Life, Camera, Action

Last year, for Christmas, my wife bought me a Braille watch. It’s a wonderful invention. Hinged at the nine o’clock position, the crystal opens with a button press so you can feel the position of the hands in relation to the raised dots at the hour marks. It was intended for the visually impaired, but for those who can see, it still has a frivolous, albeit satisfying, use: During a movie, without even taking your eyes off the screen, you can tell how much more you’re in for. “What’s the matter with Indiglo?” someone asked, and I spat upon the ground and railed for nine-and-a-half minutes about things that light up in the theater.

I’d like to invent a black box with a green button that can be kept hidden in a jacket pocket and pressed at opportune moments to jam all non-emergency cell-phone usage within a 40-person radius, darkening every tiny screen within the presser’s field of vision.

And I’d like to invent a set of gauzy squares that, when moistened, adhere invisibly to the temples and, when rubbed by finger tips, create a static charge that lowers the volume of the ads shown on the screen before the movie.

And I’d like to invent a coin that, when chewed, gives the possessor a sense of impending artistic inspiration. It functions as perfectly legal tender at grocery stores and turnstiles but also has a gummy consistency and a pleasant flavor. And since it’s a coin, the very act of chewing it displays a casual, quiet disregard for material things, like chewing the sleeve of a Prada suit, but more private.

And I’d like to invent a genetically altered, chemically peculiar feather that, when stomped absently by a loafer on a sidewalk, sends shivers through the soles of the feet, building upon the sense of impending artistic inspiration that, moments earlier, was achieved through the chewing of coins in an afternoon meeting that had gone on so so long, that one of the attendees had, under the table, felt the hands of his Braille watch and wondered if they’d stopped, all the while giving the impression to everyone who looked upon his quizzical expression that he was deeply considering the budget or the action plan or the research report that was projected onto the wall, rolling a lozenge around his tongue, the feather stomped shortly thereafter, the five o’clock horn still bleating at full volume, the coat trailing behind and nearly caught in the revolving door, the loafer-clad worker subsequently seized by a curious jolt that travels up his shin, through his femur, and into his chest cavity where it sustains a steady hum during which the entire world suddenly makes sense.

Through a tickling of the ribs, through a swelling of the heart, all of the people nearby are suddenly allies in a world made of wind and rain and dirt, a world that’s bent on dissolving each and every one of us back into itself through unending abrasion.

And the vibration in the chest cavity lingers long enough that the person arrives at home, drops the coat and feverishly outlines the scene from a movie or a chapter from a book, or makes big broad strokes across a canvas or shoots a video still-life of the lump in the crib—ah, it moves, not a still-life after all—where the quietly breathing infant lies almost but not quite motionless, now captured by video tape and edited, massaged, into a different sort of lump, an image, a consideration, a reflection of the crib, of the neighbor, of the meeting that went on so so long, shaped now into a thing of beauty that, when looked upon by the spouse and the family and the neighbor and the world, says to each of them, Yes.

And I would like to be among them, to walk into a theater and see the movie made by that casual, amateur everyperson who, in the moments between the crush of work, and the duty of life is an artist of the first rank waiting to be heard.

I reveal not where the radioactive, chemically peculiar feather has been placed, but I advise you, in those hurried moments, to watch your step.