31
JanJazz
From the exhibit Private Lighterature . Townsend Center for the Humanities , University of California, Berkeley, October 25th 2006 - January 10th 2007. Dedicated to Aurélie Vialette.
Special thanks to Tony Cascardi & Teresa Stojkov
I was trying to figure out how to tell it. At first, I thought that writing it in English would be easier: a foreign language makes feelings more distant and soothes the emotions. Then I thought: but what if by easing the emotions they end up disappearing? Anyway, I don’t know how to talk about death and transfiguration. Let me, please, tell it in the most crude present, just as I feel it, just as the photographs are eternally present.Compositio loci. Somewhere in the middle of the desert I stop to fill up my motorcycle’s tank. Scanning the place mechanically, my eyes are suddenly hit by a rather strange aerodrome. There, the planes are sunbathing, like in a resort for aircrafts. They either suffer or enjoy careful makeovers that allow them to restart their flight. I take out my camera and my finger begins a tiresome and useless dance with the shutter. Everybody knows how stupid it is to take photographs in the desert around noon, when only an eraser light reigns. I am already putting away my stuff in the bike so I can continue on my way when a very kind voice behind me stops me, by asking if I could take a photograph of her and her dog. The dog’s name is Jazz. It is a very serious, almost solemn dog. Her name is Carol. They travel in a voyager with another fellow whose name I have completely forgotten.
“It’s my mother”, says Carol. When she becomes aware that I did not understand what she said, she points in the direction of the dog and pronounces the same sentence again. I nod almost imperceptibly, while I concentrate on cleaning the lens. How to react in the face of such a troubling declaration? I don’t know, that’s for sure. Carol cannot conceive that my lack of expression might undercover a lack of interest, and therefore proceeds to tell the events, including all of their minute details. It was twelve months ago, day by day, when she, as she used to do periodically, phoned home to Oregon. The voice behind the telephone was her brother’s, the youngest one, as I recall. He told her how her mother had passed away only a few hours before. Carol, in this very moment, was simply making a stop in her trip throughout her everlasting desert, exactly like the Dutchman’s timeless navigation of the Cape of Good Hope’s oceans. She cannot leave the desert. No matter what she decides to do, it will be too late. She quits the phone booth she’d used for her call, crying her eyes out. She then sits on her truck’s bed while a dog, coming out of the blue, emerging from the turmoil of the desert reverberations and sand clouds, jumps to her side and stays by her.
With a face from another world, Jazz stares at me, seriously, solemnly confirming the plot.
This story, along with the images, really moved me. It reminds me of the ways in which narrative is almost always a cloth with which we attempt to smother death in its cradle. And in the desert where there’s just too much light at midday to take any decent photos? Perfect backdrop for some serious jazz. Just terrific through and through. Thanks, hermano.