Truth

Bergman complains more than once that Tarkovsky makes only Tarkovsky films – this is true, of course, but what’s the problem? None for those of us who rather like the idea of the exacerbation of a particular style – of a stream of artworks allowing an artist to construct a self-contained world. Take the gorgeous rewrite of Duras’s The Lover. The Lover from North China, published six or seven years later, is more fragmented, bitty, and the characters act in a manner which is – let us say – implausible. Particularly moving is the introduction of the servant boy, Thanh, who, if memory serves, is the dedicatee of the book. Everyone is always weeping. And everyone is in love with the younger brother – this is marvellous I think. And there are more silences than ever.

There’s a good blog in here somewhere, if only I was sober enough to write it. Here is my point in rough, unsubstantiated outline: the exacerbation and rarefaction of a style foregrounds, in the work, both the artificiality and self-sufficiency of the artist’s world and the kind of substrate of that world. A substrate? That word is not right – I am thinking of the materiality, of an absolute density that makes itself present when the work presses itself towards an experience which dissolves its protagonists, its verisimilitude, its attempt to present a real or convincing world. How clumsily I am expressing myself! I will have come to back to this another day.

Few works can endure the attraction to this black star. Let me say, very simply, but also in a way that is entirely unsubstantiated, that Smog’s The Doctor Came at Dawn is the great artwork which comes closest to dissolution. Do not tell me it is mannered or monotonous. The greatness of this album is the way it endures absolute breakdown and sustains itself by enduring the terrible gravitational force which threatens to tear it apart. It is an argument which few would agree with, but I think Rain on Lens bears witness to the same threat. This is a tenacious album - some find it monochrome - but that is what allows it to draw close to breakdown and survive.

What is great, utterly great, about Bill Callahan, is the way in which he imposes a tone upon silence, the way he allows it to resound in his work, in particular, in the strange drone you can discern on some of the tracks on The Doctor Came at Dawn. His music, because it is simple – and what a great struggle it must be to maintain and endure this great simplicity –, forms a kind of echo chamber. What resounds there? Somewhat pompously, I hear truth. Yes, truth is always the world I associate with The Doctor Came at Dawn. Not because it accurately represents the world, or corresponds to it; not even because it holds together as a self-enclosed suite, with perfect coherence, but because it lets breathe – but is it a breath or a death-rattle? – a murmuring outside words and a sonority outside music. As if it is attuned to the origin of the world, when nothing had yet emerged from darkness. As if songs themselves were a seismograph attuned to the great but distant movement of the earth.

Comments

[Matt Frink]

Good God, our tastes in film, literature, and music are identical. Everything I've ever read regarding Bergman and his opinion of Tarkovsky, which is admittedly very little, has seemed to insinuate that Bergman thought Tarkovsky was a superior filmmaker. I distinctly remember a quote in which Berman said something to the effect of "Tarkovsky walks freely in the room on whose door I have merely knocked." This is definitely interesting. I'll look more into it.
As far as Bill Callahan is concerned, I'm a fairly recent devotee, and have as yet only heard "Knock Knock", "Dongs of Sevotion", and "Wild Love". I think I'm mostly impressed with "Dongs of Sevotion" for much of the same reason as you love "The Doctor Came at Dawn". There is such a dread present in the songs, especially "Bloodflow". Just an incredible feeling, a dance of death. I learned about Smog through Cat Power's cover of "Bathysphere" and I only wish his music had found me sooner.

[LI]

Well there's a few of us with similar tastes (I'll do a blog on this ...) As for Bergman on Tarkovsky, there's quotes on the Nostalghia website, which I was looking at yesterday. Isn't there a story of Tarkovsky and Bergman seeing one another at an exhibition and each turning on their heels and disappearing? As for Smog, I bought *Knock Knock* when it came out, but I can remember why. I bought the first Bonnie 'Prince' Billy album that day as well.