Moments by Will Hoffman
This is the only thing you need to know about the world today. When you're done watching get up, go outside, and watch for moments. I am. See you later.
I'm back. It made me remember this:
There is a world dimensional
For those untwisted
By the love of things irreconcilable.
--Hart Crane
Sometimes, far too seldom, I like to go out into my neighborhood of Queen Anne in Seattle. I like to go out and see what the world dimensional is up to, and to exercise my far-too-sedentary body. The problem is I don't do it enough. It never seems compelling. Jogging, walking, reps of all sorts for exercise's sake fill my spirit with inertia. To the sleeping mind all walks seem the same -- pretty flower, overgrown lawn, cute little house, sad big McMansion, jogger with perky breasts, jogger with miles to go hanging from her thighs. As the song says, "All in all, it's all the same. / Just call me if there's any change."
But, from time to time, out I go. And recently when I went out the mantra, "There's never nothing happening," echoed in my mind. I decided to test it. I decided to wake up and take a look around.
Waking up when you're already awake is something that takes constant effort and a life to learn. You first need to wake up to the fact that you are sleep-living; a state that most humans inhabit every waking second of their life. Just knowing isn't enough though. You have to decide to wake up, to be present in the present, and inhabit the present moment no matter what your monkey mind may do to return you to slumber.
It doesn't take a sage to glance at the current political and social and entertainment landscape of America to tell you that many prefer sleep-living to wakefulness. Not only that, the sleepers have a growing resentment towards those who continue to insist on wakefulness. It is as if much of our nation has fallen "half in love with easeful death;" with freedom and government set on cruise control. That's only one reason why it is more important than ever to know and to act in the world every moment in the belief, "There's never nothing happening."
Looking out into my little world up above Seattle on the crest of Queen Anne Hill, I got Berraized and "saw a lot just by observing."
I recorded it all on my mental video: Here are some jump cuts, zooms, slo-mo and freeze frames:
Couple having coffee outside Tully's. He's expounding. She's listening, smiling a false smile and pretending to be fascinated. Not married. They will marry; him out of a need for love, her out of a greed for things. It will last until his need is not met and/or her greed not satisfied. Written on the wind.
"No good. No bueno. Hustling myself." Pause. And begin again. Look around and look deeper. This moment. This one. Once and once only.
Mixed race couple holding hands and walking with their two beautiful children, boy and girl, the coffee-colored compromise of America made real, heading to the Safeway. Their love as strong and lithe as their children.
Yuppie couple coming back from the Safeway. He hasn't shaved. She doesn't care. Their little girl in the stroller is pumping her chubby pink legs trying to kick off her new pink flip-flops.
Trendy young girl with spider-web tattoo on shoulder listens intently on her cell-phone to a friend and then complains that their numbers may be recorded by the NSA. Crosses the street unconsciously confident that no car within ten thousand miles will explode. Resenting the reasons why.
Homeless man sitting half in the street reading a thumbed paperback he's plucked from the garbage can next to him. It's a page turner and he's turning the page.
Couple lounging outside the laundromat. At ease with each other and waiting for their tumbling, mixed laundry to finish drying. Her hand brushes lightly along his thigh. He pushes his thigh against her hand. May their clothes dry quickly.
One overwhelming orange bloom of an Opium poppy growing alone out of a heap of rich black compost in a back alley.
Scrawled sign above a raft of reeking garbage cans in same alley, "Get Out! Police have been called."
Whirring slapzap of a weed-whacker shaving a small man's small patch of lawn. Scent of the fresh cut grass blowing across the road past the corner house which sports a skull and cross-bones flag on a pole, and a line of worn Tibetan prayer flags strung along the porch.
A sleek jogger swoops by across the street, her bare shoulders pale in the sun, her bright red hair lifting in the lambent light behind her as she runs into a wind of her own making.
The cell phone sounds the opening bars of the 9th Symphony. An old friend reveals a moment of God's grace and the ending of a pain that has been with him daily for decades.
Listening to his relief and happiness, I turn a corner towards my own home and come face to face with a small gray house festooned, roof to lawn, in a thick drenching of lilac blossoms that tumble my mind into blankness with the tsunami of their perfume.
I walk onto my own lawn and stand for a moment under the 40 foot willow shimmering above me and glance into the play ground across the way where a basketball game flows back and forth across the blacktop. Pass, catch, run, jump, shoot, rebound, nothing but net.
The light of life and the hand of God lie gently across all of Queen Anne on this afternoon.
"There's never nothing happening."
Posted by Vanderleun at August 19, 2009 11:19 AM
Writing well is good, being able to write what you see is very good. When you write about what you see it's a pleasure. Thanks.
Be back in a moment.
Posted by: Dennis at August 19, 2009 1:14 PMI took the whole day for my moment in the sun, by the sea, alone. Hurricane Bill had pulled the moisture away from the shore and a balmy 89 degrees with a frisky breeze had me asleep under the umbrella in no time.
Not too many lonely, nearly desolate beaches left in Florida, so when you find one, you dare not tell another soul. Two miles of beach and only a handful of sunbathers. shhhh!
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at August 19, 2009 1:37 PMA camera.
I carry a camera to freeze these moments.
It's like the frame that you toss at random into a natural area.
It allows you to see. Really see.
(Ya could'a given us a heads-up on that fish decapitation. I was just finishing my spaghetti)
Posted by: Cathy at August 19, 2009 3:10 PMNot a single religious artifact or building to be seen; not one person at prayer. No place, no moment for God.
Posted by: mrp at August 19, 2009 5:12 PMAllow me to suggest a poetic complement to the video.
Moments
Like the manna, mute as snow,
Swift the moments come and go,
Each sufficient for the needs
Of the multitude it feeds;
One to all, and all to one,
Superfluity to none,
Ever dying but to give
Life whereon alone we live.
John B. Tabb (1845-1909)
The Blog from the Core: Tabb Centenary Year XIII
"No place, no moment for God."
They're all moments of God. All of them. God's moments depend not and require no prayers, symbols, or buildings. Where were they or we when he raised the foundations of the cosmos?
"THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;"
No, Gerard - not all of the moments enacted by Man are made for God's Glory. Some are, but some, perhaps most, are played out for the Devil's amusement. There are moments of prayerful work, of joyful leisure, and charity. And then there are moments of pure, unmitigated evil.
It's a pretty video, but it is not Truth. Film is unreal - it presents, benignly or not, the POV of the people responsible for its production (an argument generations old). It could easily have ended with an Obama logo.
I simply noticed that for the entire gamut of human emotions displayed throughout, no explicit or implied relationship between the human beings and their Creator is present in the work.
Posted by: mrp at August 19, 2009 6:21 PMI noticed an implicit relationship with God in every frame. But as you will. I'm not here to sell you inscape or a Bible.
Posted by: vanderleun at August 19, 2009 6:28 PMI know you're not, Gerard. I'm interested in what Hoffman is selling.
Posted by: mrp at August 19, 2009 6:35 PMI looked and saw not one
No beads between fingers
No lamps lit and filled
With rose-scented oil.
What I saw before me was as
That first prayer probably
I looked and I perceived
And was filled full.
It was as though (not maybe)
The elements themselves
Sat ready rolling, tumbling
About to be made whole.
Hearing no word or song
Sounds all about, carnival
Whirling, crashing, calling
Strike iron, and ring the bell!
One, three, six, nine, eleven;
Such may be the prayer of Heaven.
(PS)
Posted by: RiverC at August 19, 2009 6:37 PMIsn't that why the Japanese invented haiku and senryu? They're even more vivid than film, I think, because as you read them, you live them.
Posted by: John Ziemba at August 19, 2009 8:18 PMExactly so, I think. A formal way of recording a moment. In which the seen is also felt. I think the primary effect of the senryu has to be aimed at a knowing implicit in the image.
The imagists used the basic structure, but I think they seldom got the vibration correct. Imagist work always comes off as being just a tad too portentous. It always wants to have a precise edge to it rather than the more feathered wet on wet effect of the senryu.
Posted by: Vanderleun at August 19, 2009 9:39 PMI so get this. I've watched it 3 times now. Thank you for posting this. When the little girl blows the bubble, then flinches..
Sending along to some others.. Thank you Sir!
Posted by: DD at August 20, 2009 1:14 AMBeautiful film, beautiful writing.
Thank you.
Tweeting as art.
Regarding the issue of religious or spiritual "stuff" ... St. Francis said: Preach the Gospel constantly. Use words {or stuff} when necessary.
Where love is, there God is also. Details are available on request.
Posted by: AskMom at August 20, 2009 7:57 AM"We do not remember days, we remember moments."
Cesare Pavese
Thank you for this reminder...to be aware of the moments.
Posted by: M*A at August 20, 2009 8:58 AMThe film is apparently a viral advertisement demonstrating Mr. Hoffman's command of the latest video technology. Any or all of the "moments" might be re-arranged or deleted to sell a client's product(s); perhaps the New York Times, or maybe Planned Parenthood (no doubt the PPer's applauded the "moment" where the man unwrapped a rubber and fell back on the bed/couch/floor. A film that is nothing more than a series of fragmentary, inconclusive, non-committal "moments" that could mean anything. That is not Life, and it sure as Hell isn't love.
Gerard, I have told you before that you may have missed your calling.
Rev. Don
Posted by: Donald Sensing at August 20, 2009 2:01 PMIt's never too late, is it? And besides, I've been keeping up on my reading.
Posted by: vanderleun at August 20, 2009 2:41 PMmrp - since you desire a bit of religion:
We should not expect that the world - or video makers - respect our religious leaning, whether it be true or false or a mixture of the two. In fact, we should assume that the falser it is, the more they will affirm it.
That aside, the word in Greek which represents the notion of time as moments - i.e. discrete instead of continuous time (chronos) is 'kairos'. In the Revelation of John, first chapter, he says that the 'time' is soon or near. The word in greek is.. 'kairos' (1:3 - kairos eggis).
This is the notion; the time for salvation is now. It is in these moments - which come to us unadorned with religious significance since there is arguably no coherent natural theology - in which we either find salvation or damnation.
While what you say about Hoffman is true, it is precisely the ambiguity of these moments that makes it masterful, not the other way around. What a person says about them - including the condom moment - says more about themselves than about the persons therein who are likely actors - or at the least we have no idea what happens before or after.
If we are spiritually mature, it is up to us to take each of these moments - and ourselves pray the prayer. In this sense consider a litany; we pray for the servants of Christ John, Mary, Frank, John, Robert, Elijah... who says that at that moment of prayer what is going on with each person is not as this video displays? Of all of the people you care for, is it so certain that one of them is not secretly cutting off the life of the unborn?
If we do otherwise - that is to say - do not pray for those recorded there (if real) we may have a piety, but it is not a Christian piety. It is instead the piety of the pagans who killed the Christians.
It is that piety which demands the outward forms of religion, demands a sacrifice to its idols, instead of permitting that it be crucified and stand in as a representative of that fallen, but still painfully beautiful, cosmos.
Apologies for the harsh words. Pray for me, the sinner.
Posted by: RiverC at August 20, 2009 3:57 PMWell, I am in tears. Thank you, Gerard.
Posted by: Mrs Whatsit at August 20, 2009 4:13 PMThank you, RiverC, for your thoughtful reply. I did not -expect- nor do I expect in the future that Mr. Hoffman (or any other film maker) will included religious iconography in their work. I did notice its absence. Including icons, whether religious, political, or corporate in a video certainly reduces ambiguity, does it not? It compels the viewer to confront a distinct POV.
As to the "moments" in the work, whose "moments" are they? Do they belong to the viewer? To the actors? To the film maker? Yes, we live in moments - moments of joy, terror, hope, loving tenderness, etc., but I am not addressing in -any- of my comments the "moments" each one of us has experienced in our own lives. All of my comments in this thread are devoted to a discrete media presentation created by Mr. Hoffman. And your recognition of the ambiguity of Mr. Hoffman's "moments" makes my point.
Since they can mean anything, they can be used to sell anything. One may find God in each frame - Great! Append the logo of any religious denomination at the end of the film. Or a publisher might find the "moments" a convincing means of selling newspapers, etc. Does the phrase "Kodak Moments" ring a bell?
I bet Mr. Obama could even use Mr. Hoffman's video to sell government health care.
Posted by: mrp at August 20, 2009 9:46 PM
Life is too short not to take time and look at the little things around you. That is where I find my happiness.
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