falling into a pillow of silence
Sometimes I get these little flashes of words I like together, words that nail an image I want to get across. "I should use that in something," I think. Right before I tell myself that the image is so cool that of COURSE I'll remember it. Right before I forget it altogether. I know, I know. Carry a notebook. But then you need to remember to look at the notebook again.
A recent combination I liked and will eventually use: "One leprous olive."
The title is one such phrase. Not brilliant, but captures a moment today while I was at my friend F-Stop's house, waiting around to be an extra in her student film. At one point we all had to be quiet while the sound folks recorded the crackling of the fire in the fireplace. The suddenness of the quiet was extraordinary. It wasn't like the ringing silence you get when you leave a noisy nightclub or concert and find yourself on the street, blinking your ears in disbelief. Oho, say the ears, enough of THAT. This was different. Not as abrupt, as the voices of crew and extras died down by ones and twos. Not as thorough, as the rustling of one of the actresses brushing her hair in the bathroom competed with the clock ticking in the kitchen. Two kinds of percussion. This was quiet with the flavor of gravity; either a silence falling from above, or one falling into silence.
The rest of the shoot was fascinating, and only lasted a couple of hours longer than anticipated, which seems about right. ArchitectX changed his hair and appeared twice; he had a character motivation and everything ("you're going to get a beer".) I kept changing my mind about my turtleneck. We ate string cheese and drank cran-mango from the rapidly warming refrigerator, which had been unplugged (along with almost everything else in the house) so the lights would have enough power. The cats Merlin and Spencer kept breaking through the barricades of helpful girlfriends, trying to sidle through the reaction shots. I've spent worse Sundays, and perhaps when F-Stop is famous I'll be able to point to this film and say, "that's my hip!"
