SF MO-Meditation

You approach it, if you are like me, at a hurried stroll: that is, much slower than the pace of walking to get somewhere, but decidely brusquer than the gait of those who take hours to traverse the entire collection.  I am more willing at this age to stand in front of a seemingly all-black canvas long enough to let my eyes adjust and discern that it is actually composed of varying shades of dark purple.  But not much longer than that.  After that second glance, I'll keep moving.

So if you are like me, when you approach "The Last Century" your quick take-- from a medium distance, on thunking heels-- is this: Hmmm, a picture (but wait, no, it's on a television screen, so it must be a video still) of several people in a small bar or cafe of some kind.  Not bad.  Worth a glance of appreciation at the realism.  Perhaps there are some appealing details packed deeper in the image.

By then you've slowed to an idling scuffle, and then to a solid pause.  And then you spy a trick! The frame is a still, except for a single lively white whisp of smoke, streaming steadily upwards from the cigarette poised at a dangle in the hand of the man in the foreground (a scruffy white middle-aged cafe-dwelling type) at the forefront of the scene.  Huh.  It *is* kinda fascinating, to watch the playful, free-spirited motion of the cigarette smoke grafted -- via some videographic magic-- onto a static background.

The man, whose cigarette-hand is supported by an elbow propped on a small circular table, sits opposite a black woman.   She is smiling in another direction completely, out of the camera's range.  Perhaps they are not together; maybe he is brooding on his own thoughts.  The cafe looks pleasant but cramped.  The daytime brightness mercifully lightens the room's dark wooden panels.  There are several other people in the background behind the pair in front.

This is all gathered in a blink, or not more than three.  You apprehend the gist; you are ready to move on. 

And then: she moves! The black woman, she-- something moved! Something on her. A twitch in that smile, you decide, and then see it again.  Well now! It's not just the cigarette smoke!  And, aha! The front man: he too has a feature on him that animates-- that was a blink wasn't it?  Yes, quite dramatic.  How could you have missed it before, it's so obvious!  

Pretty clever of the artist, you think, to embed these three moving sections into the frame.  An obvious discrepancy to draw you in, and then some subtler sections, to enhance the comparison between life and still-life.  Not bad.  A bit of a commentary going on there.

Um.  Wait a minute.  There's more.  Much subtler, but: yes.  Definitely.  They breathe.  Ohmygoodness, her bosom.  Her ample sparkly-shirted bosom has been rising up and down the entire time!  And, look! And look. Her eyes blink too.  And you can see when he inhales. 

They're playing at being still figures.  This is a video, all of it.  And the three other people, they're all moving.  Look at each, and verify: the accordian player standing at the back slightly sways to keep in position.  The man off to the lefthand corner at the piano blinks.  Watch longer, and there it is: the shoulders rise and fall.  Breathing: in, out, in, out.  The thin white young woman in black (squeezed into her own table between the black woman and the accordian lad) is hardest to figure out.  She blinks only rarely, and her clothes mask any change in the breath.  The closest thing to breath I could identify was a brief flutter of the throat, which could as well have been a swallow.

The next question is: If this is a video, how long is the loop?  Are they just repeating every few seconds?  But no, a group of school boys peeking around me decided.  Look, one of them said, the cigarette is still burning down.  It's been burning down the whole time.  This satisfied them, but I wondered.  Perhaps that smoke sidling across the cigarette was an add-on, a manipulation on top of a few second loop. 

I stared and stared at the video, stilling myself to focus on each person.  What parts of the body shift as a person breathes? I quietly interrogated the scene.  I have tried to ask myself this in meditation many times, but always feel blocked.  My mental distraction inevitably limits the extent of tracing I'm able to manage.  Yet the longer I gazed at the video, the calmer I felt, the sooner I became absorbed without even knowing it.  The more I saw, the more there was to discover.  It was amazing how rhythmic these effects of the breath were, how coordinated. 

The window on the far left, above the pianist, was nearly whited out by sunlight.  Nonetheless, as I peered further I saw that sometimes a car passes by outside, casting a shadow against the glass.  It even affects the coloration on the wood panels way on the other side of the room!  It is a swift ripple of light and shadow voyaging across the room.  I never think about these things, with paintings.  Ah, and that looks like a person going the other way outside the window.  I can't quite tell if anything is repeating, but it seems like the action must be a long repeat.

Finally, finally the cigarette has burned down almost to the man's fingers.  The stub of ashe at the tip has grown so long it can hardly be believed.   It must fall soon, right?  Oh, the anticipation!  A little longer... a little longer.

Pffft.

It settles onto the table. 

The characters stay in freeze. 

The entire screen abruptly snaps black.

Several seconds go by, and then the tableau reincarnates:

A man in a cafe with a cigarette, smoke eagerly spiralling from the far end of the tip. 

 

Screw meditation tapes, screw dharma lectures.  Maybe it's okay that I can't yet find stillness through stillness.  Maybe it takes motion for me to find enough stillness to realize that stillness is motion.   Breathing in, breathing out.  The pause between breaths.  It is all one.

 

 

...

"The Last Century", by Sam Taylor-Wood (at the SF MOMA)