and mostly look at the past with nostalgia I wasn’t actually happy then. I had no friends and little stimulus, I’d taken to self-harming, I was probably as close to depression as I’ve ever been.
Another of the thoughts I had while watching the film, only recently remembered and scribbled down, was an idea to be used in either a piece of fiction or a poem. During one of the passages in Blue where Jarman describes (I think) an eye hospital I thought “I never saw sick people before now, and now they’re everywhere.” That as a wellperson you’re mostly never aware of sick people. At the same time I remembered that when I first heard Blue I was in way more aware than I am now. I attempted more rigorously in my poetry to ensure that people with sight and hearing impairments would still be able to follow my arguments and understand what the poetry was about. Although I couldn’t remember the precise citation I wanted to express the thought as an echo of what I thought was St Paul. Something like “When I was well I knew well people, saw the world as a well person, and all was well. But now I’m surrounded by illness and I can’t remember being well.” It could equally well have used “23 year(s)-old” to describe the sensation of ‘meeting myself’ - it’s a relativity of outlook. I’ve since looked up the original quote, and seen that it is St Paul, from his first letter to the Corinthians. Of course laden before and after with his moralising, exclusionary christianity. The small section I half remembered and was alluding to is, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.” And it was something I wanted to echo.
Although in my formulation you could restore Paul’s line about seeing as through a glass, darkly, to describe the limitations of any viewpoint I prefer not to. The implication in Paul is that one state is inherently superior to another, and that they are both inferior to a greater supernatural perspective, attainable only after death, but to which one must aspire. The acknowledgment that wisdom is incomplete doesn’t lead to an interrogation of how you reconcile or negotiate between different manifestations of ignorance. Instead it leads to an entrenching within your own certainties and ignorance. I hope that the implication of my pastiche/quote/recasting is simply to say that, “I see the world through the filter of my experience, some of which is contingent and changeable.” I believe this opens you to dialogue, “This is my truth, tell me yours” in the words of Aneurin Bevan, as opposed to the christian/monotheistic entrenchment expressed in words like “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” I find such certainties even more repellent now than I did at 23.
While watching Derek Jarman’s Blue tonight a number of thoughts occurred to me that I thought I should write down. But to do them at the time would have meant leaving the film, diverting my attention to chase them. Consequently I’ve forgotten most of them though I will attempt to remember. However a short time after while reading the paper I had a thought related to the film that I do recall. That watching the film was like meeting myself.
I had a peculiar sensation at times while watching the film that I couldn’t quite place. Only subsequently did I realise that there were times when it was like my 23 year-old and 37 year-old sleves meeting. One of the nice things was that neither self was upset by the encounter. My 23 year-old self, autodidactic, trying to get on an Open Univerity course, was listening to Blue when it was first broadcast. Simulcast on Channel 4 tv and Radio 3. We didn’t have a tv so i coulod only listen to it. My 37 year-old self now more knowledgable about film, familiar with other of Jarman’s films and his books Chroma and Modern Nature, aware of Yves Klien Blue, and living independently having had adult relationships.
I remembered the references to the Balkan wars in Blue. Remembered the news coverage of the conflicts at the time. Remembered sitting and listening to to Blue. Remembered being drawn into the words. Remembered the words more than the music. Never saw the film or the blue used until now. I remembered being there, remembered a time in the past and for once didn’t feel needless jealousy of, or nostalgia for, that person or that place or time. I was happy now, as who I am and where I am. And with who I’d been. I didn’t feel superior to my past self. He saw the piece completely new. He ha no familiarity with the text, or with the cinema of Jarman, or with any cinema for that matter. He was a lot more innocent. His experience was very different.
As I set myself to write this I had another thought. I was thinking about how to explain what I meant by ‘meeting myself’. Trying to trace it through the sensation I’d felt, and the specific moments I’d felt it, I remembered another of the thoughts I’d had watchingthe film. The part mentioning the Balkan wars, watching refugees on tv made me think ‘it was so long ago and so recent.’ Recent because it’s still fresh. Especially when some trigger brings a moment back by surprise. But also because on a personal level I still have most of the aspirations, beliefs and values of my 23 year-old self intact today. Long ago because it is. There’s no way of going back to that time or place. The world has changed a lot. There’s still war, racism, division, HIV/AIDS, bigotry etc. But technology has moved on, some global concerns have shifted, the world appears to be getting richer, whatever fuckiing value that has, and the mass murder of civilians has moved elsewhere. Which makes the next sentence look really trivial. Personally it’s long ago because although I remember good times and mostly look at the past with nostalgia I wasn’t actually happy then. I had no friends and little stimulus, I’d taken to self-harming, I was probably as close to depression as I’ve ever been.
Another of the thoughts I had while watching the film, only recently remembered and scribbled down, was an idea to be used in either a piece of fiction or a poem. During one of the passages in Blue where Jarman describes (I think) an eye hospital I thought “I never saw sick people before now, and now they’re everywhere.” That as a wellperson you’re mostly never aware of sick people. At the same time I remembered that when I first heard Blue I was in way more aware than I am now. I attempted more rigorously in my poetry to ensure that people with sight and hearing impairments would still be able to follow my arguments and understand what the poetry was about. Although I couldn’t remember the precise citation I wanted to express the thought as an echo of what I thought was St Paul. Something like “When I was well I knew well people, saw the world as a well person, and all was well. But now I’m surrounded by illness and I can’t remember being well.” It could equally well have used “23 year(s)-old” to describe the sensation of ‘meeting myself’ - it’s a relativity of outlook. I’ve since looked up the original quote, and seen that it is St Paul, from his first letter to the Corinthians. Of course laden before and after with his moralising, exclusionary christianity. The small section I half remembered and was alluding to is, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.” And it was something I wanted to echo.
Although in my formulation you could restore Paul’s line about seeing as through a glass, darkly, to describe the limitations of any viewpoint I prefer not to. The implication in Paul is that one state is inherently superior to another, and that they are both inferior to a greater supernatural perspective, attainable only after death, but to which one must aspire. The acknowledgment that wisdom is incomplete doesn’t lead to an interrogation of how you reconcile or negotiate between different manifestations of ignorance. Instead it leads to an entrenching within your own certainties and ignorance. I hope that the implication of my pastiche/quote/recasting is simply to say that, “I see the world through the filter of my experience, some of which is contingent and changeable.” I believe this opens you to dialogue, “This is my truth, tell me yours” in the words of Aneurin Bevan, as opposed to the christian/monotheistic entrenchment expressed in words like “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” I find such certainties even more repellent now than I did at 23.
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