Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

How we decide what is best.

From motion, from cause, from existence, from goodness, from design.

ON LIGHT

Intertitles may be perceived as an affectation. Light will suffice to convey how the venial nobles have inflamed the painter’s ambition, as if they’d slammed it in a door.

As a child, I had an ambition to subdue light. My brutality and aggression were expended splitting and bending the spectrum. My exhibitions, at the major museums, were to simulate various effects; for instance, sunrise, cobalt shade thrown by concrete, the blushing harvest, bright orbs underwater, prisons of icicles.

I envisioned a career trajectory. My youth exploring the spectra of morning, kindergarten, the beginning of business hours, honeymoons, eastern-facing monastic cells. Next, when the ignorant knew how to pronounce my name and I was in magazines, of flirtation, recess, vacations, reprieves, athletics, anxieties. During my fellowships, the light of belonging, nature, literature. As I aged, fell from vogue, my wives beggared me and my children spurned me as a narcissistic fool, of eclipses, executions, twilight, and, with relief, finally, exhibitions of darkness. This was my plan but life did not work out that way. I have, as of yet, done little to subdue light.

ON INFLUENCE

The problem of influence. It is leprous. Sleep evades me as I try to identify my antecedents. I am not so arrogant to believe I possess a unique sensibility. Haupt was vigilant against the possibility of imitation but he lifted the structure of New Athens from Parker’s camp dystopia Swoon for the Colonel anyway. The senses are sources of contamination. Memories, the patterns of nature. I will avoid Weide’s whip pans, Farboksky’s elemental continuity. The masters and mistresses are not the problem. It is the hacks, the language of the middle, which must be avoided. Jockeys riding their content as far as it will go. The meanest journeyman has, if one digs enough, a perceivable and singular style.

ON POSSIBILITY

As a plastic art, cinema’s possibilities have winnowed. As a narrative form, its possibilities remain without boundaries. If, after months of toil, my film was revealed to have affinities with a Trinidadian feature playing in the background on the rail and my unconscious seized it, ravaged it for parts, I would be disappointed.

ON STYLE

The smudges of an auteur’s incidental style are their legacy. Take Polycarp . Critics mention the shot of Polycarp kneeling, Polycarp bound to the stake, Polycarp ignoring the entreaties of the priests to recant his vows and be forgiven, but rewatching the film, I was struck by the similarities of its slow pans to those on the storyboards of Altarpiece . One must quarantine one’s style.

A rich, distinguished genealogy of theft recedes into prehistory. The first practitioner was Cain, the thief of life. Homage can be better than invention. Satires, attacks, refutations, tributes. Theft refreshes art. After cataloguing the idiosyncrasies of the great directors, three shots remained unclaimed: the extremely close, the medium-long, and the extremely extremely long. These shots were not, I felt, of my vocabulary.

Lawrence said, Why are you combing your hair?

I said, Never mind, Lawrence.

He said, It’s strange that the correct arrangement of a protein filament can indicate desirability to potential partners.

I said, It’s strange that you exist for no reason except to listen to the problems of neurotic and affluent urban professionals, and even then you’re only turned to after the drugs exhaust their particular neural pathways.

The listings on the night of my appointment with Dr. Lisa were dismal. There was King Louie at the Baxter and The Civil Civil War at the Runaway Seven. There was Eat or Be Eaten at the Conspicuous, which is too erotic for a date.

Another tactic I thought I might try was to take her to the Heights, which was temporarily closed for renovations. Then I could ask her if she wanted to dine. Although that could also backfire, given my face.

Osvald’s possession of me is not yet comprehensive enough for him to gain control of my limbs, except for one special condition. Osvald hates to brush his teeth and will only do so under special duress. Because he has avoided dental problems in his life, he believes brushing destroys protective bacteria in one’s mouth. He resists my attempts to use a toothbrush, although he tolerates mouthwash, and enjoys the good brands of whitening gum. During certain hours, when Osvald has less power, I have made it my habit to casually walk by the sink, and, thinking hard about this or that mystery, brush my teeth without keeping the act in my mind.

The date of my appointment with Dr. Lisa, this was not possible. My tongue needed scraping. I raised the instrument to my mouth, without incident, but as I cleaned it, the scraper jerked from my hands, slicing my tongue. The scraper flew from my hands into the recycling can. Conscientious Osvald. Blood on my tongue. I went to the kiosk down the block to buy coagulant spray.

I said, Osvald, if you insist on doing this, I’ll stay home tonight and watch Interpermanence on repeat.

Osvald was averse to Interpermanence , a psuedo-intellectual examination of the male role in contemporary society, and would not remain in the building if it was playing. It related to some Jurassic personal drama of his own, when a woman he was dating went to the film with some man after he gave her a dumb speech about human sexuality, about the uselessness of jealousy. Maybe something happened, maybe not. This threat pacified him but for one more rebellious jerk of my arm, when I was raising my toothbrush to my mouth. Toothpaste in my hair. I needed another shower to get it out, but had run through my water allotment on my first. To the charging station latrine. The attendant took in my bloodied face, my disheveled hair.

He said, Do you need me to call someone for you? Or maybe you’d like to eat?

I said, The key, please.

He said, Here you go, but please be advised that the use of illegal narcotics is prohibited on the premises.

I said, The use of illegal narcotics is prohibited everywhere. You don’t need to distinguish between the charging station and the Hub at large.

It was my luck to catch a local going near the hospital.

How to proceed with Dr. Lisa? To ask her too early would be too eager. To ask her too late, as if it were an afterthought, might seem timid.

Lobby, nurse, questions, office.

Dr. Lisa in makeup, not much.

I said, Hello, how are you?

She said, Open your mouth.

She said, It’s bleeding.

She said, Tongue out.

Her hand on my jaw.

She said, I’ll stitch this real quick. How did it happen?

I said, Licking a mailer.

Scissors, thread, needle, syringe.

She said, I’ll numb it up. Keep your tongue out.

In my mouth, her cold hands. The pinch of the needle. These procedures frighten me but the prospect of seeming fearful in front of Dr. Lisa was worse. She was sloppy, quick. It took less than two minutes.

She said, Your tongue is going to hurt for a couple days. Now. What will we see?

On the rail to the Bombay Cinema I told her about Altarpiece . She learned I was married before. We discussed the occupation of myself by Osvald and the subsequent negotiations for my motor functions. I mentioned my neighborhood, the outages, the cameras.

Dr. Lisa’s turn. Safe Zone born and raised. At sixteen, she signed the public service contract, which meant her medical education was paid for in return for a modest salary at an assigned hospital until the age of thirty-nine, and the agreement to practice medicine in the public sector for her entire career. No marriage but a relationship lasting six years. Together in school, in the first years of their careers, then it was used up.