Singin’ in the Rain and Bill Leaves the Agency. A Film in 2 Acts (by Colin Clark)

Act 1. I’m Singin’ in the Rain.

 

 

Opening Shot. Static and lingering.

 

An empty room in an apartment. On the opposite wall are two windows, evenly spaced within the camera’s frame. It’s morning and the sky is pale with brightness. It’s summer. There are no furnishings, curtains or carpets. The floorboards are not polished but neither are they raw wood. Sunlight fills the vacant room with potential. It doesn’t feel barren, only awaiting redecoration and renewal.

At the top centre of the frame hangs a bare light bulb. It is not switched on. Out of view a door buzzer buzzes once.

 

Next Shot. Static and lingering.

 

At the sound of the buzzer, there is a hard cut to a tighter shot of the light bulb. It hangs down the central axis of the camera’s frame. The curve of the light bulb almost touches the lower edge of the frame. There is dust collected on the light bulb. Out of view somebody rises from a chair and moves across the floor. The sound of their gait tells us he’s a man. There is a momentary pause before a door is opened.

Still out of view, a second person wheels a trolley into the apartment. They exchange a few words.

Man1. No. Okay, through there.

Trolley is wheeled into the vacant room, but still out of view.

Man2. Anywhere?

Man1. Yeah. In the middle.

Man2. Okay. You’re the boss.

Something heavy and solid is deposited on the floor. The man with the trolley now leaves the room and the apartment, followed by the sound of the door being closed.

 

Next Shot. Static and lingering.

 

Momentarily after the door closes, the film cuts to the centre of the floor in the vacant room. There is a large cuboid block of ice. It stands approximately 18” tall and about 12” square. Condensation runs down it’s cloudy surface. This shot compositionally mirrors the last. The ice is central to the frame, the camera is slightly elevated above it showing it’s topmost surface.

Out of view, the man enters the room and puts down a box containing tools and opens a stepladder. The man climbs the ladder and there is the sounds of him using a hand drill. Dust falls and lightly coats the top surface of the ice block.

Next Shot. Static.

 

Hanging from the ceiling is a noose, it is tied from a rope of black hemp with a decorative  white cord wound around it. The noose enlarges and mimics the form of the light bulb. The light bulb has vanished, replaced with this symbolic other. Out of view the man re-enters the room. The sounds of his footsteps are of metal on wood. He is wearing tap shoes. The sound of each step is doubled giving his cadence a comic timing and pace.

 

Next Shot. Static and lingers for a long time.

 

When we hear the man stop walking, the film cuts back to the block of ice beside which he stands. The shoes are of black patent leather. They have a reflective sheen, an inhuman perfection against the organic frozen fluidity of the ice. Around the base of the ice block has collected a small amount of melt water.

With care he steps up onto the block of ice, and steadies himself. The shoes raise up onto tip toes, a slight pause and wobble, and then settle again. After a small amount of time the tap shoes shuffle slightly, then stand still. The film pauses for a while.

 

Next Shot. Static.

 

Hard cut to the shoes standing in a large puddle of water. The light in the room is now the gold tinged low angle light of a summer evening. It has been a long day.

The shoes have lost none of their shine, and the puddle gives the floorboards a varnish, a twinkle that was absent earlier in the day. The toe of one of the shoes taps and shuffles slightly at the puddle. Inspecting it, as if unanticipated.

Muffled, but audible, music starts from another apartment. ‘I’m singing in the rain, just singing in the rain. What a glorious feelin’, I’m happy again. I’m laughing at clouds, so dark up above...’

 

 

End of Act 1.

 

 

 

Act 2. Bill Leaves the Agency.

 

Act 2 is told in close up, with only two exceptions. It is exclusively silent save for one small noise.

 

Opening Shot. Static and lingering.

 

In the centre of the camera’s frame is a glass light shade hanging from the ceiling. It is round and approximately 12” in diameter. It is the colour of creme caramel and shares a similar edible opaque lustre. It is spotless. Around it is a large patch of damp. The camera lingers here to enjoy the relative fluid qualities of the light shade and the damp. If the light shade was less immaculate, it could appear to have sweated out the surrounding damp patch.

 

Next Shot. Static and lingering.

 

With this shot, it becomes apparent that the room is bathed with a golden evening light. It has an almost physical presence. Every surface touched by this light has a greater tactile appeal.

The torso of a seated man fills the frame. He wears a single breasted, brown wool and silk suit, a white shirt and a black tie. At the top of the shot is his tie knot, the lowest edge is where his shirt and trousers meet. His suit sleeves flank the frame. The suit has a gentle, pricey sheen. It was tailored to this man’s body. Since that time, some of his substance has left him, slackening the suit’s sharpness.

 

Next Shot. Static and lingering.

 

One of the man’s hands reaches for a heavy bottomed tumbler of whiskey sat upon a glass table to his left. The glass is straight sided and is three quarters full of liquor and ice. It leaves a ring of condensation on the table. His hand and glass leave the frame. The camera lingers on the ring of moisture while the man drinks. The glass is replaced exactly upon the ring of moisture. A bead of condensation escapes from where he has held the glass, and joins the expanding ring on the table.

The camera lingers here, before cutting to the next shot.

 

Next Shot. Static.

 

A matching glass with matching contents is raised to the red painted lips of a woman. The evening light reflects equally from her glass and lips. At the top of the frame is the bridge of her slender nose. The V describing the neck of a red grosgrain silk dress touches the centre of the lowest edge of the frame. She has dark curly hair which stops at her jaw level.

 

Next Shot. Static.

 

The camera returns to the man’s torso. He shifts slightly in his seat. Then sits motionless. After a moment his right hand reaches into the left hand side of his suit jacket. With practised fluidity, he pulls out a pistol, and points it at the camera. The camera quickly cuts to the next shot.

 

Next Shot. Static.

 

Hard close up of the man’s hand, gun and cuff.

The pistol is a nickel plated automatic hand gun. The pistol is all aggressive reflections, it appears to have no interior, no substantial mechanism. The gun makes his hand look pink and raw. Like the suit, his skin belongs to a different man. Tailored to his once correct dimensions that no longer fit. Neither hand nor gun hold any warmth.

The gun twitches the slightest of gestures, an upward nod.

 

Next Shot. Static.

 

For the first time in the film, the camera allows a full portrait, identifying the woman. Her  hairstyle, make up and dress combine to form a 1950’s appearance.

The woman raises her glass, and holds it on top of her head. Nestled in her hair, the glass bears no weight upon her head.

If the couple have not performed this before, they must share an intimacy that borders on the telepathic.

 

Next Shot. Static and lingering.

 

The film cuts to a close up of the light shade and it’s surrounding patch of damp.

A single bead of moisture is collecting. The room reflects in it, making it a tiny bump of pale gold. It is a miniature, and imperfect copy of the adjacent light shade.

It gathers itself together, growing with an activity, an agency, so slight as to be molecular.

 

Next Shot. Static and quick.

 

The man turns and reaches for his drink with his left hand. His right hand is still pointing the pistol.

Quick cut to the next shot.

 

Next Shot. Static, very quick.

 

The bead of moisture on the ceiling now quickly changes. It’s tiny mass grows, tips a critical level, and drops.

Quick cut to the next shot.

 

Next Shot. Static and quick.

 

The man replaces his glass on to the table, it is now not centred on the ring of condensation, leaving a crescent of moisture.

Quick cut to the next shot.

 

Next Shot. Static, very quick.

 

Close up of the pistol, still pointing to the camera. The droplet lands on the chamber of the pistol.

Quick cut to the next shot.

 

Next Shot. Static and quick.

 

The camera cuts to an intense close up of the pistol’s muzzle. It performs a tensile quiver.

CLICK.

The only sound in the entire act is the gun misfiring.

 

Last Shot. Static and extended.

 

With leisurely grace and without fear, the woman brings her glass down to her lips. She drinks not for fortification, but for pleasure.

 

 

THE END

 

Round and Round (by David Cochrane)

“On a bike your consciousness is small. The harder you work the smaller it gets. Every thought that arises is immediately and utterly true, every unexpected thought is something you had known all along…..what goes round in a riders mind is a monolithic ball bearing, so smooth, so uniform that you cant even see it spin…”

‘The Rider’- Tim Krabbe

 

What follows may not transport you; the reader, from A to B. ‘Writing about writing about cycling’ ends up firstly being an acknowledgment that one is putting oneself through a process of self analysis; an acknowledgement that what follows will be a loose self portrait of you the cyclist as writer and secondly an exercise in frustration as it does not take long to fall back into the mode of ‘writing about cycling’. Or maybe it’s that one cannot ‘write about writing about cycling’ without ‘writing about cycling’. Bare with me….

Whilst riding I’ve noticed that my streams of thought work much like my feet on the pedals; as I ride a track bike to work during the week, and my feet are constantly moving, this link between mind and body becomes more and more apparent. So as my feet push down on the left pedal and pull up on the right my thoughts are in perpetual motion with them.

Pushing forward through traffic my mind skips and jumps from one thing to the next, as soon as I dismount these rhizomatic connections stop. As I set off the recognition of a tight physical sensation in my stretching thigh muscles gives way to the details of the day ahead, to the weekend, to someone I once knew, to a present once bought for me, to a birthday of a far away friend that looms closer, to a dinner I once ate with a colleague who is no longer nearby; a loose collection of details; quickly thumbed pages of re-collections that roll along quickly and blur with my own speed. It is as if I find myself sat in a darkened room watching the contents of my own mind spinning on a zoetrope in front of me. I can notice but I cannot grasp each thought as it appears.

Parallels can be drawn between this and the act of meditation; an endeavour that is often described as ‘ridding one’s mind of all thoughts’ when in actual fact most teachers of meditation will point out that meditation is really an observation of our minds and what occurs within it during those long hours of sitting (reasonably) still and concentrating on ones breathing. One is supposed to acknowledge the un-impeded mind at work and watch it, without ‘grasping’ as it bounces from one thing to the next, lost and confused without the convention of logical ‘coherence’. 

For many years I attended a course of therapy with a clinical psychologist who practiced EMDR; a branch of therapy that for a large part also involves acknowledging what the relaxed mind does. Unhindered thoughts from the subconscious arise as ones eyes watch the therapists finger move from left to right, akin to the swinging arm of a metronome. This latter motion is a useful tool for helping people who have undergone severe trauma; something that often causes the brain to get confused. It is said to stimulate both hemispheres of the brain at once and ‘pull them in line’ with one another.

The wagging finger I spent hours watching works exactly the same as my feet on the pedals; back and forth and side to side does the same thing for the brain as up and down, push and pull.

After four years of cycling across town once a week I began to realise that the journey to my therapist was becoming almost as helpful to me as the course I was attending. While riding my mind felt free and unburdened, able to think without past negativities clouding its progress. My feet moved, my thoughts tumbled along, and things that had seemed problematic at the start of the journey were no longer problems by the end. Whereupon I would reach my destination, jump off and the speeding thoughts subsided into the background noise of the street. People walked with their coffees, and their prams with children, buses growled their way along the tarmac and I would scrabble desperately for the lost pearls of thought before they were washed down the nearest gutter with the summer rain.

Because of this rare phenomenon, much of this article was written in intermittent stops while out riding and consists of scribbled, quite often illegible notes in my notebook that I kept in my back pocket.

As I previously mentioned, writing about cycling as a day-to-day activity (as opposed to a sports commentary for the Tour de France or the Vuelta d’Espana for example) becomes a portrait of our daily lives. I reflect, fantasise, resolve, dream and ponder on my bike. And the nice thing is I’m quite sure that I’m not the only one. After the 7/7 bombings in London, the city saw a surge in cycling not witnessed since the 1930s. Add to this various cycle hire schemes, a huge push in advertising from the mayors office, the introduction of so called ‘cycle superhighways’, a growth in independent bike retailers and the added ‘hip’ factor of pretty bikes ridden by pretty people in pretty clothes, with not one single bead of sweat between any of them no sirreeee…and we now have have a city where a large percentage of its population thinks on two wheels instead of four.

A portion of a capital city whose thoughts are stimulated by a pace determined by ones own legs; a human pace with added wind and, judging by the past three summers, rain in ones hair for invigoration (!) plus the empowerment that comes from getting somewhere using ones own volition and determination. Ok, so we’re not catching up Copenhagen just yet which currently wears the maillot jaune for having 36% of the cities population get to work by bike but we are getting there…

Everyday I pass hundred of cyclists; old chaps with greying beards on tourer’s, men and women with seats on the back for the kids, young men in Lycra on smart Italian racing frames, rudeboy’s on outsize mountain bikes with suspension forks, young ladies on Pashley’s and Peugeot’s and couriers on beaten up steel horse’s with flyers for the last alleycat* they rode at the weekend pushed into their spokes…. and most of them are smiling. You may think this is an exaggeration but I promise you, its not. Get hold of a bike for the day and watch the others pedal with you and you will see this unconscious grin, so rare on the faces of commuters in this city, spread its way across the lips of many. This is the same smile I wore at aged ten, as I tried to impress my uncle by taking a tight corner on my new racing bike and instead ploughed through Mrs Boyd’s hedge stopping just short of ending up going through her living room window. This smile has not gone away. The self empowerment that comes from getting from A to B using ones own legs, heart and head should not be underestimated and lest I sound like some cyclismistic preacher of two wheeled wonderment (which I know I do…) yes, of course cycling in London is tough, tiring, wet, and dirty but it is, I believe, fully worth the effort.

Of course, not everyone is cycling to get from A to B. Long term cyclist and writer Graham Fife speaks in his book “The beautiful machine” how aged five he learnt that escaping from an abusive home life on two wheels was a lot quicker than walking, for him cycling was not about arriving, it was about leaving:

“ I knew what the bicycle promised, it promised Freedom”

The 1939 film “The wizard of Oz” introduces us to Dorothy Gale who dreams of finding another place:

“Its not a place you get to by boat or train

Behind the moon, beyond the rain”

One can only wonder how Dorothy’s story would have differed if she had, instead of waiting for a tornado to come along and sweep her away, stolen Miss Gulch’s (the Wicked Witch of the West no less) bicycle with Toto in her basket and got out of little town Kansas the hard way.

I’ve cycled since I was a small boy, and as I’ve grown my two-wheeled fixation has grown with me. Two years ago I began going out at night, not to get to work, the pub, or a friends house but just to ride. I came to realise I agreed with the words of the great naturalist John Muir when speaking about the power of the outdoors on the workings of ones mind:

…” going outside was really going inside.”

This was the point where I realised that my addiction had hit a point that I couldn’t rationalise to others. Friends, colleagues and strangers at parties looked at me as if I were crazy, thankfully a handful understood. As I pedalled through the night observing the different lights, people and time signatures of the city my mind would again begin to loosen. This is why I cycle I thought to myself and this is why this article floats along from point to point in some desperate attempt to convey what happens in the saddle. A task that feels nigh on impossible. There are no words that exist in the place my mind goes when I ride…so I can only talk about motion from a stationary position.

After a summer of bruised skies and daily deluges, autumn is shaping up beautifully. Most morning’s last week were fresh and crisp, with blue skies and a cold wind that bit around my ankles and reminded me that in the coming months winter riding would be upon us. This cold Autumnal wind that beats down the road towards me is the challenge of this time of year; as positive as cycling is, its ALWAYS a challenge.

Quite often this challenge is a mental one, and then distance, weather and hills play their part and seek to put one’s two wheels into reverse. Climbing the last hill before I get home these days I find myself naming the London hills I can think of: Champion, Fox, Knights, Highgate, Biggin, Norbury and so on: a verbal meditation and a distraction from the pain in my thighs. Last week as I pulled myself up this final climb a cyclist zipping down the hill towards me smiled and lifted a hand from the bars in recognition of a familiar struggle.

In his book “What is Sport?”, the French cultural theorist Roland Barthes while writing about the Tour de France speaks of this battle and the camaraderie that exists: 

“ This combat is a competition, not a conflict. Which means that man must conquer, not man but the resistance of things”

On a bicycle I feel in control in a world that makes us feel we should be, but quite often are not. On a bicycle I can conquer the ‘resistance of things’ that the world puts in my path and it makes me look forward to being old and grey, possibly deaf, possibly bald…but still pedalling.

 

*A type of race started by bike messengers that consists of hitting various checkpoints around the city in order for a nominal prize

……………………………………………………………………..

David Cochrane is an artist based in London and co-founder of brokenbiscuitsbikerides.wordpress

Thanks to Andy Marsh, co- founder of brokenbiscuits for encouragement and much bike related discussion when progressing up said hills.

 

The Stick (by C Hazell)

I had been at work for three hours.

The engine was ticking over nicely.

Strip lights stripping their omnipresent glare onto all that is sentient and all inanimate beneath. Temperate stale air – revolved and recycled so no persons should ever need open a window. BBC News playing on the flat screen with the volume down low – providing a soothing background hum of world affairs. The frisson of technology in the air!

I, a now fairly well oiled cog in this machine dutifully perform my tasks with a quiet mind. It is better that way. To not think. To be at one with the machine. Shut the imagination down and silence desires – at least until home time anyway. Keeps one out of trouble.

...BLANK...BLANK...

...BLANK...

Then on this day, at this particular time I was asked for a stick.

The insulated bubble momentarily burst -

...BLANK...?

- A stick

Torn away from vacant contemplation my swivel chair stopped swivelling.

A stick?

[A crack of static]

A stick...I have not been rehearsed in this one. [Mouth goes dry as panic sets in]. Am not the best at thinking on my feet nor on my chair for that matter...

- A STICK?

[Autumn. A fire of leaves and sawn branches. The bite of the cold air complements the earth woody scent combusting in the amber glow. A stick to prod the fire. A stick to throw on the fire...a stick...]

[A machine somewhere bleets]

The cold air dissipates as I focus on to the enquiring face illuminated by strip lights.

A question mark lingers in the air, growing heavier with each millisecond... the cog is faltering and in danger of disturbing the equilibrium...

But! Suddenly a flash of comprehension!

A JOKE!

It is a joke! Strip light face is joking!

Word has got around about the occasional dirt underneath un-manicured fingernails! They can all see through the facade of vacant professionalism unto the feral unhinged individual underneath! There must be some sort of creepy crawly in the meeting room which needs to be banished with a stick and who better to ask than:

You are right!

I DO keep a stack on wood underneath my desk! You never know when you might need it. But also, between you and me

on the eve of company meetings when everyone has gone home I place all the sticks in the centre of the office take my clothes off and dance around an unlit fire shrieking loudly and leap from desk to desk and then roll around and rub myself against the synthetic carpet until all my hair stands on end...

I smile back knowingly – how wonderful to have pre-empted a joke about oneself! I am now in on it as well – the smelly hippy!

However, my self-satisfied smile encounters a slight change of expression beneath the strip lights. Soft focus enquiring has sharpened suddenly into hard lined questioning...

- A Memory Stick? Do you have a memory stick?

Oh...

Oh yes.

That kind of stick.

...BLANK...BLANK...

...BLANK...

Cut Grass And Diesel (by Paul McCann)

What were they doing in the fucking sky? Thousands of cars... just floating. It seemed so natural, how it looked I mean. It looked so natural.

I knew that road well. The woods where we would hide, the green where we played World Cup and the hill where we fell off our pound-shop skateboards. It was just on the corner where we stood.It has changed with time but unlike everything else, this memory seems to have grown clearer.

I once read an article on the effects of growing old on a person’s vision. The article proposed that the flickering of Television imagery experienced by the elderly was due to the gradual decay of the cornea over a lifetime.

The cornea is in a very real sense the point where the images of the world around us are actualised. Those images remain momentarily on the cornea, as a frame in a film.

 

In the late 19^th century the eyes of murder victims were photographed in detail. The Detectives believed that in the future technology would exist to extract the final image witnessed, thus revealing the murderer's identity.But the images on the cornea fade away as transiently as the moments themselves.

Interestingly, the older more decayed cornea processes this transition faster and so in fact sees faster. The flickering experienced is due to the eyes being faster than the frame rate of the television.      

 

I digress; we stood on that corner facing the sky, my father’s hand resting on my shoulder and my hand resting in my mother’s.

We watched, we watched as did everyone else on the road, amongst the rotary sound of a nearby lawnmower, and the smell of cut grass and diesel.

My friend Denis cycled by... oblivious to what we witnessed. He glided down the hill on his bicycle and around the corner where we stood.

Between the instance of seeing my friend and before my gaze returned to the sky, I expected the cars to have gone, disappeared like some ethereal spectre but there they were lingering, softly drifting away above us.

 

We used to hang out in his dad's broken down old Lada. I remember one moment vividly. It was when hurricane Charlie arrived. We sat in the car for hours burning the dashboard with the cigarette lighter. Violent winds rattled the world around us as we focussed on the task at hand.

It was a discovery of great significance. You simply pressed it in, twenty seconds later it popped. You then removed it and examined the spiraling glowing wire. You could spit on it for effect.

The car's battery was dead. It wouldn't start, the radio, the lights, the Cobra car-alarm system none of it worked but the cigarette lighter worked just fine.

Maybe the concentric nature of the burns appealed to some deeply embedded prehistoric drive, drawing out a particular state of mind, a remnant of Pagan times. Or perhaps there was simply a satisfaction through inflicting ourselves on this machine.

On this occasion, when I saw the underside of the cars; I couldn’t help but think about the colouration of marine life. The grey -green of the fins and torso to provide camouflage in the murky water of a lake and the pale underbelly to mimics the colour of clouds.

On this particular day the car’s grimy metallic underbelly likewise  blended into the overcast sky... the clouds seemed nothing more than the billowing vapours these machines once exhausted.

I can still feel it, like a humming static wrapping itself around me.  just as when a hand is close to your face, though never quite making contact it can still be felt as a presence.