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Jacki Apple: One Word at a Time (1994)

© Jacki Apple 1994. All rights reserved.


1. ONE WORD AT A TIME

One word at a time.

[AUDIO]

(Water
dripping

drip...




(sound of
freeway...









Ebb/flow
like waves






.......)


4. APPARITION

A full moon appears at about the same level as my
right ear just right of center in the upper quadrant of
the screen. I look over my shoulder. Nothing there. The
orb of light hasn't moved. Identifying it as a moon is
a first glance unproven assumption. It might just as well
be a very bright star. A white dwarf even.


5. PAW PRINTS ON THE EVENT HORIZON

"You can't sit there", I implored, "It's unhealthy.
You'll get radiated!"
He stubbornly resisted all efforts to dislodge him.
I imagine him beginning to glow, his orangeness becoming
incandescent. His face is right next to the door on the
screen. He grins, Cheshire variety, ear twitching.




(wind....









Chimes




Chimes







....wind)




(pigeons...

















.......)


6.


7. BIG BROTHER HAS A BIG MOUTH (don't stick your tongue in it)

(Thunder
clap...


(clock
ticking...



tick
tock


tick


8. SWISS CHEESE (as to a mouse)

The words TRAP DOOR appear on the screen.


9. SKY WRITING (the turn of a phrase)

"....a house of wind and voice", wrote Bachelard
in The Poetics of Space, "...hovers on the frontier
between reality and unreality".

"You've tampered with the quote", says the parrot
disapprovingly.

"Yes", I reply, exhaling very slowly, holding my
palms up to the light. "But so did Bachelard."

ART\n. 1. skill acquired by experience, study, or
observation.

Syn. ART, SKILL, CUNNING, CRAFT, ARTIFICE the faculty
of executing well what one has devised. ART distinctively
implies a personal unanalyzable creative power."
He turns the page.
ARTIFICE\n. 1. an artful strategm; TRICK. Syn. see ART.


(Dwarf
vocals...





Tap
dancing


dwarf





..........)


...pages..



loon


pages...



........)


10. WE ARE ALL DWARFED BY THE SYSTEM (a sample performance)
START PROGRAM


"Always taking things apart, you don't know how to
make in the first place",
he taunts gleefully.

"Footnote, footnote", he proclaims, doing a little
tap dance.

"Pan-cultural post-postmodernism is just another
critics' ruse, a way to inflate your own status. It's
your revenge against artists!" snarls a pony-tailed
head sporting half a dozen earrings, as it looms over
sword.




(Carousel
music...






laughter..
tap
dancing


big laughs





high-
pitched
baby laugh



music
begins...


The spiky-haired one snaps his braces aggressively,
and shoves a microphone into the Larger Dwarf's face.


The Larger Dwarf has jowls, rumpled graying hair
that curls over his collar, and those little half glasses
that sit on the end of a long nose.

"Frenetic kineticism", he scrawls in his leather-
bound notebook. He taps his pencil in a sharp gesture
of punctuation, raises his eyebrows peering over his
glasses, the corners of his mouth turning downward.

See: Language and Facial expression.



double
laughs





laugh


music end.


Dwarf
vocals


snores...


........
laughs










snores


"The ability to produce doesn't necessarily imbue
the product with any particular significance, a mani-
festation of late post-industrial culture..." shrugging
his shoulders "in which Neo-primitivism is a very
interesting phenomena..."

"Now if we could just put this in an interview format
with call-ins", counters one with wire-rimmed glasses,
Power Book in hand, as the spiky-haired Dwarf flips
through the air, a whirling dervish chanting
"Opera, opera".


laughs



music...


















...plus
"Do You
Wanna
Dance"
disco






full
house
applause...

PROGRAM DIRECTOR to PRODUCTION ENGINEER
END PROGRAM


[Language and Facial Expression.Observational data.] **

The use of musculature in the
utterance of different languages
appears to determine facial de-
meanor which may cause misinter-
pretations in intercultural ex-
changes.

EXAMPLE: The preponderance of
vowel sounds pushed up from the
throat thrusting the lower lip
outward result in the impression
that the French never smile.
While the sharp precise conson-
ant sounds thrust by the tongue
through open lips give the im-
pression that the Japanese smile
all the time.









disco out





........)
SILENCE


11.
(We are not where we are, therefore we are where we are not.)


13.
"
Umhmm, says the Traveler, now we're getting somewhere."




(wind.....


scraping




munching




........









.........)





14.

"I've been thinking about potatoes", says Dr. Chamb,
opening a large volume on civilizations of the Andes,
replete with illustrations and diagrams on terraced
agriculture and all manner of tubers and roots, a hundred
and fifty varieties.

" amarilla, llamellina, papa seca, ulluku, uqa,
mashua, maca, puka pina " he begins to chant.....

"Can you tell me, please," he asks, "how can we buy a VCR?"



15. THE POSSIBLE SHAPE OF THINGS THAT ARE (a dialogue)

"Stephen, why is the universe the way we see it?"

"Well, if it had been different, we would not be here!"

"Can you elaborate."

"For example if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different stars either would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium or else they would not have exploded. From what we know at present, it seems clear that there are relatively few ranges of values for the fundamental numbers that would allow the development of any form of intelligent life. Of course there might be other forms of intelligent life we cannot even imagine that do not require the light of a star or the heavier chemical elements made in stars and flung back into space when they explode. But then they would inhabit another kind of universe than the one which we are able to observe."


(Andean











..........)



(clock
ticking...


















"So the conditions of life as we know it and its evolution are
very specific to the laws of this universe?"

"Yes. At least it appears that way as far as we know."

"Then can we consider the possibility that the fact that we are
here is in some way as necessary to the existence of the universe as we understand it, as it is to our existence."

"That's an interesting hypothesis. I haven't really looked at it
quite that way. What do you have in mind?"

"Taking into account the probable existence of the physical
embodiment of intelligent life in various stages of its evolution
throughout the universe, a significant enough portion of it being
humanoid, and similarly pursuing these questions, there's the uniquely human phenomena of the compulsion, one might even say the necessity,to make art, which I am suggesting acts as a counterbalance to the destructive forces. A cat does not compose symphonies, nor does he wage war."

"And though I can't be entirely sure, I don't suppose a cat goes about asking himself how the universe began or will end, or worries about why he's here and what does that mean. He just is."

"Which is also like saying that he doesn't need to ask the
question because the answer is contained in the fact of his existence. It's a bit like your 'no-boundary' theory. Which is, well, kind of Zen, don't you think? I mean, the idea that maybe "imaginary time" is really the real time, and what we call real time is just a figment of our imaginations, something we invented to help us describe what we think the universe is like, which we have to do in order to know why we exist in it. What I'm getting at is that the energy being exerted and emitted in this exchange is keeping the universe from collapsing; that is, this activity is necessary to maintaining the balance of order and disorder, expansion and contraction."


"So your talking about intelligent life as a kind of fuel, a
nutrient necessary to the continuing life of the universe as it
exists. That is, it's state of expansion necessary for intelligent life."

"In a sense. But think of it as a corollary to the black hole
problem. Particle/antiparticle, opposing forces of gravity. We're
talking about creative as opposed to entrophic forces. For example -- Can we make a mathematical model of the actual energy generated by consciousness? Since we don't really know very much about how consciousness behaves outside it's containment in the physical body."

"That's an interesting proposition."

"Equally important is the question of the kind and type of
frequencies -- disruptive, harmonic, etc. in the overall equation. So it's not just that we think, but the content of our thoughts and the form of expression. In terms of electro-magnetic resonances, how is the balance of things affected by what we fill the air with?"

"If you were just dealing with the planetary environment in this century, it wouldn't seem very promising would it? In terms of pure malevolence and dissonance, that is...."

"Well just in terms of artistic practice, not to mention the
problem of media space, I think this is a major challenge for the 21st century, but that's a whole other philosophical discussion...."



























tick tock
.........)


16. SOMETHING ABOUT AN EMERALD CITY

"EXCELLENT!" says the Traveler. She turns over another
card. PSEUDOPODIA. False feet.


17. YOU KNOW HOW TO WHISTLE, DON'T YOU....
"We are the music-makers, and the dreamers of dreams",
Shakespeare declares with some satisfaction.

"I always suspected you were an optimist", T.S. Elliot replies. "I'd put it this way -- we are the music, while the music lasts!"

"And every time Pavarotti sings he keeps the universe from collapsing," I say.

"The probability is that you are all correct", Einstein chuckles. "You know, I always liked Fred Astaire and those Gershwin boys."


(tap dancing...








more tap
dancers...





















.........)

18. PHANTOM UNIVERSE:\CULTURE


19.

"Ugly skin bags of water!", MURK bellowed, the
thunderous vibration flinging the alien humanoids off
his belly like fleas off a dog.


(satellites
beeping in
phased
conversations













.........)

20. TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING

It's just across the border, you know, in that
Phantom Universe otherwise known as Culture --
violation, ravishment, blood and bones, rubble and ashes...

 


It has yet to be proven that the energy generated
from a group of people chanting certain ritual songs
can't make it rain.

"You don't get radio messages for free!" countered
the very down-to-earth Dr. Rood. "And I don't see them
making such an expensive investment to communicate with
primitives like us."



(music...



.......














Train
whistle..)





pigeons
cooing





drip...



22.


23. METAMORPH

In a high-ceilinged room in a disappearing city of old torch songs and creaking stairs, a woman receives footsteps, messages without signals. Her hearing becomes so acute that sometimes there are so many voices they blot out the sound of the outside world. Slowly she learns how to shift frequencies, to sort out harmony and dissonance, to move between dimensions of reality. But she is unable to leave the room, even when she walks the streets of the city.

****


24.

See Baudelaire's Dwarf.
"A Heroic Death".



.......)


(lullaby****
..........
Footsteps




.........


........)

25. YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN.... (rain...
....and
river...

































...rain
fades...
bird
chirps...)

26. GOING BETWEEN

The door slams shut disappearing from the screen.

For what seems a very long moment everything vanishes,
all light and sound. I have no sensations whatsoever, and
it occurs to me that I might no longer be in my body.
First naming the parts then the action, one word at a time
I reconstruct myself from the inside out until I picture my
hands at the end of my arms thrusting forward and apart as
if throwing open drapes.

"Welcome", says the Traveler.

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