Work Text:
These fragments I have shored against my ruins*
*
The camera is a solid weight in your hands. It is a comfort, a screen between you and the world. It is your eyes and it is your memories and it is how you have faced each new day for so long.
And what you record with it is a record that you were here, that they were here, that this happened, that it means something.
Focus.
The camera is proof. The camera is safety, you tell yourself, because the camera doesn't lie.
*
If filming is the way you capture reality, then editing is how you make sense of it. Alone in a dark motel room at four in the morning, sleepless, you cut and you stitch the raw chaos of your life into something that can easily be parsed. Bringing sense to senselessness. Bringing order to reality. This is the closest you will come to control.
(They say that what you leave out is as important as what you leave in.)
You sleep as it renders.
*
Charging headfirst into situations, you have immunity, because in the movies, no one notices the man behind the camera. Because in the movies, the cameraman can’t die.
And you only point the camera where the story plays out. Observe:
Pan in on Alex: Alex is running from something. Alex needs help.
(Frame and re-frame.)
Pan in on Tim: Tim is the final clue to the puzzle. Tim can be trusted.
(Frame and re-frame.)
Pan in on Jessica.
Pan in on Jessica.
And cut.
(You watch the footage incessantly.)
You couldn’t save her.
Frame and re-frame:
But it wasn’t your fault. You aren’t the main player in this story: you are just the cameraman. And you have on film the proof that she existed, isn’t that enough?
(It isn’t enough)
Pan out. Your choice. You are the one behind the lens. You were never really here.
*
"Sees me."
The observer becomes the observed.
This isn’t how it goes. You are not the main character in this story.
(The cameraman isn’t a character. The cameraman can’t die.)
You focus as he raises the gun to you for the final shot.
The camera is the weight of memories in your hands, like the heaviness of failure, as you bleed out, useless, on the cutting room floor.