[Jim Moonan]

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It Is Already Late And I Won’t Be Here Tomorrow

There is such poetry in what the eye can gather in this languid home-made movie. (Thirty-one views for those who are counting. I make up three of the thirty-one to date.)

There’s a caveat: I don’t have a good grasp on what the narrator is saying. I assume it's Portuguese. I gather the English title speaks volumes. The language and the tone of voice are sublime. But still, I don’t know what shape, form, or context the narration is couched in. At least not for certain. It could be about something wildly different from what I’m conjuring — though I’m not conjuring anything too specific. I’m simply absorbing the visuals and the sounds and the tone of the piece. And another caveat: it can only be absorbed by allowing yourself to slow down to the pace of the video's eye.

It evokes a part off my past. I once spent a winter in Ibiza, way before the glitz blitzed it. Me and a Dutchman traveler I met on a train diverted our original plans and went there instead, renting a dirt floor adobe dwelling and cooking in a hearth. We lived on chickpeas. We bought beat-up bikes and spent our days pedaling up and down the sunny roads that led to tiny villages. We drank Herbas in the evenings. This video looks, at times, like the Ibiza I remember. The bare beauty of it hiding half in and half out of sight.


Some highlights not to be missed:

The magical murmuration: disappearance and formation of birds on a filament-like strand of wire at 2:26

• The gorgeousness at 9:18
  
• The rooster crowing and dog barking like music
  
• The appearance of the sun and a figment on the screen at 10:26
  
• The clarinet at the end.
  
• The credits at the end do provide some clues, but I’ve not yet followed them.

P.S. I left a short comment on youtube and he wrote back to me. I’ll follow up with him.

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[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Jim, thank you so much for posting this.

I think it's beautiful - poignant, but not in a sickly way. I don't understand any of the narration either. I love how we're shown what I think is the schoolhouse, and the sound of the children inside, but no children playing. And the details, like the coriander (cilantro) leaves at the start.

For me, it is comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time. It's strange, too. And it makes me think of my home places in a different way, seen through the film-makers eyes, seen through memory, isolated.

These are just first thoughts. I'll look again tomorrow. And, again, thank you for the link!

Sarah-Jane

[RCL]

I'm intrigued by the frequency of vertical bars of various types that may suggest imprisonment or entrapment?

[Michael Cantor]

The language is Portugese, and I believe it's Brazilian Portugese (softer, shushing sounds.) When I was working there I got to the point where I could tell and understand dirty jokes in Portugese - my personal definition of functional fluency - but that was over forty years ago and I've lost almost all of it.

I'm afraid the movie doesn't have nearly the same effect on me as it did on you. Possibly it's my own memories of Brazil interfering - I was knocked over by the sheer beauty of much of the land, the people, the architecture, and the sheer joy of living. But the film just doesn't call to me.

[John Riley]

It’s interesting how intrigue and interest enters your life in patterns. It started with Clarice Lispector and then on to Fernando Pessoa and Saramago and suddenly everything is in Portuguese. I’ve even started dappling in the language but that isn’t realistic at my age. There is a worldview that appeals to me. It isn’t “ almost Spanish.” It’s unique. I’ll enjoy this several times. Thanks.

[John Isbell]

Yup, as you say, John, Portugal's been unified and independent of Spain since about 1100, except for a brief patch in the 16th century. That's long before modern Spain existed. It's its own place.

CHeers,
John

[Jim Moonan]

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Sarah-Jane, Yes, the blending of the comprehensible (the visual) and the incomprehensible (the sound of the voice/language of the narrator) is what makes this a kind of home-made exotic piece of art. As it turns out, after I commented on Youtube about how impressed I was with it he wrote to me and explained he had done the video to satisfy a project requirement in college. He has published other videos that I've watched that are much more intentionally artistic-minded. They are very good. This is another one he did entitled "From Blindness To Silence" that I think might appeal to you even more.

Ralph, I hadn't given the bars that do appear frequently any other meaning but that they are indigenous to the artist's ancestral home: a small, rural, nondescript town in Portugal. But it does give me pause now that you mention it — but not in any way that detracts from what I think is being depicted.

Michael, based on the road signage that appears (beginning at 8:15) the location appears to be Portugal, not Brazil. In fact, the credits at the end identify the village/town as Paredes, Portugal. What I found poetic was the ordinariness of the small village and the seeming sense of detachment of the speaker who, at the same time, drips of nostalgia and loss and even hopelessness. (I don't know what his narrative was so I could be flat wrong.) It is the speaker's voice (and the strange, foreign beauty of the language) that captured me at first; and the ambient sound throughout is intoxicating; and then comes the lonely clarinet... It is the height of melancholy IMO.

John: It’s interesting how intrigue and interest enters your life in patterns. It started with Clarice Lispector and then on to Fernando Pessoa and Saramago and suddenly everything is in Portuguese. I’ve even started dappling in the language but that isn’t realistic at my age. There is a worldview that appeals to me. It isn’t “ almost Spanish.” It’s unique. I’ll enjoy this several times.

Yes, what you say is ironically what the title of this video I think is alluding to.

That quasi-murmuration that ends on the wires at 2:26 is pure poetry.

And the fact that it is so obscure (42 views and counting) only adds mystique. It feels destined to be forgotten.
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[Rick Mullin]

Wow. This is great. I don't understand a word of it, but the sound and imagery get me by without the words. The title helps. Thanks, Jim!

[Jim Moonan]

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Hi Rick, I saw that you had commented on this but I didn’t respond, hoping instead that the mere fact that you had watched it and had been moved by it might be good “advertising” to attract others to see what I saw, and you saw, in it. It’s a simple distillation/meditation of a complicated reflection on the ephemeral passage of one’s life. We are, as the song goes, just “passing thru”. Everything about it — the gentle music in his voice, the video footage of the hand-held cellphone, the crowing of the roosters — everything is in concert.

A few years back, when I was traveling back and forth from Boston to Trenton to be with my brother who was dying with lung cancer, I took an afternoon drive by myself through the “old neighborhoods” and was overwhelmed by the experience. I could hear a narration running in my head that was just as soft; it was not my voice. It was his voice. The ordinariness of it all suddenly shimmered with meaning.

I don't understand Portuguese either. But the tone coupled with the visual spoke directly to me. And yes, the title sings (it echoes Nemo's "Just In Case it isn't There" collection of prose poems.)
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