A
young writer sits at a keyboard and begins to write a screenplay for
a film that they are almost entirely certain will never be made, the
only thing stopping them being entirely certain being their faith in
the flexible nature of uncertainty. In it they describe the opening
shot.
A
close up of a chinese woman's face. Her face is presented in a
decontextualised location, we see no walls nor hear any background
noise, all she is surrounded by is a blue light, the blue of
cigarette smoke. Music is gently played from an unknown source, it is
coming from the ether for all we as a viewer can decipher. As the music continues she begins to sing along with it, it is the song
'Crazy' written by Willie Nelson. The chinese woman sings along with it
with all the cultural markings which have become cliches in the west
and have often been used for the purposes of racist stereotyping; for
example, the r's get pronounced a l's and, vice versa, the l's get
pronounced as r's, 'Crazy, crazy for feeling so lonely', becomes,
'Clazy, clazy for feering so ron'ry'. As she continues to sing the
significance of these cultural markings become less and less
significant as they begin to fall into the backdrop of the depth of
feeling contained within, coming out of, the chinese woman's voice, a
feeling felt being one expressed regardless of whether it is being
advertently performed or not. The meaning of her feeling is what
becomes the focus of the scene, that she is a chinese woman who
pronounces her r's a l's is only a very small aspect of the scene,
there is more to her and to her song than this. Her singing is
beautiful regardless of whether she has any technical ability in this
area or not.
Through the rest of the
day they continue writing the film as a series of sequences such as
identical twin somnambulances who were separated at birth wandering
at night to the same city park bench and sitting there together for
ten minutes or so until they part ways only to forget about all of
this the following morning, the writer's belief being that film is
first and foremost, inescapably, a photographer's medium and not
necessarily a storyteller's one.
Twins are a recurring
motif in the film, another set of identical twin brothers in infancy
appear later in the screenplay, both of them wearing batman t-shirts,
both of them black boys with braids. Perhaps this is because the
writer themself has a twin in mainland Europe. As children, and still
to this day, they were constantly asked what it is like to be a twin,
the best answer for this being to shrug their shoulders as if to say,
'it's like being a twin, it's like being a twin and not being a twin,
what's it like being you?'Another question people constantly asked
was whether they felt each other's pain being a twin, if they knew
what the word was back then they would have said, 'of course..
empathetically', two people do not share a womb for nine
months without learning a thing or two about their womb mate.
Later
in the day, whilst on a walk the writer imagines a response to the
film. They imagine that they are at the Cannes film festival sitting
in the sunshine, a fizzy drink in front of them. They are upset.
Their stomach is upset because they had a drink the night before,
they had a drink and then the drink had a drink and then the drink
drank them, and their head and heart is upset because they feel as
though they have been misunderstood. They worry that people make a
point of misunderstanding one another because it is an easier thing
to do than to sit down and try to understand one another. They
believe the cornerstone of civilisation should be consideration
rather than debate.
Their film has been mostly received very badly, except for one or two positive reviews. The criticism of the film has mainly decided that is a work which
perpetuates cultural cliches and racist stereotypes. In other words,
the critics focused on the chinese lady pronouncing her r's as l's in
the opening sequence rather than the nature of her song.
After
their walk the writer returns home to sit at the keyboard of their
computer once more. After staring at it a while they open a play they
have been working on for some time and write a line to be said by the
old cleaning lady, Florry, 'They
are what they are. Just clouds. Some of them full of rain. Some of
them fluffy. That's all there is to it really. Made out of cloud.'
Thinking to themself, 'in a similar way to human beings being made
out of human being', as they stare out of the window. Seeing the mid
afternoon sunshine, which is surely the same sunshine as the early
morning sunshine, though different, they wonder whether they should
get around to brushing their teeth. As they wonder about the weather
and whether to brush their teeth they begin to sing a song.
'Clazy, clazy for feering
so ron'ry. I'm clazy, Clazy for feering so brue. I'm clazy for
clying, clazy for tlying and I'm clazy for roving wu.'
