and power.
There are no glass houses. The shades are drawn and «real» life begins. Some
activities are impossible in the open. And these secret events are the voyeur's
game. He seeks them out with his myriad army of eyes — like the child's
notion of a Deity who sees all. «Everything?» asks the child. «Yes, every-
thing», they answer, and the child is left to cope
with this divine intrusion.
The voyeur is masturbator, the mirror his badge, the window his prey.
Urge to come to terms with the «0utside», by
absorbing, interiorizing it. I won't come out,
you must come in to me. Into my womb-garden
where I peer out. Where I can construct a universe
within the skull, to rival the real.
She said, «Your eyes are always black.» The pupil
opens to seize the object of vision.
Imagery is bom of loss. Loss of the «friendly
expanses». The breast is removed and the face
imposes its cold, curious, forceful, and inscrutable
presence.
You may enjoy life from afar. You may look at
things but not taste them. You may caress
the mother only with the eyes.
You cannot touch these phantoms.
French Deck. Solitary stroker of cards. He
dealt himself a hand. Turn stills of the past in
unending permutations, shuffle and begin. Sort
the images again. And sort them again. This
game reveals germs of truth, and death.
The world becomes an apparently infinite, yet
possibly finite, card game. Image combinations,
permutations, comprise the world game.
A mild possession, devoid of risk, at bottom sterile. With an image there is no
attendant danger.
Muybridge derived his animal subjects from the Philadelphia Zoological
Garden, male performers from the University. The women were professional
artists' models, also actresses and dancers, parading nude before the 48
cameras.
Films are collections of dead pictures which are
given artificial insemination.
Films spectators are quiet vampires.
Cinema is most totalitarian of the arts. All energy and sensation is sucked
up into the skull, a cerebral erection, skull bloated with blood. Caligula
wished a single neck for all his subjects that he could behead a kingdom
with one blow. Cinema is this transforming agent. The body exists for the
sake of the eyes; it becomes a dry stalk to support these two soft insatiable
jewels.
Film confers a kind of spurious eternity.
Each film depends upon all the others and drives you on to others. Cinema
was a novelty, a scientific toy, until a sufficient body of works had been
