Forkhead (2006)

(After David Lynch's Lost Highway)

There there. You’re tired. Stressed. Have collected no victories. All your curfews. Even the sax hasn’t let you out. Of the house. But I’m there right now. Call me.

*

This must be super-rare, but the first time I saw Lost Highway I was stoned. Foreseeing a headfilm, I’d shared a preparatory J outside the Astor Theatre. Finding my seat, I found myself quietly toasted.

*

Forks in the road, in the head. Highway by night; snaking lights. Lost in forks.

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An ancient book on the art of feigning death. Unquenchable book.

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From early in the piece I had Fred Madison figured as a fellow forkhead. A real channelsurfer. My suspicions were confirmed (bigtime) when he forked into parallel identities, Fred Madison becoming Pete Dayton becoming Fred Madison becoming, etc.

*

More questions than answers: He wears black or black wears him? Who’s tailgating who? How would he hide his body around himself, resurface out of the corners of her? Whaddayou mean, “What?!”

*

The phone’s ringing. (Again). Odd,

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Hello… pick up?

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LH was on a double bill with Dead Man. Lynch’s film came first, with its rapid eye movement. The good confusion. By the time it was over I had little energy left for Jim Jarmusch’s film… in my sleepwatching was left to ponder whether LH could equally have been titled Dead Man.

*

Sleep is not entertainment. Broadly speaking. Ink runs in drawers. The woman who isn't a doppelganger. (Where is she?)

*

Plant cameras in the dark, rich soil. Houseplants that require no natural light. (Pupils dilate). Footage blooms in the night.

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We’ve met before, haven’t we? This is one of those movie quotes I always quote 'in character'.

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Impossible to say the story's over. Just as it’s impossible to say, “The story’s over there.” Still, despite everyone’s best intentions, the story may be put to rest with a cliché. A time-marker. The post-film cigarette, with its rush of switching back to some kind of

*

“David! Shit! I think you left the gate open!”


As published in Sein und Werden, Spring 2009 (online edition).