Part of my goal, my fascination with film, really has to do with the, sometimes minute but very real, differentiation between the angles of incidence. How nobody can see my view exactly. And I can’t see anyone else’s either. It’s really rather mind-blowing if you think about. This variation, this parallax view that always guarantees, no matter how closely intertwined, everyone has a slightly different story, a slightly transverse interpretation on things. Even standing right next to each other and witnessing the same events, will bring discrepancies when the retelling happens in isolation, the two not being able to corroborate and fill in the narrational gaps for each other and thus form a more complete story, which I imagine is a trait good writers have. Myself, I’m too precise and veridical for that and so I stick to lenses and to a lesser extent tennis, which I was never more than good at and so use the latter in a to date satisfactory attempt to, with the Academy of course - understanding that no matter how much I tried, trained or concentrated on bending the court to my will, I’d never make it to The Show - support the former.
But back to parallax; I always thought that it was a rather disappointing phenomenon and, at its core, essentially responsible for every disagreement ever. Secondarily, and therefore deemed far less important, I want to disprove my burgeoning theory that the only reason anything at all exists, or ever existed was and is because of my own very tangible and corporeal presence in this three dimensional world; perception is limiting and very well can veil truths, be they slight or consisting of enormity. Oh no not the shallow truths that anyone can discern but the real fundamental truths that make life inherently worth living; those truths that are so hard to define without circling back and using the very word or words in the explanation of what you’re trying to define. Am I being clear or is what I’m trying to say; is it becoming more diffuse and randomly kaleidoscopic with every word? I can’t really even tell anymore but I’d sure like to rectify that so no part of what I or you see is left out and abstract to each other. We should both concretely agree just how the striations differ; how far they are apart and of the exact binomial nomenclature of the trilobite fossils contained therein. The primordial make up must be agreed upon if we’re ever to advance to anything more than polemic stasis.
It might just be me trying to stave of my descent into pure, unadulterated solipsism but I’m hoping it’s something a little deeper and more profound than that. I’d at least like to think it is anyway. And wouldn’t it take an outsider’s point of view to figure that out anyway? In most cases yes would be the answer but in my particular situation I don’t have the luxury of being able to create a fantasy with which I, my very own self, can be satisfied is an adequate justification for existence on this plane, or any other, for that matter. And, of course, given my gift (curse) of not being able to take anything that could even be called the most rudimentary solace in any shoddy, half-through, thought-out traditions that most people believe in wholeheartedly, I can only take comfort in the seemingly real fact that I do in fact exist. Being apparently here, and able to feel and think and have a modicum of self-awareness is the only thing I’ve come to totally believe in so far.
Might it be as simple as DNA? That the apogee of the helix is known only to the present (X) minus one plus some random decimal that goes on ad infinitum all the way back to the primordial stew where it all began as some random happenstance or was absolutely directed with intent in mind? It’s hard to tell. What is it that makes uniformity so apparent on the surface but doesn’t quite hold together when you look subcutaneously? Or maybe that’s the reverse; differences are easily discernible upon a scan of the outside but when you look inside, that where the real variations lie. It’s hard to tell and maybe Einstein was right; that it’s all relative and a matter of perspective no matter what. What you see, think, hear and feel is all just a matter of what frame of reference you’re looking through. He said that that’s the case except with light; which seems strange and counter intuitive given that light seems to be part of the universe not a part from it and should conform to the laws just like everything else apparently does. Unless, of course, the whole picture hasn’t quite revealed itself to us yet. But science can be a filthy prostitute too. It portends to be the truth but if you corner any true scientist and ask them they should tell you that all science is a statistical probability and that outcomes are only what happens a majority of the time and that there is in fact a certain amount of latitude for other unexpected outcomes. And it might be some tiny sliver but in said sliver lie infinities.
All the way back to Galileo at least and probably way before that; and I’m only considering current recorded history, not those that may or may not have been completely erased by their own doing or some natural disaster - and surely evidence is all around us in the form of abandoned or decimated civilizations that at some point in the past (our future) there was technology that they had common knowledge of but is now lost - lenses, even the most meticulously manufactured ones have had slight variations in the chips that constitute them and even when all those splinters are melted and uniformity is achieved through the smelting process there will still be slight differences in the molecular structure of the viscous liquid that’s created and that always ends up in the final product. Again both a curse and a blessing, our willingness and or ability to forget and move on. And the ‘five fingers’ is the only thing, lately, that helps me dull the overwhelming hum that is the oscillation; the very vibration of ‘inanimate’ and live objects. That seems to be the real symptom of all things in the universe. This ‘Brownian’ motion that seems to be the only predictable signature of all things both living and non. And well just how does parallax affect that one may ask? If everything’s always moving than every moment of observation will yeild a slightly different result. It’s all about the instrumentation and the level of sophistication of the observer and the ability of said observer to relate what he or she sees to the average, ordinary mindless citizen in a way they’ll understand while at the same time not making them feel dumb…
Even though that may be contrary to any human that can actually think. I’m not exactly sure what it is; why people get all inimical and defensive when they don’t understand what people say. But they do most of the time - back to the probabilistic nature of science and how all my experimentation leads me to believe that it’s all some weird circle we’re stuck in in this lifetime. My medium, of late, has been film and I strive over and over to evoke the same emotions, illicit the same verbal responses but so far I’ve only every come close. And this in no way indicates that I want same ness in all things. If we were all cookie-cutter versions of each other, we would never have to speak to each other. We would just inherently know. It’s not the variety I’m trying to quell; just the uniform interpretation of events I intend to foster. Or die trying…
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