3. Richard Catlett Wilkerson, San francisco (USA)



21/12/2000, PST, 7 H 30


3. Snake Arrow

 

There is an old man in Heidelberg who tells me I can work on my film. Its near the University where he teaches philosophy. I wander around the country side looking for just the right place to shoot the film. I get a little lost and find myself in a field near the road. I know my friend lives near the lake, but I don't know which way the lake is. I ask a person walking by who looks like a local which way the ocean is ? He points down the road to the right. I thought it was to the left and this leave me feeling a little disoriented. Still, knowing where the ocean is tells me the lake is the other direction.

I begin walking a find a perfect place to shoot the film. I ask a small crew that is now there to begin to set up for the film. A woman lifts a black snake from the grass. She pulls the snake through her fingers and the snake becomes very stiff. "Good," I think to myself, " Now its stiff enough to shoot."

She picks up a bow and shoots the snake/arrow across a creek. I feel this will somehow join the two parts of the map in my mind, the side with the ocean, and the side with the lake where my friend lives. Still, I wonder if she can do this again with the film rolling.


Commentaires

Dreambat notes that the film topic was not recalled upon waking. Reflecting upon what it might have been, Dreambat first wildly speculated that it was about the flow which occurs between little lakes and large oceans. I mentioned to Dreambat that he seemed to be developing an kind of stock answer, relying upon Jungian notions of the personal unconscious as the lake the collective unconscious as the ocean. Dreambat agreed it was a shot in the dark, but I think he was deadpanning me with allusions to the black snake being shot.
"Thing is, he said, the word 'film' is a bit of an interpretation itself."
"What do you mean ?" I asked.
"Well, I said I was there to shoot a film, and that was kind of what it was, but it was more, or less."
"More or less a film ?" I continued.
"More than a film, but not completely a film either." He explained. "Sometimes the goal was to shoot a film, sometimes this goal fully slid off the dream platter leaving other fruits to be tasted, yet the scent of this film-project remained, so it seemed easiest to characterize it as a film."
I asked him if he had plans to shoot a film.
"No, not at all. And even after the dream, I can't really find that desire. I do see that shooting the film gave me some kind of legitimacy to wander around the fields, scoping things out."
Then he changed the topic a bit, saying : "But this is really more taking a personal direction, why don't you ask me about the dream-as-incubated for the solstice ?"
"O.K., tell me about that part."
"I do like the notion I mentioned before of the two lands, the two waters, the two sides, the confused directions, all being bridged by a magic black snake."
"Yes," I smiled, "What was *that* about for you, what is bring bridged and how does the black snake do this ?"
"I'm not sure that's clear yet. It does remind me of an earlier dream where another philosophy teacher extracted a black snake from the wall of a small ravine where he was holding the class. At the time I explored that image as extracting the unconscious from the maternal ground. Given that my dream-maker liked that and went with it, this new black snake scene might be looking at some way I can participate in bridging two kinds of maternal ground, perhaps personal and collective. You know, I recall the snake goddesses of Minoan times holding the snakes somewhat like bows"
I noted, "Oh, were back to Jung again ?"
"O.K., said Dreambat, I see you want less representational conceptualizations. Another way of saying this is that the fundamental flaw in the center of the universe is not going to find resolution by simply coming back together. This would choke off the streams that flow and create territorialized bodies of organization. Rather, an intense becoming extracts the surplus; subverting repressive organization and putting into orbit a network of sub-objects that create a nomadic field of intercommunications. Well, lets drop the word "communications" as its so full of assumptions and preconceptions and stick with the dream imagery. The mind wants to find the snakes' target, but this is missing the point. The snake is extracted and temporarily the more resistant of the two materials, bow and snake. Thus the bow "interprets" the snake but the snake also complies, and flies. She gives expression to the snake/arrow, but it hasn't yet landed on the other side, or any side. "
"Its almost like a New-Years Myth, I noticed, shooting from one side to the other."
"Yes, however, the charm for me is not just the remembered imagery, but the not-quite remembered processes, the not quite filming, not quite home, not quite clear, not quite snake, not quit arrow, and yet more than a film, more than a snake, more than just being confused. New forms begin coming into being. There is the Snake-arrow-Heidelberg thing, the confusion-travel-ocean machine, the film-field-ego factory. Each of these productions are like little aliens that are learning to dance with each other."
"So,I cut in, trying to get him to summarize, what do little aliens learning to dance with each other have to do with the dream as a solstice dream ? "
"Well, for me right now, its about what is extracted from the present field of flows and shot beyond where we now are."



Richard Wilkerson
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.dreamgate.com



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