Manufactured Landscapes

Photo: J. Chapman

My writing, or rather, my ideas have always been tied to painting and photography. I went to film school in the late 80s and in a way I was taught to see or visually observe first, before anything. Cinematography classes didn’t work so well for me because they were way too technical, but one thing I retained was the idea of a good photographer working to remove or subtract light from a scene, rather than add it. It’s sort of how I approach my writing; a healthy dose of Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory (7/8 of the story is underwater) mixed in with cinematography theory. And so photographs and paintings always start off my ideas. The piece from yesterday has a certain visual look in my head, if I were to shoot it on film. It’s not made clear necessarily in the narrative, but then again it wasn’t written in film script form. It’s the entire picture that’s bizarre and absurd to me, but still; give me a camera and I can deliver something along the lines of what I’m describing.

I’m writing this because the last year or so I’ve been hyper-aware of and interested in what we’ve been doing to our environment; particularly through extraction (mining) and damming rivers. Last night my wife and I watched this, which in my opinion is vital viewing for all people, especially during these Olympic Games, when Beijing and China in general seem to be on everyone’s mind. If you get a chance, please invest an hour and a half of your time and watch this dynamic documentary. It puts everything that you (and I) do in perspective and makes you re-think your wasteful actions and re-tool your ideas about finding solutions. Although very much pro-environment, I am not a fan of Al Gore’s film, which preaches and educates while wagging an accusatory finger. I also found his film devoid of any concrete, believable sources, and so I look at it with a very skeptical eye. The wonderful thing about “Manufactured Landscapes” is that not many people speak. No one delivers sermons or holier-than-thou opinions. The images are left to tell their story.

I am attracted to this kind of filmmaking because it’s what I strive to do with my writing. Put a story out and let the readers form opinions—although most of the time you can guess where I stand. It’s what I was striving to do with my little documentary, which I shot and put together in 1989 (“The District”) and which recently resurfaced in the form of a 16mm reel found in my childhood home, at the bottom of a drawer. I promise I will transfer the emulsion onto digital format and post it here soon. It’s not much, it’s raw and dirty and nasty, but it was a statement on my particular environment and the social events at the time which shaped it, that I was hoping to make, even then—almost 20 years ago. I recently viewed it (I have it dubbed onto VHS tape) and, although rudimentary and devoid of any cinematic tricks, CG or any of that slick nonsense we’re used to seeing from film, it still holds.

The photo above was shot by my wife’s cousin, Jason; an extremely-talented artist who has embarked on a tough mission, documenting our receding natural landscape and raising awareness of the destruction caused by our carbon footprint. It’s this kind of art which inspires me to write, and which gives birth to the stories that you read on this web log. I know it may sound strange, particularly since none of my fiction explores environmental concerns overtly, but you must trust me when I say that particular images yield a certain mood which I then attempt to transfer into a written piece. Anyway, you can learn more about Jason and his thoughts on the matter on his environmental site here and check out his photography here.

Although I often shudder at the times in which I live, I am so grateful for mediums such as these (blogs, journals, flickr sites, etc.) and people like Jason—unknown, talented artists who struggle to push important ideas to the forefront of our daily discussion and our daily lives. I adore documentary filmmaking and photography; it speaks to what I’ve always tried to do with my writing. And I adore artists and altruistic people who undertake seemingly impossible missions for the greater good of humanity. They inspire me.

Señora De Las Iguanas

It’s a straight line across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, north to southeast.
(I still love Mexico.)
You go from Veracruz right down to Juchitan de Zacagoza.
You go in a yellow 1968 Volkswagen Beetle with a broken cassette player and a furry rabbit’s foot dangling from the rearview.
You go past adobe and mud huts and smoke an Indonesian black clove.
And another.
And another.
There is no illusion of time, just the Mexican countryside rolling at one hundred kilometers an hour.
You think: this is what it’s like in my own country, so you’re not shocked when you see outhouses, poverty, clotheslines.
I love Mexico.
Misery is somehow transcended here.
By what? By whom?
God?
In Juchitan you hit the Pacific Ocean where you catch the sun going into the water.
Coronita beer is five cents at the Salvador bar where a beautiful, brown, Mexican woman with a missing front tooth smiles and serves you even though you’re sixteen years old.
Juchitan is in Oaxaca province.
It’s an ancient, communal, matriarchal society.
It’s fiercely independent.
Everything that is run by women is beautiful.
Everything that is done by women is beautiful.
The goat’s dance precedes the slaughter, and even that is sadly prepossessing and resplendent.
You watch the blade slowly go into the flesh and don’t turn away.
Grandfather did it that way, too.
Only he needed help to hold down the swine.
And the animal’s cries were horrendous.
Do you remember that?
I told you about that; about how when I was a child, I’d run to the room at the back of the house and cover my ears and hum.
But the women even slaughter beautifully.
They give life so elegantly.
And take it back just the same.
You are in Juchitan to try to see through Graciela Iturbide’s eyes.
Only you cannot.
You can just recall her photographs.
And listen to the women of the town spin their tales: Long ago there were two hunchbacks. One was kind but the other was mean and spiteful. The two hunchbacks could not work in the village because everybody made fun of them; therefore they went into the hills to cut wood. That is, the kind one cut all the wood since the mean and spiteful one was very lazy and was always telling his companion:
–Ay!, how sick I am today. It is better if you go and cut the wood this week.
His partner, being kind-hearted, would go into the mountains and do all the work week after week…
That was Domingo Siete.
Well, part of it.
The woman who sat with me and told me that tale also used a needle to dig out a splinter from under my skin.
On my finger.
She sterilized it in the fire in her home.
She told other stories while she worked the needle into the flesh and somehow never drew blood.
El Principe Oso, Blanca Flor, El Conejito Verde.
And El Chupacabra.
Not the tale, but the drink.
Banana, orange juice, pineapple juice, guava juice, and rum.
Clemencia y José:
–Very long ago there lived a couple who had a daughter named Clemencia. The mother, who was a witch, did not like Clemencia because she said the girl was a fool who was always going to church…
A fool. Always going to church.
She tells you about Graciela Iturbide.
–She went back to your country to photograph Texas.
You say.
–That is not my country. I don’t have a country.
And then she laughs because she knows you’re just a child.
Speaking in child tongues.
Speaking child words.
She says.
–Mi hijo, everybody belongs somewhere. Even if in the end, it’s just in the earth.