I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer – non-nine, not-eight, non-seven, non-six, not-five, etc. – is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.
(Argumentum Ornithologicum by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Andrew Hurley)
***
Film and video maker Scott Puccio recently uploaded a short video he made last year named Aviary: bird dreams, embedded above. It was originally made to be shown in wooden peep-boxes that Scott built himself, the video looping on a small digital frame. Aviary is the second video he made to be seen like this; below is a picture of one of these “Dream Machines”. It’s currently on display in my very favorite used bookstore, Rustbelt Books. From what I understand, Scott’s making some more of them.
I had met Scott a couple of times since I arrived in Buffalo 2001, but it was about five years ago that we became close friends. I had seen two films of his at the first Electric City Spectacular: Films about Buffalo, a series of short films, divided into 11 “boxes”, frame by frame shots of our mutual friends, of Wegmans, Buffalo, his father picking cherries; and Polyphemus, single-framed cut-outs of eyes from magazines, our eyes following that circling, maddening white spot on the pupil that says “life” – the life that Polyphemus lost. I loved the films. I remember us going on a long walk up east of Elmwood, up Utica, complaining about films and peoples reactions to them, how it made us upset that anyone could think of Michael Moore’s films as progressive considering his aesthetic was the same as that of Fox News, how David Lynch wasn’t really all that interesting, how all those cultural studies books of popular films seemed to be so pre-dominant and rarely interesting, and how this moving image thing is so much more then what we see around us. Then we kept hanging out, talking, always talking, rarely at bars, more till 4 am at one of our homes.
At the time, I didn’t really know anything about experimental flicks – my mind was still set on the old masters from Europe, (Truffaut, Malle, Bunuel, etc.), and it was Scott who introduced me to a whole host of films and videos that have been dear to me since. It was he who’d call me to say “Hey! We’re going to x festival and YOU ARE COMING. YOU HAVE TO COME.” I thought it was great. I think we both share a desire for deep, meaningful friendships, and if I learned anything from ours, it’s how important and vital it is to be generous, and I think it comes across, humbly and playfully, in his films too.
Aviary, inspired by the Borges story, is one of my favorites.
