RUDIMENTS, pt. 159
Making Cars
Well, I never envisioned myself
being this old, but whatever would
I do about that now? I came into
this life without cheering and I
suppose that's the same way I'll
exit - I just hope not real soon.
I close my eyes. What would I
go out with? Images of 'dodge
ball' in that crazy basement room
in old School 4? Or walking the
ivies at Princeton while clutching
a Small World coffee? That's a
pretty fair lifetime stretch, even
if it wasn't until age 56 that I got
to Princeton. My first real telling
moment was (another one) about
1959 when I got caught up in
seeing, probably five times at
least, some movie called 'Invaders
From Mars.' It was a movie somehow
made in 1953, but not brought my
way until '59, when I saw it at the
old Woodbridge Theater, on Main
Street. Before it was long ago torn
down, that was a favorite spot of
mine. Whatever it was, an old, rather
small, single-screen theater with
continuous showings of the same
movie, over and over (meaning you
could, and by watching, unbothered,
over and over, really get to know
a film really well). No one ever
bothered anyone, it seemed, maybe
as long as you occasionally bought
a box of candy or popcorn or something
along the way. It was a nice way to
get lost, back then, being a young kid.
So, transfixed as I was, that movie
held my attention and represented,
for me, a real imagistic portrayal of
myself. It was pretty weird how I did
that. The gist was: a young kid, witnesses
a 'landing' of aliens (from Mars), realizes
what's going on, no one believes his
story, it's all kept hush-hush. His parents
and other adults, the cops, the authority
figures, by means of an implant into
the back of their skulls, become part
of the 'others' - the ones the Martians
are taking over - and everything the
kid does or says falls on deaf ears.
Panic ensues everywhere...all that
stuff. It somehow spoke to me, the
panic, the anguish in the stupid kid's
face and posture, the drama of the
situations, the others, and especially
the little girl other, who raptly kept
my attention too. Looking back at it
now, it seems unviewable and hokey.
I can also now very easily read the
unspoken, cold-war subtext of Commies
versus US. Of course. In the same vein,
but never as exhilarating, were
Journey to the Center of the Earth,
The Time Machine, and a bunch of
Haley Mills movies too. None of
them, however, transfixed me in the
way that 'Invaders' did. I liked it back
then when all movie houses were
single screen and only showed one
film. Now everything's a 'plex' of
this or that and all the scattered
movies are junk. I mean Junk -
unwatchable. That entire industry
has changed - films. The cameras
now are always on the move. They
never stay still. The'action' you see
is false and fabricated and is always
activated FOR the camera's pan, as
it moves across a scene, the rear of
that scene then coming up for the
cross-shot, which in turn gets the
idea of movement and passage across.
But it's all false. Another problem with
films, then and now, but worse now,
is the music 'behind the scene'. In the
old films it's always going on, active
and swelling, but not in the foreground;
it sort of happens and you don't realize
it, nor do you realize you're answering
to the 'emotion' it's bringing up.
Sometime around Scorcese, or 1972
or something, they all began changing
from that older-style music (Elmer
Bernstein, Bernard Hermann,
Nino Rota, etc., and the other
film-music guys), to simply using
contemporary music, mostly
'rock n' roll' tunes (which always
carry their own baggage) in films.
You knew then that every piece
of music was going to bring with it
its own references, probably different
for each person. Iconic stuff. That's
a problem. The universalism is lost.
You get the sense you're being steered,
led, used. And, anyway, that all became
a science, 'moviemaking' in that vein,
once the film-school industry got
hold of it and all real story-line
work-development disappeared.
-
I can carp about this all day, but
it's not worth doing. What I need
to do is make the distinction
between things : In the sense
that my life was once part of all
that old-school stuff, and then it
was all taken from me and I evolved
out of it all. I used to sit and listen
to my grandmother, whose days
ran from 1901 onward, as she
would tell me the stories of her
young days, the horse-men, the
deliveries, the clomp-clomp through
the streets, the blocks of ice and
the fresh vegetables and fruits sold
everywhere, carts,wagons, storefronts.
Just the old ways of things and how
they were done. I never knew how
she rolled into the modern world
of my youth so easily - she'd
take the bus to Journal Square
from Bayonne, or she'd get to
Penn Station, Newark and take
the train to Avenel. She was
always alone, and adept at
reading train schedules and
making the connections and
all. In her old-world way. It
was something foreign to me;
we'd just jump in a car and get
to where we were headed. For
her and her world, by contrast, if
it wasn't us picking her up or
bringing her somewhere, she'd
do all these plodding and tedious
things, including walking to and
from places, as if they were all
nothing, just part of life. The old
way. Never a complaint. Plenty of
stories. Everyone she'd known was
a 'greenhorn' - her term, or her
generation's term, for immigrant,
someone who didn't know the ways
and customs. I remember vividly
as she told my father, in the car one
day, about a man who'd accosted
her in an elevator, exposed himself
and demanded sex. She laughed
him off, curtly telling him to look
at himself, 'yeah, and you probably
need a derrick to get it up.' Even
though I knew what a derrick was,
from oil-rig knowledge, I had no
clue what she meant to say by that.
I guess she was pretty gutsy.
-
There wasn't much else to go by,
early on. My life was one, large
learning-motion, and I didn't have
any rear-guard support. Not much
in my house revolved around
knowledge. It wasn't only until
much layer that the thought hit
me that my parents, any adult,
for that matter, each had personal
outlooks and stories and events
particular to them. With or without
knowledge or 'learning' thy were
all perfectly valid. I was merely
an interloper trying to barge in.
-
I admit to being voracious - as
a 10 year old, by 12 for sure, I was
an intellectual vacuum-cleaner,
trying to take in, absorb, everything
I could. Words and memories, one
by one - I didn't worry much about
which 'school' it was of, poetry, painting,
philosophy. All over the place, I didn't
care. Logical positivism; yeah, sure,
Mr. Wittgenstein, Mr. Russell. (Ludwig
and Bertrand, respectively). I tried
everything : Langston Hughes, 'You
and your whole race look down upon
the town in which you live and be
ashamed, ' and 'I too sing America.
I am the darker brother.' Langston
Hughes died the year I want to NYCity.
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