Special Effects

It is overwhelming, inside, reaching the surface through the eyes, maybe in the extremities of teeth. The sorceres in special effects departments are performing their evil magic, bringing the world to its knees through obscene images of The End. Shall we go to the cinema on the eve of your greatgrandmother's funeral? It's a film about the end of the world. I'll bring a sweater, the evening might be cold. The power within stirs and surfaces, this time as indigestion. "Did you want something from the buffet?" she asks annoyedly with the key still in the door. "No, I'm just waiting for my wife." There is no point to the conversation from either side. "Will the old lady be burried in the ground?" "Yes, yes, I believe so." "I have never seen anything like it before." Have you never wondered where dead people go? I ask the child within. I know, answers he or whoever, grandma has grandpa in a little plastic container on her desk. That is correct, you get an A for that. It is probably a writing desk - you would have gotten an A+ for that answer. But then again, grandma never writes anything. The last postcard she sent us said: "I am sending you kisses. If you don't want them, send them back." It was both nice and cruel, don't you think? The film starts with perfect images of the flood, the last big flood. Black magic, methinks, and I get this idea (it comes from the power and the power of the child): all cinematography should be returned to its original role as mere entertainment. And entertinament, weapon against time, are all graphic novels and rock'n'roll and literary and other magazines, don't let anyone tell you differently, says I aloud to the dark and presumably empty auditorium, with images of civilisation's end on the screen. Mere knick-knacks, fandangles and whimsy-whamsies! They have fooled us into believing they deserve our undivided attention. Let us push all literature back to where it belongs - to pre-Gutenberg hiding holes, to monasteries high up in the mountains. Only then can all words and images be free again, receive back their original meaning, the meaning that is given to them through life, the life the remnants of which still cause power to shoot up in diminishing intervals as hiccups. Let us silence the banal, there is only one Book (how will this sound to the learned ear? how will this sound to you, little fella writing these words?). One Film (now, that's better). Taste the screen, lick it, tear it up, touch the material, the canvass, the paper. The cinema has nice and cosy and new blue seats, I cuddle up to the person sitting next to me in the dark but forget to check whether it is still M. and for the rest of the end of the world am afraid to look again. In the car on the way back I study her carefully. It is her. In a new release - The Dream - words and images break free again. Coming soon to a cinema near you.