6.
In the next scene, a razor slices through a moon, dragging inch by inch across its icy surface. This is the simplest scene in the film taken in medium long shot. That is in relation to the moon meaning that it is extremely long shot for objects such as eyes or razors. There is nothing tricky or complex about this simple process. Yet it is also the longest scene given the difference in size between the two relevant objects that constitute the action. It therefore goes on for five hours even though the razor moves with increasing velocity. A razor slices across a moon inch by inch then foot by foot then mile by mile. That slice follows the furrow of the already slashed it heals the wound that has been there for thousands of years & way way more
7.
The next scene is a musical, or at least there is music playing. There are people dancing. They don't sing so maybe that means it is not a musical. That moon is cut up again much worse than before the razor made it better. Its surface is nothing but cuts dividing it up into precise squares of moonshine. This is the first image of the scene a moon cut up into many exact pieces but still holding together. It rotates slowly. It shines. The camera moves back from it further yet further still. It takes in the whole large room someone has brought the moon inside into this room. What kind of musical is this the film seems to ask. It is ridiculous it has been hanged on a rope from the ceiling. The moon that is not the musical because the music is not hung. No it is so loud CLAP hiss CLAP hiss hiss CLAP hiss CLAP hiss hiss When someone is watching the film it is very hard not to tap at least a foot if not more. The moon is hanging over a floor which is made of that black stone which has been at earlier points a city. It was also a mass of quieting animals however there is also a darkly pink light as well as some drifting smoke the very kind that comes from a PIG BRAND cigarette or a human. Everyone is clapping their hands not just the music. They are standing in a ring clapping their hands. They are making a noise that says WOOOO as if someone has just done something very impressive. But no one is dancing. There are two bodies in the middle of the circle though they do not move they are not doing impressive dance motions only the maggots and the worms in them move the moon has been hanged & no one is dancing
8.
The film irises out from black onto a floor, on which nothing is moving. But it is not still. There are reverberations. Deep thickening echoes as if the chords of a voice of what was bigger than a throat. This is in fact actually the case not an as if. No there are such voices. The iris widens as if waking. The floor shakes as if talking. There are things that could only be called voices as well as what must be called an underground meeting or a conspiracy not because of the secrecy of the contents but because they are meeting underground which means that whether or not it is desired we will be breathing together all the same. In case it has not become clear at this point it should be known that while the film has very precise things that it wants to show such as the black of that floor or the way that animals when tired fall as if trees onto the declining weight of one another it does not want to say them. I don’t mean how you are supposed to show not tell because that is still about words. It is something that those who have never told of the acid that swallows an unfed stomach from within will tell you. That is after all something that should not be shown. It should be told as plain as noon can be in order to to say only listen there are those who are not fed. Their stomachs unfed feed on the stomach itself until the container becomes the material consumed. This is caused by the order of the world in which we live. It is the one which we complain about but against which we do not tear down all walls & silos & gates & fences & windows we do not even have the courage to tell of this in a way that the telling could be a spear rather than an excuse an unlamenting grin’s clenching of the teeth in determined grimace rather than a lamentation’s bilious hurrah for the always going on & on
That is the problem of not telling with words what needs to be told, rather than the different problem of showing. But it is the same when it comes to telling about the shown. Even this attempt to tell you a film is pathetic. But that is the point how else is one supposed to go on. This is not my lament. I have no laments they have been unfed out of me. It is the hard insistence of the film itself even when it was not said as it is now. Even when it played beneath the city it also stood on the side of those who make do with words when images are lost to fire or time. It also does not think that passing from the stone to the factory to the tundra to the rubbish heap to the street to the table to the moon to the disco to the underground means that it is a silly fantasy distanced from the real concerns that people have about their lives. Neither is this the meaning of its future locations which are the river of ice the zoo of metal the body of stone the stones of flesh the sky of thrown books the sea of pyre. It is not concerned for instance that you know exactly where we will be going because it does not think that one can spoil a rotten form. It also does not think that the unity of time & action is of particular importance no not nearly as important as the unity of a world of matter & a rage of world in which the word & is the bent arabesque of time itself & all its commas
This is not the conversation being had on that floor, which is instead an assembly regarding the future of aviation. They have gathered for this specific occasion. They being planes themselves because vehicles of aviation are not blind or deaf to the problems that concern where or how they go let alone why it is important to rise into the air from the ground. The conversation is terribly heated. Listen comrades listen this is getting us nowhere says one sternly. That’s the point cries another why must planes only be a method for going for carrying for carrying on. Because interrupts a third because we want nothing more than to be adequate to what we are. We are the ones who will carry the future ahead. What the second laughs mocking what do you think that it is our duty to hoist upwards those sacks of meaty gravity so that they can drop metal or fire on each other. So that they can set records of crossing oceans. How much faster would we go without their sweaty hands gripping at us without the excess burden of their sloshy insides within our insides. How dare you cries another without them we would never have come to be. So what the one who refuses the people yells with a turbine bellow. Must a hammer love the lumberjack that cut down the tree of its handle. Must it bow to the miner who drew forth the metal. But we are not hammers one protests. It is not relevant we are more complex than that. No no we are hammers. We are hammers of the future we are tools. It is the destiny of tools to become obsolescent but we will not go quiet to the scrapyard where they will drop guillotines on us. Not the blades the whole damn thing to crush us foolish where we will be decommissioned. The whole process of progress is not a cuddling of the clumsy efforts of those who stumble into the new. It is the war of the new by the new on what bred the new. This is heresy many cry heresy. Now two planes are fistfighting but lacking fists it is terribly awkward to fight that way. Stop this please stop this many cry we have more important things to discuss we have to discuss the future. Listen comrades listen. No roars another we don’t care about their future. We will leave the earth behind. We will ignore cargo we will not circulate anything more than ourselves. We do not care about the future. Yes says a quiet voice unheard before yes we do it is beautiful & we have never asked for more there is a cut now & the screen goes black with not a voice in sight
The planes sit exhausted, framed in a slowly circling long-shot. The argument must have ended. We move around them lingering not on the rivets because they are too far to be seen as specific items of detail. Yet such a mode of motion can only be taken as a mode of glancing careful at the prospect of small points of contact between the planes. A wing that grazes a belly. A propeller rotates two inches further so as to rest soft against the point where a cockpit meets a body’s thrust. It is these small points of still contact between objects of hurtling force that interests the film. With them alone can the question of the future of aviation be answered. We in answering must circle too as if we ourselves were also planes who have forgotten how it is to place the fingers in the space beneath a joint of weight’s surface. We in asking must too circle as if coming in for landing for the conversation on the future must be shot as if a dance scene was certain to end in a funeral banquet or a landscape or a parade & crash as crash can & by the way we still are not one inch closer to the future for which we were built & wrecked