Tags
absurdist, Alexander Frost, art, avant-garde, Dada, death, hate, heartbreak, human nature, isolation, life, Love, meaning, Norway, poetry, serendipity, sex, short film
The footage employed in the short film Post-Partum Blues was collected over a quite lengthy period of months that I am admittedly hesitant to number due to the haziness of my recollection, but, for the sake of specificity, I would venture to guess that the entirety of the three hours or so of stock footage from which the film is culled was obtained at intermittent periods dating from the Spring of 2009, perhaps beginning in April or May, to mid-November of 2010, the time at which I am writing.
‘Entropy increases at the subatomic level.’ This statement, one of the primary tenets underlying the structure of the study of thermodynamics, is not only a law of the aforementioned field of physics, but it is also an incontrovertible fact. There are observable phenomena that provide legitimacy to this statement at both the micro- and macroscopic levels of the known universe, but this does not limit one’s observation to the strictly scholastic, the nomenclatural, or the esoteric. Entropy can be seen at work everyday, establishing bonds that are seemingly oxymoronic in constitution with relative ease, and, just as easily, breaking them apart without apparent motive, in the necessary relations between human beings.
Love and hate, the two strongest of human emotions, are inexplicably linked, chained together like the strands of the DNA helix, that essential building block of creation. And the macroscopic level of the universe does not seem to exhibit any deviation from the structural principles inherent to the tenets of quantum mechanics. There are galaxies a great number of light years from our own, observable only with the most sophisticated telescopes, that twirl around one another in a cosmic waltz, swirling into and out of one another with the lover’s abandon, obfuscating in the process where the one ends and the other begins, distorting the fabric and the texture of space and time as they join each to each like the individual threads of a patchwork quilt. Whether or not their movements are guided by the hand of an almighty creator is, of course, a matter of debate, but it is entirely irrelevant. The human being is the necessary functionary of the universal. Like the galaxy, it longs to blend itself with something of its own kind.
The medium of film allows for another seemingly oxymoronic phenomenon: the reconciliation of the thoroughly Modern, those advances of technological significance that have precipitated the cold and impersonal symptomology of humankind at present, with the thoroughly Ancient, specifically the medium of poetry, a literary form that was transmitted in the oral tradition long before the ubiquitous implementation of the printing press, and the Internet Revolution. Poetry necessitated the actual physical convergence of living, breathing human beings. But this is not to say that the amenities allowed by the various industrial and technological revolutions that have taken place over the last few centuries are to be regarded as inherently negative; for the dissemination of art in its numerous forms has never been as easy as it is as this very moment, and it is in this way that people from across the globe may experience the beauty of a piece of artwork with unparalleled ease.
I believe that the primary purpose of artistic creation is an essentially transcendental one: to establish bonds with our fellow sentient beings, to transcend the hopelessness of our singularity and the transience of mortality as a means by which to satiate that universal longing for companionship, and in companionship, to derive an even greater meaning from the mystery of existence. Human beings are, after all, social creatures, a fact evidenced in no small part by the observation of a certain phenomenon at the level of the brain, an organ whose amazing complexity is underlain by the indubitability of a chemical make-up that makes pair-bonding an almost unconquerable desire.
Poetry is everywhere. It may be found wherever one may happen to look. It is not only words, but it is silence as well. It is music. It is the falling leaves and the changing of the seasons. It is the feeling of insignificance one feels when observing a sunset on a mountaintop or enveloped within the gloaming in the countryside. It is sex. It is the warmth of a lover’s embrace, the sound of her breathing as she falls asleep beside of you, the kisses you exchange upon waking. Poetry is found in dreams. With this short film I wanted to create poetry with technology, and in so doing, to form a multi-media amalgamation, because I have never been content to work in one medium. My desire to connect with others is too great and it cannot be restricted. I filmed this. I edited it. I directed it. I wrote the music, which is, by the way, a lullabye I composed for a little girl, still a baby, too small to worry herself with ideas of beauty or entropy. But one way or another I will find you. I will make you love me, hate me, want me, forget me, reject me, resent me, need me. I want to make you feel something. This might be our only chance at intimacy. I am letting you into my soul, if that is indeed what I have, and if that is what guides me in my artistic endeavors. And I only ask one thing in return: that you post one thing for which you are thankful, just one in lieu of an admission ticket to my beautiful fucking film. After all, it is that time of the season. But I don’t care about that. There is never a time not to share something.
The film you are about to see is a parallel of life itself. It is, at its core, a series of randomized images I happened to collect while out wandering by myself in the countryside. Post-Partum Blues is an exercise in serendipity, in realizing the beauty that exists in accident and ceasing to take it for granted. And we all are, both you and I, products of accidental occurrences, and if it is only in this respect that we form a human connection, if we never share a single moment together, a laugh, a tear, or a hug, we will always have this nature of accident to bind us, to unite us in the ever-increasing entropy of the universe we share. People come and go in a person’s life like the passing of the seasons, and who is to say if it might or might not rain today? Perhaps you just might feel a tiny raindrop on your cheek.
Watch the short film by following this link: