We live to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
Everything obscured. Obliterated.
Layered over, as Hockney says.
Matthew Brady moving the dead
instead of the cameras, circa Civil War.
Manipulating the image.
Making it more.
We talked about which movies we like.
Really. And so the drama:
Call me Ishmael and all that
through however many chapters
until the Rachel appears, and finds you clinging
to drowned Queequeg's coffin.
But what of the reliability of retrospection?
The eyewitnesses' embellishments.
Unintentional yet instrumental.
How you enter the frame and alter it?
Enter the room and the conversations change?
You're not surprised, are you?
The Doobie Brothers' Long Train Running
and you on lunch break from the bureaucracy
with a reference librarian
and they're doing a sound check
and people are beginning to segue
into the weekend.
He said. She said. Muddied.
Wait. Let's run through that again.
Warmify it this time, please.
Manipulate the image.
Move the dead.
Later, comparing notes
for the retrospective report
due Monday morning on your boss's desk.
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| Francesca Woodman |