My Hand Outstretched to The Winged Distance and Sightless Measure

Images from Still Light: Film Notes and Plates by Robert Beavers (1971, Il Torchio). One of the most treasured editions in our library. Jonas Mekas wrote the introduction and he quotes Gregory Markopoulos, who describes the films of Robert Beavers as being composed of "the language of diamonds." 

In reading about Beavers's process, and the shadows that find form in his films, I was immediately struck by his devotion to the act of reading, and the translation of that experience to the cinematic reckoning. Both involve a form of projection. 

Leonardo, Rilke, Ruskin. Texts and textiles, sound and light, architecture and silence, restraint and extravagance. They are all there. Sunrise to sunset. 

And the first line of text on the first page of notes reads: "Show the travel of space which is the projection of film."

*Title of this post is what Beavers has named a series of films he made between 1967 and 1970.

They Saw Tiny Blue Fogs in the Shadows….

Then these children of the open air […] betook themselves to the field-path; and as they went there moved onward with them, around the shadow of each one’s head, a circle of opalized light, formed by the moon’s rays upon the glistening sheet of dew. Each pedestrian could see no halo but his or her own, which never deserted the head-shadow […] but adhered to it, and persistently beautified it; till the erratic motions seemed an inherent part of the irradiation, and the fumes of their breathing a component of the night’s mist…

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They were never out of the sound of some purling weir, whose buzz accompanied their own murmuring, while the beams of the sun, almost as horizontal as the mead itself, formed a pollen of radiance over the landscape. They saw tiny blue fogs in the shadows of trees and hedges…

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Her affection for him […] it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her […] A spiritual forgetfulness co-existed with an intellectual remembrance. She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes of darkness were always spread. They might be receding, or they might be approaching, one or the other, a little every day...

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It was the heavy clay land of Blackmoor Vale, and a part of the Vale to which turnpike-roads had never penetrated. Superstitions linger longest on these heavy soils. Having once been forest, at this shadowy time it seemed to assert something of its old character, the far and the near being blended, and every tree and tall hedge making the most of its presence…

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* Some landscapes from Hardy’s Tess. Irradiation and shadows, forgetfulness and remembrance, presence and absence.

* Images from Way Down East, 1920, D.W. Griffith.

Like Hearing a Whisper and a Rustling....

In the space between the curtains and the blind a dark greenness gushed forth; thin bands of the white froth of morning seeped in between the slats. This might have been my last waking impression or a suspended dream vision. Then I was awakened by something drawing near; sounds were coming closer. Once, twice I sensed it in my sleep. Then they sat perched on the roof of the building next door and leaped into the air like dolphins. I could just as well have said, like balls of fire at a fireworks display, for the impression of fireworks lingered; in falling, they exploded softly against the windowpanes and sank to the earth like great silver stars […] It is very difficult to describe, but when I think back, it is as though something had turned me inside out; I was no longer a solid, but rather a something sunken in upon itself. And the air was not empty, but of a consistency unknown to the daylight senses, a blackness I could see through, a blackness I could feel through, and of which I too was made. Time pulsed in quick little fever spasms. Why should something not happen now that normally never happens? – It’s a nightingale singing outside! – I said half aloud to myself…

But it’s a bit like hearing a whisper and a rustling outside, without being able to distinguish between the two!

...

~ Text: Robert Musil, "The Blackbird" in Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, Archipelago

~ Images by William Henry Fox Talbot

All the Sounds Seemed to Be Sleeping....

All the sounds seemed to be sleeping, or afraid to ring out. Early in the morning or late in the evening, the slow exhalations of foghorns could be heard, exchanging warning signals off in the distance and announcing the presence of boats. They sounded like the plaintive cries of helpless animals. Yes, fog was present in abundance. And then, now and again, there would be yet another beautiful day. And there were days, truly autumnal days, neither beautiful nor desolate, neither particularly agreeable nor particularly gloomy, days that were neither sunny nor dark but rather remained consistently light and dark from morning to dusk, so that four in the afternoon presented just the same vision of the world as eleven in the morning, everything was quiet and pale gold and faintly mournful, the colors withdrew into themselves as if dreaming worried dreams.

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~ Text: from The Assistant by Robert Walser