Julian gave this lecture to his freshman class in the winter of 1999. The students graduated this year.
A Tibetan mystic says: "Words are the seals of the mind, results -- or, more correctly, stations, -- of an infinite series of experiences, which reach from an unimaginably distant past into the present, and which feel their way into an equally unimaginable distant future. They are 'the audible that clings to the inaudible,' the forms and potentialities of thought, which grow from that which is beyond thought." Yes, each word that we utter has come down to us through time, loaded with the history -- the individual stories -- of all those people who uttered them before us, and thus infused them with their personal meanings; we ourselves, in uttering them infuse them with the meaning of our own personal stories.
The eastern philosophies use the repetition of mantras as a spiritual practice. Mantras are words which are charged with the hidden energy of the universe; they embody the functioning of our spiritual, mental, and physical mechanisms. Thus mantras are words which not only describe but have the power to be what they describe. They are words which embody the origin of all actions, all phenomena. Thus when you hear someone describe you by saying: "He's all words and no action," perhaps you should be proud. Joking aside, the word "mantra" is at the root of our English word "mind," via the Latin "mens," meaning mind, and "monere," to remind, whose roots are in the Greek "menos," meaning spirit. Our English word "memory" also belongs to the same family of words. And if we can speak of a family of words, the word "image" is not such a distant cousin either, and gets invited with no resentment at all to all such family get-togethers.
Thus images are the steam, the imaginal vapor which words emit. She or he who knows the secret of words knows the secret of images, knows the secret of stories.
Our whole lives are a weaving of stories; we even ask the silent morning glories to tell us what those stories are; when we rush to lunch it is because we can't wait to share with our friends and coconspirators today's gossip stories; we do this even though we know we're not supposed to talk with our mouths full; on the way home from work, we stop at supermarket, where, waiting in line at the register, we peruse and half believe the stories that scandal sheets would have us believe; and in the evening, the old couple, or the young one, eating dinner wordlessly across the vastness of the dinner table, that too tells us a story; a story with words, yes, but words unspoken, words as thoughts, darting like cockroaches trapped in the sudden horror of the kitchen light. And after that is the story everyone knows about, the story at 11.
And then when we go to bed our dreams are the spinning of many stories; we don't really know who spins those stories but the story goes there are two or three ladies, the Fates I think they are called, who live in the moon and spin the yarn which makes up the stories of our lives, and contrive, whenever fancy strikes them, to sever the yarn, which ends this round of our story. And do you think it is a coincidence that "webster," the moniker of America's word meister, in fact signifies a "female weaver"? In the old country it was indeed the distaff side of the family who was in charge of weaving, along with our sweaters and socks, words into stories.
*
I grew up in Romania where, because we had neither TV nor central heating, we sat around the fire in the terra-cotta stove every winter evening and told stories; one such evening, when I was about seven or eight, I sat nestled under the cozy weave of a woolen blanket next to my downstairs neighbor whose name was Bridget, and whom I had a crush on -- she was a year older than I and in those days I liked older women -- while Bridget's mother weaved us a Hansel and Gretel-like tale about a boy, who in order to get his sweetheart out of the clutches of an evil old witch, had to bring the witch a bowl of magic strawberries; in order to get the magic strawberries he had to go to a magic field -- perhaps Strawberry Fields Forever - and blow a magic horn. Then the magical strawberries would magically sprout and all he would have to do is gather them in a bowl.
The little boy manages to get the magic horn, but is bereft of the bowl, and the only person in the neighborhood in possession of a bowl big enough for the magical strawberries is a very stingy old man. The old man has no problem lending out his bowl but he has to have some collateral; and the only collateral the little boy has is his magical horn. So they barter: the little boy would go to the field and blow his magical horn; the strawberries would sprout; he would then rush to the old man's house, trade the horn for the bowl, rush back to the field and fill the bowl with strawberries which he would then take to the evil old witch's, who would take them as barter for his sweetheart. So, the little boy blows the magic horn, and up pop the magic strawberries; so far so good; the little boy rushes to the stingy old man's house, trades the horn for the bowl, returns to the field to find, what? the strawberries gone! He rushes back to the old man's house, trades back the bowl for the horn, rushes back the magic field, blows the horn again, and once again, up pop the strawberries; rushes back to the old man's house, trades the horn for the bowl, returns to the magic field: strawberries gone. This goes on a number of times, in the manner that manner of tales tell it.
Bridget and I were wrapped tight into the story and into each other; our interwoven fingers were tense with anticipation; my mother was sowing or darning or crocheting and my father had just thrown another log into terra-cotta stove; and just then, there was the tramping of heavy boots up the stairs to our third floor walk up apartment, then the insistent knocks on the door. It was Bridget's father, who was a colonel in the Romanian army; he was being mobilized that very night to the Hungarian border; the Russian troops were invading Hungary to crush the Hungarian uprising and the Romanian army was ordered to be on the alert; he needed his bags packed. Bridget's mother abruptly interrupted the story; her face clouded up and without a word snatched Bridget from the weave of our cozy nest, and...
I never heard the end of that story. History was in the making somewhere, and it rudely and contemptuously deemed itself worthy of interfering with my story. There was nothing I could do then: history brought an army to back it.
Still, I remember wondering at the time if the invading Russian army, who apparently had the power to quell a people's longing for freedom, could have managed to snatch the little girl from the clutches of the evil old witch.
On the other hand, since I was the little boy in the story, the Russian army had, so to speak, rudely and contemptuously contrived to snatch my girl away from me. I vowed revenge.
*
Years later when Bridget was 15 and I had painfully become aware of her exquisite form, trained as it was by gymnastics -- her trainer was the same as Nadia Comaneci's -- we packed up our suitcases, Bridget and her mother and my mother and I, and took the train to a little resort town by the Black Sea, only a few short kilometers away from where Roman poet Ovid, in exile, wrote his classic "Metamorphosis."
Our accommodations were meager. Romania was, and still is, a very poor country. All four of us crowded into one tiny rented room in a dilapidated shack on the beach owned by a local fisherman. There were two beds in the room and fate would have it the ruling mothers decreed they would share one bed while Bridget and I another.
My heart pounded in concealed anticipation. How could it be, I wondered: Bridget had a reputation in the neighborhood, and all the contributors to that reputation were quite a lot older than I was. The lights went out. I was unbearably shy in those days, so when I felt Bridget's warm foot touch mine, an infinitely more pleasurable sensation than the one of the hot water bottle we were used to in winter, I had to first assure myself that she didn't just fall asleep. Next I had to assure myself that I wasn't asleep and dreaming. My fingers shyly shifted and crept the short distance to touch hers; and, glory! she responded by quickly interweaving her fingers with mine. What followed must have been the quietest embrace in the history of love. Bridget kept placing her lovely fingers to my lips each time I broke into a sigh.
But, once again those dreaded interruptions: the next day on the beach she fell in with a group of theatre people, vacationing actors and directors from the graduating class of the Theatre Academy of Bucharest and didn't show up for the next three nights. Later the frenzied mothers and heartbroken moi found she had spent them in the arms of an actor, named Tiberius. He must have told her a story, and it must have been a very good one.
It seems that knowing what story to tell and how to tell it gets you somewhere, somewhere I knew I wanted to be. That was the beginning of my show business career: I decided that to tell stories for a living is the only way to go.
That was the end of that story, this time around anyway. Bridget and I may still have a story to share in the next life. In this life however Bridget and I saw less and less of each other; perhaps we brushed by on the stairs once or twice, but our embrace was never mentioned again. It wasn't an evil witch who stole her from me, but someone certainly had bewitched her.
And to this day I still don't know what the outcome of the witch story is either, or what its moral may have been, except perhaps you shouldn't barter with witches and stingy old men; especially that you shouldn't barter for love and for poetry, which is the only metaphor I can discern in the magic horn and the strawberries. Perhaps that story has no ending or perhaps it has an ending I am supposed to find for myself. Or maybe it's just that the Beatles lied when they promised us Strawberry Fields Forever.
I lied too. Her name was not Bridget but Geta, a common enough name in Romania, but here it's not, and I was afraid you might confuse her with a Volkswagen. And it wasn't a room in a fisherman's shack we rented. It was a still a room, a single room, but in a boring brand new building twenty minutes from the beach, by foot. But I figured a fisherman's shack sounded a little more exotic.
All I'm saying is that I told you a story. In telling you this I am telling you the story of the story I told you. You're never not telling a story. Who knows, it might even be her trainer wasn't the same as Nadia's. Please, don't hold it against me. Bridget, I mean Geta, was real and I get goose bumps to think of her even now, thirty five years later.
Besides, you too told a story when you applied to go to school here. It must have been a good story because we believed you and now you're in. And we also told you a story to get you to come here. It worked, because you're here. What the hell, even the president tells stories. But we're not going to dwell on that here.
*
Hasn't each one of us has waited for a lover that never showed? And isn't it true some of us were abandoned by a parent, and perhaps felt our heart strings tightening when we ourselves walked out on someone? Yes, each of us is wounded, has been wounded, and worse, forced by circumstance or fate to keep quiet. We were, as Bob Dylan said: with no tongue to reach our thoughts. I know a student who would like to make a film about what it's like to be an ethnic American, but is afraid of his friends abandoning him.
Each of us wounded another, each of us was wounded, each of us of yearned for revenge; we all laughed at the wrong time, inappropriately, and were shamed for it; most of us have had an unfeeling boss, or lover, or teacher whom we hated and dreamed of hanging; and most of all, all of us, love, continue to love, even in our hatred, even when we cover it up, which is what cynicism is all about and its art-child, postmodernism.
The internal monologue -- our most noble, most ignoble, most ignored thoughts -- the very silk of the spider, if you know how to catch it, no, not catch it but watch its course while loafing with a lazy but attentive eye, is as profound a story as the rise and fall of the roman empire, in whose ruins we are still trying to settle our tenuous tents. And as soul wrenching as Beckett's Waiting for Godot or heart rending as Tennesee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.
The poet Ted Berrigan tells that "the arguments we have with others are rhetoric, the arguments we have with ourselves, poetry." Rhetoric, the art of the politician, who'll paint the story in colors which will show him or her in the best possible light. In that sense, we are all politicians.
As I said, you had to tell a story to get into school. In telling that story you had to paint a picture of yourself; though not an untrue one, still, there are a few details you forgot to mention; and this conflict on the frayed border between who you are and who you want the world to think you are is the key to understanding character, and to understanding politics; and perhaps the uneasy contraband between the two the origin of all stories.
The poet Walt Whitman is great because in his poems he speaks about those who are forgotten, or calls to attention the forgotten stories in all of us.
None of us know where exactly thoughts or words, or images come from, yet when they come to us we welcome them, or reject them, or are indifferent. Some of us attempt to duplicate the stories that previous generations have tried to imprison us in, or liberate us with, while others attempt to create new stories for themselves. Even the most abstract art is a story, perhaps the story of the paint that dripped on the canvas, perhaps the equivalent of an internal world, much more than a Rorschach spot, the essential coagulation of an experience in the so called "subconscious," and can display, to the attentive eye, the most revealing details, that is, details revealing a story.
Social organization, history, how it all got there: history is not history books, nor costume dramas, unless it's the costumes we wear; and there are plenty of those, such as the costumes we a wear to get a job, or the ones we wear to get a lover; because history is my story and her story and his story, it's the story of each and every single human being, which is the story of every thought ever thought, every word ever uttered. The story of every heart beat when we unexpectedly spot the one we long for, the story of every flower and every brick, every bird and fountain and building.
No wonder the great Dutch film director Carl Dryer compares film to architecture -- the tracing of every step; because, in stories no step is meaningless because each step is part of a story and is the story, and each step is infused with meaning, and, like the mirrory jewels in Indra's net in Hindu mythology, contains not only itself but all the steps all human beings have ever taken. Each step contains all stories; stories are what human beings, you and I, do tracing carefully the tracks left by our steps, foot steps, word steps, thought steps. Everything is story, everything is history.
How many foot steps, word steps, thought steps are contained in the contorted dance of man and woman trying to get after what they want from one another?
"A painting by van Gogh tells no stories," says the French poet Antonin Artaud, and yet a woman walking into a shack tells a wonderful and deeply felt story. The crows, invading our world from the blue imponderable tell stories as well, deeper for being mysterious, the stories of poetry rooted in the unfathomable, the void, a world which we must attempt to communicate and dialogue with if we wish the stories to be friendly to us.
A poet writes:
"my yearnings trained me in spit contests where I won oranges and beer, which I carelessly tossed over the bridges you crossed that afternoon, do you recall? when I squandered sand on your little baby red shoes.
"You whimpered and gobbled a whole donkey; then, upon awakening, still groggy with disgust, charted for yourself the countenance of a night owl; I easily diagnosed you -- true to your disorder, you snorted -- and when I got home I bashed my head against the faucets until the pigeons winged away with crimson messages for you. you mimicked miscomprehension, and like a stubborn ballerina of obsidian, had your little baby red shoes messengered to me, belligerently demanding reparation.
" I shook the sand off impatiently but later shifted my drift and effortlessly dissolved them on a moonless night (my joints intransigently enmeshed in my notorious allure of a blue fever belladonna pitch) then preserved them inside a trade manual I dried in the wind, diligent daily visitor, intent on teaching me the uses of the violin. And he didn't denounce me even though I was lazy -- so you vaunt -- and my days and years went to waste; and even now the violin is still an amber imponderable to me but when I spit, the wind squeezes through the beckoning of your little baby red shoes, and howls a doleful tune, and everyone rushes out, clapping in unison."
The poem, entitled "cipher violin", meaning a violin that exists in the space of imagination only, tells us a story though we don't quite know what it is; the Romanian by birth-French by residence poet Gherasim Luca speaks of a woman beautiful as a forgotten dream. These are the kinds of stories that make us aware of another world, one of dreams and catacombs at whose door we should be wise to knock and ask for permission to enter should we wish to be allowed to see to the spider whose silk all veritable stories are weaved from.
*
We've come a long way from the fire place; now the fire place has been replaced by the TV. And TV does nothing but trivialize our stories and flattens the potential meaning of our lives. In no way does it reflect the complexity and multiplicity of our lives. Minorities have complained, and rightly so, that there is a lack of positive image roles representing them on TV. I for one wouldn't want to be any of the white people represented on TV either.
Yes, TV is a series of trivialized tales, interrupted every few minutes by that evil old witch of advertising, the chimera that turned us to stone, that is, mannequins on which to hang designer labels. The poet, who in ages past opened up for us the vast and mysterious possibilities of our inner world, is now left to write copy for commercials, in other words, invites us to enter the world of mystery we long for, but we must wear Nikes to be allowed admission.
Our bodies, so much despised by the religions of old, have now been rescued by the corporations and recycled into an excuse for consumption. As Tom Waits aptly puts it: "They're making feet for children's shoes." Perhaps our bodies have switched place with our souls," as the seminal Mexican poet and philosopher, Octavio Paz proposes. In that case, admission to heaven will be determined by what sorts of designer clothes we wear at the Pearly Gates.
It seems that filmmaker Jean Luc Goddard is absolutely right when he tells us, through the words of his dreamer anti-hero/hero played by Jean Pierre Leaud in Masculine-Feminine: "This wasn't the film we dreamed of. This wasn't the total film that each of us had carried within himself (or herself), the film we wanted to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, that we wanted to live."
*
I hope for you that the stories you wish to tell the world through cinema are infused with your own true stories. There is nothing as interesting and story-worthy as the unadorned self of a human being, of any human being. "One cannot be short of themes while there's plenty of reality," says that magical writer of Bicycle Thief, Cesare Zavatini.
The straitjacket of hero worship which most Hollywood films are fettered by demands that heroes are "better" than us. There is no reason why we should want to have heroes who are "better" than us except to validate our self-hatred and to sell us tickets to shows that enhance our self-hatred by making us watch heroes perform what we think we wish we'd rather perform than the bulk of our daily actions.
You'll never you see Mel Gibson come to satisfaction before his lover does. Nor will he ever be scared. And neither will you see a gay Schwartzenegger. Nicholson will never be minus the snappy comeback. Star actors never allow themselves to be caught on screen behaving in a manner which they deem demeaning, which is really the way you and I behave, even though it might be true to the character they play. OK, so Michael Douglas did allow Sharon Stone to tie him up, but did she really beat him?
In building an altar to place our heroes on we diminish what we are in our own eyes. Our lives are then less than the lives of our heroes because we feel we're incapable of their imaginary feats. We repeat the action of spying on the imaginary feats of heroes to confirm, and continue confirming our self contempt. And the cash register keeps on clicking ever faster. And our fantasies of ourselves become ever more grotesque.
Cinema is not enough any more to satisfy us. Our hero worship has extended into the Theatre of the Absurd of Real Life. Recently we witnessed one of the most absurd soap operas in the history of the U.S., of the world: the undignified unveiling of the private life of the President of the United States, in the media, through the offices of the special prosecutor.
The society of the spectacle is alive and well here. Perhaps Kenneth Starr is the greatest director we've ever had. Not one to be satisfied with one specific medium, he admixed to advantage cinema, television, radio, news media, the Internet. In the process, transcending Hitchcock's legendary but minute appearances in his own films, transcending Orson Welles, Starr, a star spelled with double "r," cast himself as a hero/villain of great media stature. We're only making movies; he plays for keeps.
Perhaps Kenneth Starr is the greatest postmodern artist we have: he's the only one who managed to deconstruct the presidency with words and images. Perhaps he listened well to Bob Dylan's words: "Even the president of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked." With consummate skill, and in spite of himself, he showed us who we are as a people at this stage in our history. What he opened up the door for, no one knows. Not only did he mix his media, he mixed genres too: comedy, drama, tragedy, erotic thriller, suspense, pornography, morality tale, situation comedy, comedy of manners, soap opera, Theatre of the Absurd, and who knows what else.
There are people who might not know who Orson Welles is. I am sure there are those who don't know who James Cameron is. I am willing to bet there are even those who don't know who Schwartzenegger is. But I doubt there is anyone who doesn't know who Kenneth Starr is.
Still, for all that, I doubt anyone will want to sleep with him for it.
The great American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson says we ignore the ocean within us to go begging for a cup of water of the neighbor. In this maxim you will find the secret behind the Starr histrionics and success.
History is nothing but our own individual stories, exactly as they are. But for some reason, we human beings do not like to see ourselves exactly as we are. So we make up stories about ourselves; we powder our perceived faults with the mascara of self deception.
Thus the need for heroes: the hero, in our deluded perception, is he or she who can create the most attractive mask: those kinds of heroes are then made of powder, or to be more precise, of celluloid, or to be even more precise, of an admixture of shadows thrown on the screen by the sculpted by light celluloid and our own desire to lie to ourselves. Or to be yet even more precise, of shadows thrown on the screen by the celluloid sculpted by light with the coded images of our desire for self delusion. Thus a whole industry is engendered out of our self deceit.
*
OK, so after all this deconstructing, you might wonder what is there that's left for us to do except give in to cynicism. Is there anything we should aspire to? Is there anything left to aspire to? Is there such a thing as a true hero?
I don't know. I too am searching and questioning. How do we begin? I don't presume to advise. I can only, at most, give you my wish list, based as it is on my hope that you are the cinema storytellers of the future.
A Yoruba proverb says: "The earth does not belong to you; it is on loan to you from your children."
Actually, what the hell, I will give you advice: I've earned the right to. I have inhabited the earth about thirty years longer than you. So, here are some ideas. Take them or leave them. They have been helpful to me.
First, I think that keeping a concerted daily diary, your own personal history, your thoughts, words and actions, exactly as they are, is a good place to start. Octavio Paz says that "each human being is a unique, unrepeatable, and precious creature."
And our own Walt Whitman brags, not without reason: "Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself." He is not speaking of himself only. It is his wish for us that we see ourselves in that way. The true hero is he or she who transcends the need for self deceit, who has no qualm "telling it as it is."
And in case you still think your own story is not as worthwhile as another's, Whitman continues:
"There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,
"There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,
"No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
"No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you."
Second, I hope that you read biographies; this includes autobiographies and journals. It is important, I feel, to carefully trace the life stories of those who left behind great works. Not to worship them, but to learn from their steps, both from their failures and successes. To learn how they turned their failures into successes. To allow their struggles to inspire and give strength. To help us see own lives from a taller perspective. They were, perhaps, not so different than us. They will prove to be great spiritual allies and mentors. They would be happy to know you felt they were.
Speaking about mentors, I feel it's crucial to actively look for one. It takes many years to master one's craft. There is no greater fortune than to find a caring and wise someone, like Dante's Virgil, to guide us along the way. An eastern proverb instructs us that "when the disciple is ready, the master will appear." And besides, the learning process never stops.
Emerson tells us: "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous impression with good humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."
And then, perhaps a return is necessary, to the study of great works, those in words as well as those in images and in sounds, of the great minds of the past, a serious and concerted questioning leading to a reconstruction. Studying these works, not slothfully expecting to be entertained, not as customers or consumers, but actively, as creators. Not rejecting before understanding.
When told by an admirer that he's read most of his books, the Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo replied: "How many times?" Reading a book over and over, looking at a scene from a movie over and over, gives us a window into the author's mind, leads to understanding. All great works of art require effort to grasp; but with patience and repeated trials we can trace the motion of our own inner world reflected in their world with great accuracy.
There is no greater joy than one of awareness gained through self effort. This sort of effort never fails to pay off, never fails to be reflected back in our own work. A Buddhist maxim teaches that blue dye is produced from the indigo plant, but if something is dyed repeatedly it becomes bluer than the indigo plant itself.
I repeat, we must be able to forge our future by breaking through the limiting habit of being a mere consumer; we must continually endeavor to become a creator. If we continue to loll at the level of consumers, our work will not rise above "America's Funniest Videos."
It's essential we do not give up; only a superficial person will give up without a struggle. It's vital not to judge or dismiss or laugh something off before trying to understand it. It is no different for me at fifty than it is for you at twenty. Only a man or woman of true understanding can hope to avoid being sucked into the destructive lockstep march of our consumer society and becoming merely a demographic. We must choose between light and ignorance. Delving into the works of the men and women who have stood up as our lighthouses is a good place to begin.
Walt Whitman assures us of our journey's rewards:
"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
"You shall posses the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
"You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books,
"You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."
Thank you.
*
Julian Semilian is a poet, novelist and essayist who teaches film editing at the North Carolina School of the Arts, after 24 years in Hollywood as a film editor. His poems, translations and essays have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Syllogism, World Letter, Arshile, Callaloo, Trepan, Mr. Knife and Miss Fork, Urvox, Transcendental Friend, Xavier. His serial, The Skeuromorph Detective, appears regularly in Exquisite Corpse. His book of poems, Transgender Organ Grinder dead link, is published by Spuyten Duyvil Press. This fall will see the publication of his novel, A Spy in Amnesia, also from Spuyten Duyvil, and and the translation of Paul Celan's Romanian poems, from Green Integer.