Here is your script, written and unwritten: lights, camera, action!
This short film by Penny Lane surprises us by the self-conscious gestures that these women seem unaware of, but that their bodies persist in communicating. It becomes so obvious, that once we notice it, we can’t unnotice it. This is, of course, a reality show, and the producers and contestants are negotiating what is real and what is not. But this line is not so distinct after awhile.
Penny Lane said someone described the movie to her as “these everyday miserable quiet moments that most people aren’t paying attention to. And I wanted you to pay attention to things that you think are normal and make them feel a bit strange.”
Clearly, there is a highly performative aspect of this reality show. But many people have written books and songs about how highly performative our lives can become, until something happens for us to ask, “How did I get here?” (Thank you, David Byrne). Performative childhood, gender, sports, marriage and so on……Is it performance as play to see how things fit, or will we be as Yeats asks: “tattered coats upon a stick” ?
I remember Patricia Arquette, who plays the mother in the movie Boyhood being suddenly surprised by her own rush of tears as she is packing up her apartment before her son moves off to college. It seems a dam has now broken inside of her as she says, “I just thought there would be more….”
What happens to the feelings inside of us with some of the sounds turned down, and some turned up?
What are these women crying about? How would they describe what they are crying about?
What will be the story they tell in one month, one year, or later?
We are bodies first: body–egos. Our brains live in individual bodies, but they also live within larger systems of community and nations. In neuropsychology the brain is now considered emboddied (in the body) of the person, but also embedded in the environment. We live surrounded by, immersed really, in the power of images and the power of words.
Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that we are bodies first, living in actual space and time: like remembering to chew our food, instead of swallowing it whole, and getting a taste for ourselves. Actually, it is better to do something physical like lie down on the ground everyday. It is going back through the body door to break up the habitual neurological patterns.
Home is body, voice, relationships, ground: part refuge and part freedom.
What do you want to Turn UP?
What are you going to turn DOWN?
(Photo: Face of the Statue of Liberty, Interior View before assemblage at Bedloe’s Island, 1885
Photographer Unidentified)
Be well,
Marlene
Featured photograph by Rinzi Ruiz, @rinzizen, rinziruizphotography.com
Statue of Liberty photograph courtesy of Patty Nowicki
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