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Western History , Stan Brakhage

As Archie Moore once put it, via Melville, "The eyes are the gateway to the soul . . ." And another useful point, that Charles Olson was wont to emphasize, is that for primates the eyes constitute the most crucial sensory agency. What's called 'image,' then, means for us a most significant information, whether we consider it as an interior condition, that is, the image in the word imagination , or else the outside, those images we will momently see. If an imposition of necessary exterior 'meaning' anticipates our experience, clearly we'll see what we'll have of whatever necessity to see; for example, a driver's test will require us to see the forms of triangle, square, rectangle, and circle as significant bits of information concerned with "stop," "caution," speed limit, etc. It would be impossible, I think, to discover anyone who did not have a habit of "seeing things" in particular patterns of received and/or habituated idea, as in "seeing red," for one instance. If the usual situation of literary narrative is then imposed on the activity of film, expectably the visual activity becomes a support of the story otherwise the case—as in a play or usual movie.

Brakhage tells a story without exception, but my point is that it is a story of visual information, not of literary details. In his earlier work, Desistfilm , for example, there was the grid of this other order, a narrative that might have been told in words. One might say that also of Anticipation of Night —but by this time the narrative is moving primarily as a visually defined activity, although the 'story' is still very clear in other possible terms.

As you see this film, you might think too of its title—although far better to put such preoccupations out of your mind. They are appropriately left to the occasion of afterthoughts in this case. But the film is, nonetheless, a particular experience of "history" and of "Western history" in particular. Since this is not a test, you will not be expected to tell me or anyone else why.

You will certainly see many things that you'll recognize very simply. Colors, surely—forms, movements, even places and things. You'll be interested, I hope, by the pace of their interaction and by their divers contents more singularly. In short, you'll be seeing a specific rhythm of visual activity which is itself an obviously definite information. Much as in the case of poetry, these rhythms and the pace thus defined will have a very significant role. The parallel with constructs in music is useful also.

I remember asking Robert Duncan one time to identify for me all the ways in which rhyme might occur in poetry. So he rehearsed the familiar situation of sounds, e.g., full rhyme, go blow; assonantal rhyme, get gain; rhymes of rhythm, until outside; rhymes of parallel constructs, in the box, up the hill —and so on. Again you might consider how visual instances of rhyming are used here.

Finally, this is, simply, a beautiful film—which constitutes the possibility of that literal pleasure I'd earlier spoken of. It delights the eyes with an intensive proposition of their very literal function: to see .