Im Lauf der Zeit (Kings of the Road), 1976

The agony of not being able to find the film you want to watch.

Wim Wenders' 1976 film Im Lauf der Zeit (English title: Kings of the Road) is a film that I haven't seen since I was in high school, when an old VHS copy was lent me by a friend. To be totally honest, I remember it only in flashes. Black and white with long, slow, silent takes. I remember two men on the road. I don't remember anything else definitively enough to write out. What I can say is that this film was my introduction to Wim Wenders, who became a life-long favorite. This film also probably led into my enthusiasm for Jim Jarmusch films. (I remember a similar frustration while waiting for the re-issue of Stranger Than Paradise.) So until I can dig it out from some library, I'll content myself with listening to Roger Miller songs.

a few of these for now.

I feel like I'm getting better at the Holga, although I can see how the accidents of the film (especially the blocks of tone shift in the first few) make it more interesting in a way that I can't. I like the alchemy of a Holga photo. It's a somewhat disorienting thing to take a photo without really focusing or metering or timing the exposure. It's always the shots that I'm not looking forward to getting back that are the best; the most surprising at least.

I would like to be able to see in a way more appropriate to a Holga. I think right now I see in a 35mm SLR way. I would like to have an eye with a bit of chaos in it.

I included that last shot (well, a little bit because it's silly) because when I looked at it just now, going through which to post, i had this moment of 'oh, my god. that's me'. And I don't mean my face. I mean, that's me, sort of half-visible and floating. Transparent. I'm moody lately, and homesick, it's true. But even more than that I feel this strange pull between being disgusted by the fact that I don't do anything that I want to do, and this weird stagnation/lack of interest in doing those things.

I feel like that's exactly what I would say to a psychiatrist in order to get a very interesting prescription.

But I'm trying, I guess. It's more accurate to say that I'm trying to try. I'm reading Slavoj Zizek's The Parallax View, and it's re-connecting some neurons. [I always hear the word parallax pronounced in the Russian accent of the girl in my college physics class. pah-rhah-lahx.] It's inspiring me, but I still feel so dwarfed by everything. I also checked out recently a book on German history, which should help me start to contextualize Gerhard Rohlfs a little bit. What I'm doing is sort of like trying to explain to someone the history of Chinese grammar, only I don't speak a word of Chinese.

I like the idea of making a movie that's about him, but simultaneously about my making a movie of him and about that movie. That's the loosest possible way I can explain this, I think.

In the meantime, I've more or less stopped painting. I've been dragging my heels to finish one particular canvas, but I haven't taken the time to stretch any more. It just doesn't feel right right now. I can't honestly say if it ever did/does. I enjoy it, but a life's work...? I don't know. Thinking feels right. That's all I've ever known. And lately I've let myself get out of the habit of even that.

No more.