Raju welcomed the intrusion-something to relieve the loneliness of the place.
-R.K.Narayan
It is impossible to appreciate the importance of space in The Navidson Record without first taking into account the significance of echoes. However, before even beginning a cursory examination of their literal and thematic presence in the film, echoes reverberating within the word itself need to be distinguished.
Generally speaking, echo has two coextensive histories: the mythological one and the scientific one. [46-David Eric Katz argues for a third: the epistemological one. Of course, the implication that the current categories of myth and science ignore the reverberation of knowledge itself is not true. Katz’s treatment of repetition, however, is still highly rewarding. His list of examples in Table iii are particularly impressive. See The Third Beside You: An Analysis of the Epistemological Echo by David Eric Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).] Each provides a slightly different perspective on the inherent meaning of recurrence, especially when that repetition is imperfect.
To illustrate the multiple resonances found in an echo, the Greeks conjured up the story of a beautiful mountain nymph. Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser known version of this myth has Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pieces, burying all of her except her voice. Adonta ta mete. [*-Adonta ta… = “Her still singing limbs.”] [47-Note that luckily in this chapter, Zampanô penciled many of the translations for these Greek and Latin quotations into the margins. I’ve gone ahead and turned them into footnotes.] In both cases, unfulfilled love results in the total negation of Echo’s body and the near negation of her voice. [48-Ivan Largo Stilets, Greek Mythology Again (Boston: Biloquist Press, 1995), p. 343-497; as well as Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, ifi. 356-410.]
But Echo is an insurgent. Despite the divine constraints imposed upon her, she still manages to subvert the gods’ ruling. After all, her repetitions are far from digital, much closer to analog. Echo colours the words with faint traces of sorrow (The Narcissus myth) or accusation (The Pan myth) never present in the original. As Ovid recognized in his Metamorphoses:
Spreta latet silvis pudibundaque frondibus ora protegit et solis ex jib vivit in antris; sed tamen haeret amor crescitque dolore repulsae; extenuant vigiles corpus miserabile curae adducitque cutem macies et in aera sucus corporis omnis abit; vox tantum atque ossa supersunt: vox manet, ossa ferunt lapidis traxisse figuram. Inde latet silvis nulloque in monte videtur, omnibus auditur: sonus est, qui vivit in i11a.
[*-Eloquently translated by Horace Gregory as: “So she was turned away! To hide her face, her lips, her guilt among the trees) Even their leaves, to haunt caves of the forest,! To feed her love on melancholy sormw/ Which, sleepless, turned her body to a shade) First pale and wrinkled, then a sheet of air) Then bones, which some say turned to thinworn rocks; / And last her voice remained. Vanished in forest) Far from her usual walks on hills and valleys,! She’s heard by all who call; her voice has life.” The Metamorphoses by Ovid. (New York: A Mentor Book, 1958), p.
97.]
To repeat: her voice has life. It possesses a quality not present in the original, revealing how a nymph can return a different and more meaningful story, in spite of telling the same story. [49-Literary marvel Miguel de Cervantes set down this compelling passage in his Don Quixote (Part One, Chapter Nine):
Ia verdad, cuya madre es la historia, émula del tiempo, depdsito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir. [51-Which Anthony Bonner translates
as”.. . truth, whose mother Is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future.” – Ed.]
Much later, a yet untried disciple of arms had the rare pleasure of meeting the extraordinary Pierre Menard in a Paris café following the second world war. Reportedly Menard expounded on his distinct distaste for Madelines but never mentioned the passage (and echo of Don Quixote ) he had penned before the war which had subsequently earned him a fair amount of literary fame: la verdad, cuya madre es Ia historia, émula del tiempo, depOsito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir.
This exquisite variation on the passage by the “ingenious layman” is far too dense to unpack here. Suffice it to say Menard’s nuances are so fine they are nearly undetectable, though talk with the Framer and you will immediately see how haunted they are by sorrow, accusation, and sarcasm.]
[50-Exactly How the fuck do you write about “exquisite variation” when both passages are exactly the same?
I’m sure the late hour has helped, add to that the dim light in my room, or how poorly I’ve been sleeping, going to sleep but not really resting, if that’s possible, though let me tell you, sitting alone, awake to nothing else but this odd murmuring, like listening to the penitent pray-you know it’s a prayer but you miss the words-or better yet listening to a bitter curse, realizing a whole lot wrong’s being ushered into the world but still missing the words, me like that, listening in my way by comparing in his way both Spanish fragments, both written out on brown leaves of paper, or no, that’s not right, not brown, more like, oh I don’t know, yes brown but in the failing light appearing almost colored or the memory of a color, somehow violent, or close to that, or not at all, as I just kept reading both pieces over and over again, trying to detect at least one differing accent or letter, wanting to detect at least one differing accent or letter, getting almost desperate in that pursuit, only to repeatedly discover perfect similitude, though how can that be, right? if it were perfect it wouldn’t be similar it would be identical, and you know what? I’ve lost this sentence, I can’t even finish it, don’t know how-
Here’s the point: the more I focused in on the words the farther I seemed from my room. No sense where either, until all of a sudden along the edges of my tongue, towards the back of my mouth, I started to taste something extremely bitter, almost metallic. I began to gag. I didn’t gag, but I was certain I would. Then I got a whiff of that same something awful I’d detected outside of the Shop in the hail. Faint as hell at first until I knew I’d smelled it and then it wasn’t faint at all. A whole lot of rot was suddenly packed up my nose, slowly creeping down my throat, closing it off. I started to throw up, watery chunks of vomit flying everywhere, sluicing out of me onto the floor, splashing onto the wall, even onto this. Except I only coughed. I didn’t cough. I lightly cleared my throat and then the smell was gone and so was the taste. I was back in my room again, looking around in the dim light, jittery, disoriented but hardly fooled.
I put the fragments back in the trunk. Walked the perimeter of my room. Glass of bourbon. A toke on a blunt. There we go. Bring on the haze. But who am I kidding? I can still see what’s happening. My line of defense has not only failed, it failed long ago. Don’t ask me to define the line either or why exactly it’s needed or even what it stands in defense against. I haven’t the foggiest idea.
This much though I’m sure of: I’m alone in hostile territories with no clue why they’re hostile or how to get back to safe havens, an Old Haven, a lost haven, the temperature dropping, the hour heaving & pitching towards a profound darkness, while before me my idiotic amaurotic Guide laughs, actually cackles is more like it, lost in his own litany of inside jokes, completely out of his head, out of focus too, zonules of Zinn, among other things, having snapped long ago like piano wires, leaving me with absolutely no Sound way to determine where the hell I’m going, though right now going to hell seems like a pretty sound bet.
In his own befuddled way, John Hollander has given the world a beautiful and strange reflection on love and longing. To read his marvelous dialogue on echo [52-See John Hollander’s The Figure of Echo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). ] is to find its author standing perfectly still in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes wild with a cascade of internal reckonings, lips acting out some unintelligible discourse, inaudible to the numerous students who race by him, noting his mad appearance and quite rightly offering him a wide berth as they escape into someone else’s class. [53-Kelly Chamotto makes mention of Hollander in her essay “Mid-
Sentence, Mid-Stream” in Glorious Garrulous Graphomania ed. T. N
Joseph Truslow (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), p. 345.]
Hollander begins with a virtual catalogue of literal echoes. For example, the Latin “decem lam annos aetatem trivi in Cicerone” echoed by the Greek “one!” [“I’ve spent ten years on Cicero” “Ass!”] Or “Musarum studia” (Latin) described by the echo as “dia” (Greek). [“The Muses’ studies” “divine ones.”] Or Narcissus’ rejection “Emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri” to which Echo responds “sit tibi copia nostri.” [Narcissus: “May I die before I give you power over me.” Echo: “I give you power over me.”] On page 4, he even provides a woodcut from Athanasius Kircher’s Neue Hall -und Thonkunst (Nordlingen, 1684) illustrating an artificial echo machine designed to exchange ” clamore” for four echoes:” amore,” “more,” “ore,” and finally “re.” [“O outcry” returns as “love,” “delays,” “hours” and “king.”] Nor does Hollander stop there. His slim volume abounds with examples of textual transfiguration, though in an effort to keep from repeating the entire book, let this heart-wrenching interchange serve as a final example:
Chi dara fine a! gran dolore? L’ore.
[“Who will put an end to this great sadness?” “The hours passing”]
While The Figure of Echo takes special delight in clever word games, Hollander knows better than to limit his examination there. Echo may live in metaphors, puns and the suffix-solis ex jib vivit in antris [“Literatures rocky caves”] [54-“From that time on she lived in lonely caves.” – Ed.] – but her range extends far beyond those literal walls. For instance, the rabbinical bat kol means “daughter of a voice” which in modern Hebrew serves as a rough equivalent for the word “echo.” Milton knew it “God so commanded, and left that Command! Sole Daughter of his voice.” [55-
John Milton’s Paradise Lost, IX, 653-54.] So did Wordsworth: “stern
Daughter of the Voice of God.” Quoting from Henry Reynold’s
Mythomystes (1632), Hollander evidences religious appropriation of the ancient myth (page 16):
This Winde is (as the before-mentioned lamblicus, by consent of his other fellow Cabalists sayes) the Symbole of the Breath of God; and Ecco, the reflection of this divine breath, or spirit upon us; or (as they interpret it) the daughter of the divine voice; which through the beatifying splendor it shedds and diffuses through the Soule, is justly worthy to be reverenced and adored by us. This Ecco descending upon a Narcissus, or such a Soule as (impurely and vitiously affected) slights, and stops his eares to the Divine voice, or shutts his harte from divine Inspirations, through his being enamour’d of not himselfe, but his owne shadow meerely . . . he becomes thence . . . an earthy, weake, worthiesse thing, and fit sacrifize for
only etemall oblivion…
Thus Echo suddenly assumes the role of god’s messenger, a female Mercury or perhaps even Prometheus, decked in talaria, with lamp in hand, descending on fortunate humanity.
In 1989, however, the noted southern theologian Hanson Edwin Rose dramatically revised this reading. In a series of lectures delivered at Chapel Hill, Rose referred to “God’s Grand Utterance” as “The Biggest Bang Of Them All.” After discussing in depth the difference between the Hebrew davhar and the Greek logos, Rose took a careful accounting of St. John, chapter 1, Verse 1 -“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It was a virtuoso performance but one that surely would have been relegated to those dusty shelves already burdened with a thousand years of seminary discourse had he not summed up his ruminations with this incendiary and sill infamous conclusion:
“Look to the sky, look to yourself and remember: we are only god’s echoes and god is Narcissus.” [56-Hanson Edwin Rose, Creationist Myths
(Detroit, Michigan: Pneuma Publications, 1989), p. 219.]
Rose’s pronouncement recalls another equally important meditation:
Why did god create a dual universe?
So he might say,
“Be not like me. I am alone.” And it might be heard.
[57-These lines have a familiar ring though I’ve no clue why or where
I’ve heard them before.]
[58-Though we were ultimately unsuccessful, all efforts were made to determine who wrote the above verse. We apologize for this inconsistency. Anyone who can provide legitimate proof of authorship will be credited In future editions. – Ed.]
There is not time or room to adequately address the complexity inherent in this passage, aside from noting how the voice is returned-or figuratively echoed-not with an actual word but with the mere understanding that it was received, listened to, or as the text explicitly states “heard.” What the passage occludes, no doubt on purpose, is how such an understanding might be attained.
Interestingly enough, for all its marvelous observation, The Figure of Echo contains a startling error, one which performs a poetic modulation on a voice sounded over a century ago. While discussing Wordsworth’s poem “The Power of Sound” Hollander quotes on page 19 the following few lines:
Ye Voices, and ye Shadows
And Images of voice – to hound and horn
From rocky steep and rock-bestudded meadows
Flung back, and in the sky’s blue care reborn –
[Italics added for emphasis]
Perhaps it is simply a typographical error committed by the publisher.
Or perhaps the publisher was dutifully transcribing an error committed by Hollander himself, not just a scholar but a poet as well, who in that tiny slip where an “r” replaced a “v” and an “s” miraculously vanished reveals his own relation to the meaning of echo. A meaning Wordsworth did not share. Consider the original text:
Ye Voices, and ye Shadows
And Images of voice-to hound and horn
From rocky steep and rock-bestudded meadows
Flung back, and, in the sky’s blue caves reborn – [Italics added for emphasis]
[59-William Wordsworth, The Poems Of William Wordsworth, ed.
Nowell Charles Smith, M.A. vol. 1. (London: Methuen and Co., 1908), p. 395. Also of some interest is Alice May Williams letter to the observers at
Mount Wilson (CAT. #0005) in which she writes: “I believe that sky opens & closes on certain periods, When you see all that cloud covering the sky right up, & over. Those clouds are called. Blinds, shutters, & verandahs. Sometimes that sky opens underneath.” See No One May Ever Have The Same Knowledge Again: Letters to Mount Wilson Observatory 1915-1 935, edited and transcribed by Sarah Simons (West Covina, California: Society For the Diffusion of Useful Information Press, 1993), p. 11.]
While Wordsworth’s poetics retain the literal properties and stay within the canonical jurisdiction of Echo, Hollander’ s find something else, not exactly ‘religious’-that would be hyperbole-but ‘compassionate’, which as an echo of humanity suggests the profoundest return of all.
Aside from recurrence, revision, and commensurate symbolic reference, echoes also reveal emptiness. Since objects always muffle or impede acoustic reflection, only empty places can create echoes of lasting clarity.
Ironically, hollowness only increases the eerie quality of otherness inherent in any echo. Delay and fragmented repetition create a sense of another inhabiting a necessarily deserted place. Strange then how something so uncanny and outside of the self, even ghostly as some have suggested, can at the same time also contain a resilient comfort: the assurance that even if it is imaginary and at best the product of a wall, there is still something else out there, something to stake out in the face of nothingness.
Hollander is wrong when he writes on page 55:
The apparent echoing of solitary words [reminds] us … that acoustical echoing in empty places can be a very common auditory emblem, redolent of gothic novels as it may be, of isolation and often of unwilling solitude. This is no doubt a case of natural echoes conforming to echo’s mythographic mocking, rather than affirming, role. In an empty hall that should be comfortably inhabited, echoes of our voices and motions mock our very presence in the hollow space.
It is not by accident that choirs singing Psalms are most always recorded with ample reverb. Divinity seems defined by echo. Whether the Vienna Boys Choir or monks chanting away on some chart climbing CD, the hallowed always seems to abide in the province of the hollow. The reason for this is not too complex. An echo, while implying an enormity of a space, at the same time also defines it, limits it, and even temporarily inhabits it.
When a pebble falls down a well, it is gratifying to hear the eventual plunk. If, however, the pebble only slips into darkness and vanishes without a sound, the effect is disquieting. In the case of a verbal echo, the spoken word acts as the pebble and the subsequent repetition serves as “the plunk.”
In this way, speaking can result in a form of “seeing.”
For all its merits, Hollander’s book only devotes five pages to the actual physics of sound. While this is not the place to dwell on the beautiful and complex properties of reflection, in order to even dimly comprehend the shape of the Navidson house it is still critical to recognize how the laws of physics in tandem with echo’s mythic inheritance serve to enhance echo’s interpretive strength.
The descriptive ability of the audible is easily designated with the following formula:
Sound + Time = Acoustic Light
As most people know who are versed in this century’s technological effects, exact distances can be determined by timing the duration of a sound’s round trip between the deflecting object and its point of origin. This principle serves as the basis for all the radar, sonar and ultrasonics used every day around the world by air traffic controllers, fishermen, and obstetricians. By using sound or electromagnetic waves, visible blips may be produced on a screen, indicating either a 747, a school of salmon, or the barely pumping heart of a fetus.
Of course echolocation has never belonged exclusively to technology.
Microchiroptera (bats), Cetacean (porpoises and toothed whales), Deiphinis deiphis (dolphins) as well as certain mammals (flying foxes) and birds (oilbirds) all use sound to create extremely accurate acoustic images. However, unlike their human counterparts, neither bats nor dolphins require an intermediary screen to interpret the echoes. They simply “see” the shape of sound.
Bats, for example, create frequency modulated [FMJ images by producing constant-frequency signals [0.5 to 100+ ms] and FM signals [0.5 to 10 msj in their larynx. The respondent echoes are then translated into nerve discharges in the auditory cortex, enabling the bat not only to determine an insect’s velocity and direction (through synaptic interpretation of Doppler shifts) but pinpoint its location to within a fraction of a millimeter. [60-See D. R. Griffin, Listening in the Dark (1986).]
As Michael J. Buckingham noted in the mid-80s, imaging performed by the human eye is neither active nor passive. The eye does not need to produce a signal to see nor does an object have to produce a signal in order to be seen. An object merely needs to be illuminated. Based on these observations, the afready mentioned formula reflects a more accurate understanding of vision with the following refinement:
Sound + Time = Acoustic Touch
As Gloucester murmured, “I see it feelingly.” [61-King Lear, IV, vi, 147.]
Unfortunately, humans lack the sophisticated neural hardware present in bats and whales. The blind must rely on the feeble light of fingertips and the painful shape of a cracked shin. Echolocation comes down to the crude assessment of simple sound modulations, whether in the dull reply of a tapping cane or the low, eerie flutter in one simple word-perhaps your word-flung down empty hallways long past midnight.
[62-You don’t need me to point out the intensely personal nature of this passage. Frankly I’d of rec’d a quick skip past the whole echo ramble were it not for those six lines, especially the last bit “- perhaps your word -” conjuring up, at least for me, one of those deep piercing reactions, the kind that just misses a ventricle, the old man making his way-feeling his way-around the walls of another evening, a slow and tedious progress but one which begins to yield, somehow, the story of his own creature darkness, taking me completely by surprise, a sudden charge from out of the dullest moment, jaws lunging open, claws protracting, and just so you understand where I’m coming from, I consider “… long past midnight” one claw and “empty hallways” another.
Don’t worry Lude didn’t buy it either but at least he bought a couple of rounds.
Two nights ago, we were checking out the Sky Bar, hemorrhaging dough on drinks, but Lude could only cough hard and then laugh real coronary like: “Hoss, a claw’s made of bone just like a stilt’s made of steel.”
“Sure” I said.
But it was loud there and the crowd kept both of us from hearing correctly. And while I wanted to believe Lude’s basics, I couldn’t. There was something just so awful in the old man’s utterance. I felt a terrible empathy for him then, living in that tiny place, permeated with the odor of age, useless blinks against the darkness. His word-my word, maybe even your word-added to this, and ringing inside me like some awful dream, over and over again, modulating slightly, slowly pitching my own defenses into something entirely different, until the music of that recurrence drew into relief my own scars drawn long ago, over two decades ago, and with more than a claw, a stiletto or even an ancient Samuel O’Reilly @ 1891, and these scars torn, ripped, bleeding and stuttering-for they are first of all his scars-the kind only bars of an EKG can accurately remember, a more precise if incomplete history, Q waves deflecting downward at what must be considered the commencement of the QRS complex, telling the story of a past infarction, that awful endurance and eventual letting go, the failure which began it all in the first place, probably right after one burning maze but still years ahead of the Other loss, a horrible violence, before the coming of that great Whale, before the final drift, nod, macking skid, twist and topple-his own burning-years before the long rest, coming along in its own way, its own nightmare, perhaps even in the folds of another unprotected sleep (so I like to imagine), silvering wings fragmenting then scattering like fish scales flung on the jet stream, above the clouds and every epic venture still suggested in those delicate, light-cradled borders- Other Lands-sweeping the world like a whisper, a hand, even if salmon scales still slip through words as easily as palmed prisms of salt will always slip through fingers, shimmering, raining, confused, and no matter how spectacular forever unable to prevent his fall, down through the silver, the salmon, away from the gold and the myriad of games held in just that word, suggesting it might have even been Spanish gold, though this makes no differance, still tumbling in rem-, dying and -embered, even? or never, in a different light, and not waking this time, before the hit, but sleeping right through it, the slamming into the ground, at terminal velocity too, the pound, the bounce, What kind of ground-air emergency code would that mark mean? the opposition of L’s? Not understood? Probably just X marks the spot: Unable To Proceed- then in the awful second arc and second descent, after the sound, the realization of what Sleep has just now delivered, that bloody handmaiden, this time her toiling fingers wet with boiling deformation, oozing in the mutilations of birth, heartless & unholy, black with afterbirth, miscreated changeling and foul, what no one beside him could prevent, but rather might have even caused, and mine too, this unread trauma, driving him to consciousness with a scream, not even a word, a scream, and even that never heard, so not a scream but the clutch of life held by will alone, no 911, no call at all, just his own misunderstanding of the reality that had broken into the Hall, the silence then of a woman and an only son, describing in an agonizing hour all it takes to let go, broken, bleeding, ragged, twisted, savaged, torn and dying too, so permanently wronged, though for how many years gone untold, unseen, reminiscent of another silver shape, so removed and yet so dear, kept on a cold gold chain, years on, this fistful of twitching injured life, finally recovering on its own until eventually like a seed conceived, born and grown, the story of its injured beat survives long enough to destroy and devour by the simple telling of its fall, all his hope, his home, his only love, the very color of his flesh and the dark marrow of his bone.
“You okay Truant?” Lude asked.
But I saw a strange glimmer everywhere, confined to the sharp oscillations of yellow & blue, as if my retinal view suddenly included along with the reflective blessings of light, an unearthly collusion with scent & sound, registering all possibilities of harm, every threat, every move, even with all that grinning and meeting and din.
A thousand and one possible claws.
Of course, Lude didn’t see it. He was blind. Maybe even right. We drove down Sunset and soon veered south into the flats. A party somewhere. An important gathering of B heads and coke heads. Lude would never feel how “empty hallways long past midnight” could slice inside of you, though I’m not so sure he wasn’t sliced up just the same. Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the HeyI’m-Bleeding part. To feel though, you have to care and as we walked out onto the blue-lit patio and discovered a motorcycle sputtering up oil and bubbles from the bottom of the pool while on the diving board two men shoved flakes of ice up a woman’s bleeding nostrils, her shirt off, her bra nearly transparent, I knew Lude would never care much about the dead. And maybe he was right. Maybe some things are best left untouched. Of course he didn’t know the dead like I did. And so when he absconded with a bottle of Jack from the kitchen, I did my best to join him. Obliterate my own cavities and graves.
But come morning, despite my headache and the vomit on my shirt, I knew I’d failed.
Inside me, a long dark hallway already caressed the other music of a single word, and what’s worse, despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow.]
The study of architectural acoustics focuses on the rich interplay between sound and interior design. Consider, for example, how an enclosed space will naturally increase sound pressure and raise the frequency. Even though they are usually difficult to calculate, resonance frequencies, also known as eigenfrequencies or natural frequencies, can be easily determined for a perfectly rectangular room with hard smooth walls. The following formula describes the resonance frequencies [f] in a room with a length of L, width of W, and height of H, where the velocity of sound equals c:
f = C/2 [(flIL)2 + (m/W)2 + (P/H)21 1/2 Hz
Notice that if L, W, and H all equal oo, f will equal 0.
Along with resonance frequencies, the study of sound also takes into account wave acoustics, ray acoustics, diffusion, and steady-state pressure level, as well as sound absorption and transmission through walls. A careful examination of the dynamics involved in sound absorption reveals how incident sound waves are converted to energy. (In the case of porous material, the subsurface lattice of interstices translates sound waves into heat.) Nevertheless, above and beyond the details of frequency shifts and volume fluctuations-the physics of ‘otherness’ -what matters most is a sound’s delay. [63-Further attention should probably be given to sabins and Transmission Loss as described by TL = 10 log 1/ r dB, where r= a transmission coefficient and a high TL indicates a high sound insulation. Unfortunately, one could write several lengthy books on sound alone in The Navidson Record. Oddly enough, with the sole exception of Kellog
Pequity’s article on acoustic impedance in Navidson’s house (Science, April 1995, p. 43), nothing else has been rendered on this particularly resonant topic. On the subject of acoustic coefficience, however, see Ned Noi’s
“Echo’s Verse” in Science News, v. 143, February 6, 1993, p. 85.]
Point of fact, the human ear cannot distinguish one sound wave from the same sound wave if it returns in less than 50 milliseconds. Therefore for anyone to hear a reverberation requires a certain amount of space. At 68 degrees Fahrenheit sound travels at approximately 1,130 ft per second. A reflective surface must stand at least 56 1/2 ft away in order for a person to detect the doubling of her voice. [64-Parallel surfaces will create a flutter echo, though frequently a splay of as little as 16mm (5/8 inch) can prevent the multiple repetitions.]
In other words, to hear an echo, regardless of whether eyes are open or closed, is to have already “seen” a sizable space.
Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate.
And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.
[65-There is something more at work here, some sort of antithetical reasoning and proof making, and what about light?, all of which actually made sense to me at a certain hour before midnight or at least came close to making sense. Problem was Lude interrupted my thoughts when he came over and after much discussion (not to mention shots of tequila and a nice haircut) convinced me to share a bag of mushrooms with him and in spite of getting violently ill in the aisle of a certain 7-Eleven (me; not him) led me to an after hours party where I soon became engrossed in a green-eyed brunette (Lucy) who had no intention of letting our dance end at the club, and yet even in our sheet twisting, lightless dance on my floor, her own features, those pale legs, soft arms, the fragile collar bone tracing a shadow of (-can’t write the word-), invariably became entwined and permanently??? entangled, even entirely replaced??? by images of a completely different woman; relatively new, or not new at all, but for reasons unknown to me still continuing to endure as a center to my thoughts; her-
-first encountered in the company of Lude and my boss at a place my boss likes to call The Ghost. The problem is that in his mind The Ghost actually refers to two places: The Garden of Eden on La Brea and The Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset. How or why this came about is impossible to trace. Private nomenclature seems to rapidly develop in tight set-upon circles, though truth be told we were only set-upon on a good day, and tight here should be taken pretty loosely.
How then, you ask, do you know what’s being referred to when The Ghost gets mentioned?
You don’t.
You just end up at one or the other. Often the Rainbow. Though not always the Rainbow. You see, how my boss defines The Ghost varies from day to day, depending mostly on his moods and appetites. Consequently, the previously mentioned “pretty loosely” should probably be struck and restated as “very, very loosely.”
Anyway, what I’m about to tell you happened on one of those rare evenings when we actually all got together. My boss was chattering incessantly about his junk days in London and how he’d contemplated sobriety and what those contemplations had been like. Eventually he detoured into long winded non-stories about his Art School experiences in Detroit,-lots of “Hey, my thing for that whole time thing was really a kinda art thing or something”-which was about when I hauled out my pad of sketches, because no matter what you made of his BS you still couldn’t fault him for his work. He was one of best, and every tatted local knew it.
Truth be known, I’d been waiting for this chance for a while, keen on getting his out-of-the-Shop perspective on my efforts, and what efforts they were-diligent designs sketched over the months, intended someday to live in skin, each image carefully wrapped and coiled in colors of cinnabar, lemon, celadon and indigo, incarnated in the scales of dragons, the bark of ancient roods, shields welded by generations cast aside in the oily umber of shadow & blood not to speak of lifeless trees prevailing against indifferent skies or colossal vessels asleep in prehistoric sediment, miles beneath even the faintest suggestion of light-at least that’s how I would describe them- every one meticulously rendered on tracing paper, cracking like fire whenever touched, a multitude of pages, which my boss briefly examined before handing them back to me.
“Take up typing,” he grunted.
Well that’s nice, I thought.
At least the next step was clear.
Some act of violence would be necessary.
And so it was that before another synapse could fire within my bad-off labyrinthine brain, he was already lying on the floor. Or I should say his mangled body was lying on the floor. His head remained in my hands. Twisted off like a cap. Not as difficult as I’d imagined. The first turn definitely the toughest, necessitating the breaking of cervical vertebrae and the snapping of the spinal cord, but after that, another six or so turns, and voilà-the head was off. Nothing could be easier. Time to go bowling.
My boss smiled. Said hello.
But he wasn’t smiling or saying hello to me.
Somehow she was already standing there, right in front of him, right in front of me, talking to him, reminiscing, touching his shoulder, even winking at me and Lude.
Wow. Out of nowhere. Out of the blue.
Where had she come from? Or for that matter, when?
Of course my boss didn’t introduce her. He just left me to gape. I couldn’t even imagine twisting off his head for a second time as that would of meant losing sight of her. Which I found myself quite unwilling to do.
Fortunately, after that evening, she began dropping by the Shop alot, always wearing these daisy sunglasses and each time taking me completely offguard.
She still drives me nuts. Just thinking of her now and I’m lost, lost in the smell of her, the way of her and everything she conjures up inside me, a mad rush of folly & oddly muted lusts, sensations sublimated faster than I can follow, into- oh hell I don’t know what into, I probably shouldn’t even be using a word like sublimate, but that’s beside the point, her hair reminding me of a shiny gold desert wind brazed in a hot August sun, hips curving like coastal norths, tits rising and falling beneath her blue sweatshirt the way an ocean will do long after the storm has passed. (She’s always a little out of breath when she climbs the flight of stairs leading up to the Shop.) One glance at her, even now in the glass of my mind, and I want to take off, travel with her, who knows where either, somewhere, my desire suddenly informed by something deeper, even unknown, pouring into me, drawn off some peculiar reserve, tracing thoughts of the drive she and I would take, lungs full of that pine rasping air, outracing something unpleasant, something burning, in fact the entire coast along with tens of thousands of acres of inland forest is burning but we’re leaving, we’re getting away, we’re free, our hands battered by the clutch of holding on-I don’t know what to, but holding just the same-and cheeks streaked with wind tears; and now that I think of it I guess we are on a motorcycle, a Triumph?, isn’t that what Lude always talks about buying?, ascending into colder but brighter climes, and I don’t know anything about bikes let alone how to drive one. And there I go again. She does that to me. Like I already said, drives me nuts.
“Hello?”
That was the first word she ever said to me in the Shop. Not like “Hi” either. More like “Hello, is anyone home?” hence the question mark. I wasn’t even looking at her when she said it, just staring blankly down at my equally blank pad of tracing paper, probably thinking something similar to all those ridiculous, sappy thoughts I just now recounted, about road trips and forest fires and motorcycles, remembering her, even though she was right there in front of me, only a few feet away.
“Hey asshole,” my boss shouted. “Hang up her fucking pants. What’s the matter with you?”
Something would have to be done about him.
But before I could hurl him through the plate glass window into the traffic below, she smiled and handed me her bright pink flip-flops & white Adidas sweats. My boss was lucky. This magnificent creature had just saved his life.
Gratefully I received her clothes, lifting them from her Lingers tips like they were some sacred vesture bestowed upon me by the Virgin Mary herself. The hard part, I found, was trying not to stare too long at her legs. Very tricky to do. Next to impossible, especially with her just standing there in a black G-string, her bare feet sweating on the naked floor.
I did my best to smile in a way that would conceal my awe.
“Thank you,” I said, thinking I should kneel.
“Thank you,” she insisted.
Those were the next two words she ever said to me, and wow, I don’t know why but her voice went off in my head like a symphony. A great symphony. A sweet symphony. A great-fucking-sweet symphony. I don’t know what I’m saying. I know absolutely shit about symphonies.
“What’s your name?” The total suddenly climbing to an impossible six words.
“Johnny,” I mumbled, promptly earning four more words. And just like that.
“Nice to meet you,” she said in a way that almost sounded like a psalm. And then even though she clearly enjoyed the effect she was having on me, she turned away with a wink, leaving me to ponder and perhaps pray.
At least I had her ten words: “hello thank you what’s your name nice to meet you.” Ten whole fucking words. Wow. Wow. Wow. And hard as this may be for you to believe, I really was reeling. Even after she left the Shop an hour or so later, I was still giving serious thought to petitioning all major religions in order to have her deified.
In fact I was so caught up in the thought of her, there was even a moment where I failed to recognize my boss. I had absolutely no clue who he was. I just stared at him thinking to myself, “Who’s this dumb mutant and how the hell did he get up here?” which it turns out I didn’t think at all but accidentally said aloud, causing all sorts of mayhem to ensue, not worth delving into now.
Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you’ve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you’ve got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into.
Quick second note: if that last paragraph didn’t apply to you, you may skip it and proceed to this next part.
As for her real name, I still don’t know it. She’s a stripper at some place near the airport. She has a dozen names. The first time she came into the Shop, she wanted one of her tattoos retouched. “Just an inch away from my perfectly shaved pussy,” she announced very matter-a-factly, only to add somewhat coyly, slipping two fingers beneath her G-string and pulling it aside; no need to wink now: “The Happiest Place On Earth.”
Suffice it to say, the second I saw that rabbit the second I started calling her Thumper.
I do admit it seems a little strange, even to me, to realize that even after four months I’m still swept up in her. Lude sure as hell doesn’t understand it. One- because I’ve fallen for a stripper: “fuck a’ and ‘fall for’ have very different meanings, Hoss. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do.”; and two- because she’s older than me: “If you’re gonna reel for a stripper,” he advises. “You should at least reel for a young one. They’re sexier and not as bent.” Which is true, she does have a good six years on me, but what can I say? I’m taken; I love how enthralled she remains by this festival of living, nothing reserved or even remotely ashamed about who she is or what she does, always talking blue streak to my boss about her three year old child, her boyfriend, her boyfriends, the hand jobs she gets extra for, eleven years of sobriety, her words always winding up the way it feels to wake up wide awake, everything about her awakening at every moment, alive to the world and its quirky opportunities, a sudden rite of spring, Thumper’s spring, though spring’s already sprung, rabbit rabbit, and now April’s ruling April’s looming April’s fooling, around, in yet another round, for this year’s ruling April fool.
Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous.
Even worse, I feel like I could continue in that vein for years, maybe even decades.
And yet, listen to this, to date I’ve hardly said a word to her. Don’t have a decent explanation for my silence either. Maybe it’s my boss and his guard dog glare. Maybe it’s her. I suspect it’s her. Every time she visits (though I admit there haven’t been that many visits), she overwhelms me. It doesn’t matter that she always gives me a wink and sometimes even a full throated laugh when I call her “Thumper”, “Hi Thumper” “Bye Thumper” the only words I can really muster, she still really only exists for me as a strange mixture of daydream and present day edge, by which I mean something without a past or a future, an icon or idyll of sorts, for some reason forbidden to me, but seductive beyond belief and probably relief, her image feeling permanently fixed within me, but not new, more like it’s been there all along, even if I know that’s not true, and come last night going so far as to entwine, entangle and finally completely replace her with the (- can’t write the word-) of-
-Thumper’s flashing eyes, her aching lips, her heart-ending moans, those I had imagined, an ongoing list, so minute and distracting that long after, when the sheets were gathered, wet with sex, cold with rest, I did not know who lay beside me (-) and seeing this stranger, the vessel of my dreams, I withdrew to the toilet, to the shower, to my table, enough racket and detachment to communicate an unfair request, but poor her she heard it and without a word dressed, and without a smile requested a brush, and without a kiss left, leaving me alone to return to this passage where I discovered the beginnings of a sense long since taken and strewn, leading me away on what I guess amounts to another hopeless digression.
Perhaps when I’m finished I’ll remember what I’d hoped to say in the first place. [66-Mr. Truant declined to comment further on this particular passage. – Ed.]
As tape and film reveal, in the month following the expansion of the walls bracketing the book shelves, Billy Reston made several trips to the house where despite all efforts to the contrary, he continued to confirm the confounding impossibility of an interior dimension greater than an exterior one.
Navidson skillfully captures Reston’s mental frustration by focusing on the physical impediments his friend must face within a house not designed with the disabled in mind. Since the area in question is in the master bedroom, Reston must make his way upstairs each time he wishes to inspect the area.
On the first visit, Tom volunteers to try and carry him.
“That won’t be necessary” Reston grunts, effortlessly swinging out of his chair and dragging himself up to the second story using only his arms. “You got a pair of guns there, don’t you partner.” The engineer is only slightly winded.
“Too bad you forgot your chair,” Tom adds dryly.
Reston looks up in disbelief, a little surprised, maybe even a bit shocked, and then bursts out laughing.
“Well, and fuck you.”
In the end, Navidson is the one who hauls up the wheelchair.
[67-Yesterday I managed to get Maus Fife-Harris on the phone. She’s a UC Irvine PhD candidate in Comp Lit who apparently always objected to the large chunks of narrative Zampanô kept asking her to write down. “I told him all those passages were inappropriate for a critical work, and if he were in my class I’d mark him down for it. But he’d just chuckle and continue. It bothered me a little but the guy wasn’t my student and he was blind and old, so why should I care? Still, I did care, so I’d always protest when he asked me to write down a new bit of narrative. ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’ I demanded one time. ‘You’re writing like a freshman.’ And he replied-I remember this very distinctly ‘We always look for doctors but sometimes we’re lucky to find a frosh.’ And then he chuckled again and pressed on.” Not a bad way to respond to this whole fucking book, if you ask me.]
Still, no matter how many times Reston wheels from the children’s bedroom to the master bedroom or how carefully he examines the strange closet space, the bookshelves, or the various tools Tom and Will have been measuring the house with, he can provide no reasonable explanation for what he keeps referring to as “a goddamn spatial rape.”
By June-as the date on the Hi 8 tape indicates-the problem still remains unsolved. Tom, however, realizes he cannot afford to stay any longer and asks Reston to give him a lift to Charlottesville where he can catch a ride up to Dulles.
It is a bright summer morning when we watch Tom emerge from the house. He gives Karen a quick kiss good-bye and then kneels down to present Chad and Daisy with a set of neon yellow dart guns.
“Remember kids,” he tells them sternly. “Don’t shoot each other. Aim at the fragile, expensive stuff.”
Navidson gives his brother a lasting hug.
“I’ll miss you, man.”
“You got a phone,” Tom grins.
“It even rings,” Navidson adds without missing a beat.
While there is no question the tone of this exchange is jocular and perhaps even slightly combative, what matters most here is unspoken. The way Tom’s cheeks burn with a sudden flush of color. Or the way Navidson quickly tries to wipe something from his eyes. Certainly the long, lingering shot of Tom as he tosses his duffel bag in the back of Reston’s van, waving the camera good-bye, reveals to us just how much affection Navidson feels for his brother.
Strangely enough, following Tom’s departure, communication between Navidson and Karen begins to radically deteriorate.
An unusual quiet descends on the house.
Karen refuses to speak about the anomaly. She brews coffee, calls her mother in New York, brews more coffee, and keeps track of the real estate market in the classifieds.
Frustrated by her unwillingness to discuss the implications of their strange living quarters, Navidson retreats to the downstairs study, reviewing photographs, tapes, even-as a few stills reveal-compiling a list of possible experts, government agencies, newspapers, periodicals, and television shows they might want to approach.
At least both he and Karen agree on one thing: they want the children to stay out of the house. Unfortunately, since neither Chad nor Daisy has had a real opportunity to make any new friends in Virginia, they keep to themselves, romping around the backyard, shouting, screaming, stinging each other with darts until eventually they drift farther and farther out into the neighborhood for increasingly longer spates of time.
Neither Karen nor Navidson seems to notice.
The alienation of their children finally becomes apparent to both of them one evening in the middle of July.
Karen is upstairs, sitting on the bed playing with a deck of Tarot cards. Navidson is downstairs in his study examining several slides returned from the lab. News of Oliver North’s annulled conviction plays on the TV. In the background, we can hear Chad and Daisy squealing about something, their voices peeling through the house, the strained music of their play threatening at any instant to turn into a brawl.
With superb cross-cutting, Navidson depicts how both he and Karen react to the next moment. Karen has drawn another card from the deck but instead of adding it to the cross slowly forming before her crossed legs, the occult image hangs unseen in the air, frozen between her two fingers, Karen’s eyes already diverted, concentrating on a sound, a new sound, almost out of reach, but reaching her just the same. Navidson is much closer. His children’s cries immediately tell him that they are way out of bounds.
Karen has only just started to head downstairs, calling out for Chad and Daisy, her agitation and panic increasing with every step, when Navidson bolts out of the study and races for the living room.
The terrifying implication of their children’s shouts is now impossible to miss. No room in the house exceeds a length of twenty-five feet, let alone fifty feet, let alone fifty-six and a half feet, and yet Chad and Daisy’s voices are echoing, each call responding with an entirely separate answer.
In the living room, Navidson discovers the echoes emanating from a dark doorless hallway which has appeared out of nowhere in the west wall. [68-There’s a problem here concerning the location of “The Five and a Half Minute Hallway.” Initially the doorway was supposed to be on the north wall of the living room (page 4), but now, as you can see for yourself.
that position has changed. Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe there’s some underlying logic to the shift. Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine.]Without hesitating, Navidson plunges in after them. Unfortunately the living room Hi 8 cannot follow him nor for that matter can Karen. She freezes on the threshold, unable to push herself into the darkness toward the faint flicker of light within. Fortunately, she does not have to wait too long. Navidson soon reappears with Chad and Daisy in each arm, both of them still clutching a homemade candle, their faces lit like sprites on a winter’s eve.
This is the first sign of Karen’s chronic disability. Up until now there has never been even the slightest indication that she suffers from crippling claustrophobia. By the time Navidson and the two children are safe and sound in the living room, Karen is drenched in sweat. She hugs and holds them as if they had just narrowly avoided some terrible fate, even though neither Chad nor Daisy seems particularly disturbed by their little adventure. In fact, they want to go back. Perhaps because of Karen’s evident distress, Navidson agrees to at least temporarily make this new addition to their house off limits.
For the rest of the night, Karen keeps a tight grip on Navidson. Even when they finally slip into bed, she is still holding his hand.
“Navy, promise me you won’t go in there again.”
“Let’s see if it’s even here in the morning.” “It will be.”
She lays her head down flat on his chest and begins to cry.
“I love you so much. Please promise me. Please.”
Whether it is the lasting flush of terror still in Karen’s cheeks or her absolute need for him, so markedly different from her frequently aloof posture, Navidson cradles her in his arms like a child and promises.
Since the release of The Navidson Record, Virginia Posah has written extensively about Karen Green’s adolescent years. Posah’s thin volume entitled Wishing Well (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996) represents one of the few works which while based on the Navidsons’ experience still manages to stand on its own merits outside of the film.
Along with an exceptional background in everything ranging from Kate
Chopin, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, Autobiography of a Schizophrenic
Girl: The True Story of “Renee”, Francesca Block’s Weetzie Bat books to Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia and more importantly Carol Gilligan’s landmark work In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Posah has spent hundreds of hours researching the early life of Karen Green, analyzing the cultural forces shaping her personality, ultimately uncovering a remarkable difference between the child she once was and the woman she eventually became. In her introduction (page xv), Posah provides this brief overview:
When Diderot told the teenage Sophie Volland “You all die at fifteen” he could have been speaking to Karen Green who at fifteen did die.
To behold Karen as a child is nearly as ghostly an experience as the house itself. Old family films capture her athletic zeal, her unguarded smiles, the tomboy spirit which sends her racing through the muddy flats of a recently drained pond. She’s awkward, a little clumsy, but rarely selfconscious, even when covered in mud.
Former teachers claim she frequently expressed a desire to be president, a nuclear physicist, a surgeon, even a professional hockey player. All her choices reflected unattenuated self-confidence – a remarkably healthy sign for a thirteen year old girl.
Along with superb class work, she excelled in extra-curricular activities. She loved planning surprise parties, working on school productions, and even on occasion taking on a schoolyard bully with a bout of fists. Karen Green was exuberant, feisty, charming, independent, spontaneous, sweet, and most of all fearless.
By the time she turned fifteen, all of that was gone. She hardly spoke in class. She refused to function in any sort of school event, and rather than discuss her feelings she deferred the world with a hard and perfectly practiced smile.
Apparently-if her sister is to be believed
– Karen spent every night of her fourteenth year composing that smile in front of a blue plastic handled mirror. Tragically her creation proved flawless and though her near aphonia should have alarmed any adept teacher or guidance counselor, it was invariably rewarded with the pyritic prize of high school popularity.
Though Posah goes on to discuss the cultural aspects and consequences of beauty, these details in particular are most disturbing, especially in light of the fact that little of their history appears in the film.
Considering the substantial coverage present in The Navidson Record, it is unsettling to discover such a glaring omission. In spite of the enormous quantity of home footage obviously available, for some reason calamities of the past still do not appear. Clearly Karen’s personal life, to say nothing of his own life, caused Navidson too much anxiety to portray either one particularly well in his film. Rather than delve into the pathology of Karen’s claustrophobia, Navidson chose instead to focus strictly on the house.
[69-Fortunately a few years before The Navidson Record was made Karen took part in a study which promised to evaluate and possibly treat her fear. After the film became something of a phenomenon, those results surfaced and were eventually published in a number of periodicals. The Anomic Mag based out of Berkeley (v. 87, n. 7, April, 1995) offered the most comprehensive account of that study as it pertained to Karen Green:
… Subject #0027-00-8785 (Karen Green) suffers severe panic attacks when confronting dark, enclosed spaces, usually windowless and unknown (e.g. a dark room in an unfamiliar building). The attacks are consistently characterized by (1) accelerated heart rate (2) sweating (3) trembling (4) sensation of suffocation (5) feeling of choking (6) chest pain (7) severe dizziness (8) derealization (feelings of unreality) and eventual depersonalization (being detached from oneself) (9) culmination in an intense fear of dying. See DSM4V “Criteria for Panic Attack.” … Diagnosis- subject suffers from Specific Phobia (formally known as
Simple Phobia); Situational type. See DSM-TV “Diagnostic criteria for 300.29 Specific Phobia.”… Because behavioral-cognitive techniques have thus far failed to modify perspectives on anxiety-provoking stimuli, subject was considered ideal for current pharmacotherapy study … Initially subject received between 100-200 mg/ day of Tofranil (Imipramine) but with no improvement switched early on to a B-adrenergic blocker (Propranolol). An increase in vivid nightmares caused her to switch again to the MAOI (Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor) Tranylcyprornine. Still dissatisfied with the results, subject switched to the SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) Fluoxetine, commonly known as Prozac. Subject responded well and soon showed increased tolerance when intentionally exposed to enclosed, dark spaces. Unfortunately moderate weight gain and orgasmic dysfunction caused the subject to drop out of the study… Subject apparently relies now on her own phobia avoidance mechanisms, choosing to stay clear of enclosed, unknown spaces (i.e. elevators, basements, unfamiliar closets etc., etc.), though occasionally when attacks become “more frequent”… she returns to Prozac for short periods of time … See
David Kahn’s article “Simple Phobias: The Failure of Pharmacological
Intervention”; also see subject’s results on Sheehan Clinician Rated Anxiety
Scale as well as Sheehan Phobia Scale. [70-See Exhibit Six.]
While the report seems fairly comprehensive, there is admittedly one point which remains utterly perplexing. Other publications repeat verbatim the ambiguous phrasing but still fail to shed light on the exact meaning of those six words: “occasionally when attacks become ‘more frequent.’ ” At least the implication seems clear, vicissitudes in Karen’s life, whatever those may be, affect her sensitivity to space. In her article “Significant (OT)Her” published in The Psychology Quarterly (v. 142, n. 17, December 1995, p. 453) Celine Berezin, M.D. observes that “Karen’s attacks, which I suspect stem from early adolescent betrayal, increase proportionally with the level of intimacy-or even the threat of potential intimacy-she experiences whether with Will Navidson or even her children.”
Also see Steve Sokol and Julia Carter’s Women Who Can’t Love; When a Woman’s Fear Makes Her Run from Commitment and What a Smart Man
Can Do About It (New Hampshire: T. Devans and Company, 1978).]
Of course by the following morning, Karen has already molded her desperation into a familiar pose of indifference.
She does not seem to care when they discover the hallway has not vanished. She keeps her arms folded, no longer clinging to Navidson’s hand or stroking her children.
She removes herself from her family’s company by saying veiy little, while at the same time maintaining a semblance of participation with a smile.
Virginia Posah is right. Karen’s smile is tragic because, in spite of its meaning, it succeeds in remaining so utterly beautiful.
The Five and a Half Minute Hallway in The Navidson Record differs slightly from the bootleg copy which appeared in 1990. For one thing, in addition to the continuous circumambulating shot, a wider selection of shots has made the coverage of the sequence much more thorough and fluid. For another, the hallway has shrunk. This was impossible to see in the VHS copy because there was no point of comparison. Now, however, it is perfectly clear that the hallway which was well over sixty feet deep when the children entered it is now a little less than ten feet.
Context also significantly alters “The Five and a Half Minute Hallway.” A greater sense of the Navidsons and their friends and how they all interact with the house adds the greatest amount of depth to this quietly evolving enigma. Their personalities almost crowd that place and suddenly too, as an abrupt jump cut redelivers Tom from Massachusetts and Billy Reston from Charlottesville, the UVA professor once again wheeling around the periphery of the angle, unable to take his eyes off the strange, dark corridor. Unlike The Twilight Zone, however, or some other like cousin where understanding comes neat and fast (i.e. This is clearly a door to another dimension! or This is a passage to another world-with directions!) the hallway offers no answers. The monolith in 2001 seems the most appropriate cinematic analog, incontrovertibly there but virtually inviolate to interpretation. [71-Consider Drew Bluth’s “Summer’s Passage” in Architectural Digest, v. 50, n. 10, October 1993, p. 30.] Similarly the hallway also remains meaningless, though it is most assuredly not without effect. As Navidson threatens to reenter it for a closer inspection, Karen reiterates her previous plea and injunction with a sharp and abrupt rise in pitch.
The ensuing tension is more than temporary.
Navidson has always been an adventurer willing to risk his personal safety in the name of achievement. Karen, on the other hand, remains the standard bearer of responsibility and is categorically against risks especially those which might endanger her family or her happiness. Tom also shies from danger, preferring to turn over a problem to someone else, ideally a police officer, fireman, or other state paid official. Without sound or movement but by presence alone, the hallway creates a serious rift in the Navidson household.
Bazine Naodook suggests that the hallway exudes a “conflict creating force”: “It’s those oily walls radiating badness which maneuver Karen and
Will into that nonsensical fight.” [72-Bazine Naodook’s The Bad Bodhi
Wall (Marina Del Rey: Bix Oikofoe Publishing House, 1995), p. 91.] Naodook’s argument reveals a rather tedious mind. She feels a need to invent some non-existent “darkforce” to account for all ill will instead of recognizing the dangerous influence the unknown naturally has on everyone.
A couple of weeks pass. Karen privately puzzles over the experience but says very little. The only indication that the hallway has in some way intruded on her thoughts is her newfound interest in Feng Shui. In the film, we can make out a number of books lying around the house, including The
Elements of Feng Shui by Kwok Man-Ho and Joanne O’Brien (Element Books: Shaftesbury, 1991), Feng Shui Handbook: A Practical Guide to Chinese Geomancy and Environmental Harmony by Derek Walters (Aquarian Press, 1991), interior Design with Feng Shui by Sarah Rosbach
(Rider: London, 1987) and The 1 Ching or Book of Changes, 3rd Edition translated by Richard Witheim (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).
There is a particularly tender moment as Chad sits with his mother in the kitchen. She is busily determining the Kua number (a calculation based on the year of birth) for everyone in the family, while he is carefully making a peanut butter and honey sandwich.
“Mommy” Chad says quietly after a while.
“Hmm?”
“How do I get to become President when I grow up?”
Karen looks up from her notebook. Quite unexpectedly, and with the simplest question, her son has managed to move her.
“You study hard at school and keep doing what you’re doing, then you can be whatever you want.” Chad smiles.
“When I’m President, can I make you Vice President?”
Karen’s eyes shine with affection. Putting aside her Feng Shui studies, she reaches over and gives Chad a big kiss on his forehead.
“How about Secretary of Defense?”
During all this, Tom earns his keep by installing a door to close off the hallway. First, he mounts a wood frame using some of the tools he brought from Lowell and a few more he rented from the local hardware store. Then he hangs a single door with 24-gauge hot-dipped, galvanized steel skins and an acoustical performance rating coded at ASTM E413-70T- STC 28. Last but not least, he puts in four Schlage dead bolts and colour codes the four separate keys: red, yellow, green, and blue.
For a while Daisy keeps him company, though it remains hard to determine whether she is more transfixed by Tom or the hallway. At one point she walks up to the threshold and lets out a little yelp, but the cry just flattens and dies in the narrow corridor.
Tom seems noticeably relieved when he finally shuts the door and turns over the four locks. Unfortunately as he twists the last key, the accompanying sound contains a familiar ring. He grips the red kye and tries it again. As the dead bolt glances the strike plate, the resulting click creates an unexpected and very unwelcome echo.
Slowly, Tom unlocks the door and peers inside.
Somehow, and for whatever reason, the thing has grown again.
Intermittently, Navidson opens the door himself and stares down the hallway, sometimes using a flashlight, sometimes just studying the darkness itself.
“What do you do with that?” Navidson asks his brother one evening.
“Move,” Tom replies.
Sadly, even with the unnatural darkness now locked behind a steel door, Karen and Navidson still continue to say very little to each other, their own feelings seemingly as impossible for them to address as the meaning of the hallway itself.
Chad accompanies his mother to town as she searches for various Feng Shui objects guaranteed to change the energy of the home, while Daisy follows her father around the house as he paces from room to room, talking vehemently on the phone with Reston, trying to come up with a feasible and acceptable way to investigate the phenomenon lurking in his living room, until finally, in the middle of all this, he lifts his daughter onto his shoulders. Unfortunately as soon as Karen returns, Navidson sets Daisy back down on the floor and retreats to the study to continue his discussions alone.
With domestic tensions proving a little too much to stomach, Tom escapes to the garage where he works for a while on a doll house he has started to build for Daisy, [73-See Lewis Marsano’s “Tom’s 1865 Shelter” in This Old House, September/October 1995, p. 87.] until eventually he takes a break, drifting out to the backyard to get high and hot in the sun, pointedly walking around the patch of lawn the hallway should for all intents and purposes occupy. Before long, both Chad and Daisy are sidling up to this great bear snoring under a tree, and even though they start to tie his shoe laces together, tickle his nostrils with long blades of grass, or use a mirror to focus the sun on his nose, Tom remains remarkably patient. He almost seems to enjoy their mischief, growling, yawning, playing along, putting both of them in a headlock, Chad and Daisy laughing hysterically, until finally all three are exhausted and snoozing into dusk.
Considering the complexity of Karen and Navidson’s relationship, it is fortunate our understanding of their problems is not left entirely up to interpretation. Some of their respective views and feelings are revealed in their video journal entries.
“Sex, sex, sex,” Karen whispers into her camcorder. “It was like we just met when we got here. The kids would go out and we’d fuck in the kitchen, in the shower. We even did it in the garage. But ever since that closet thing appeared I can’t. I don’t know why. It terrifies me.”
On the same subject, Navidson offers a similar view: “When we first moved here, Karen was like a college co-ed. Anywhere, anytime. Now all of a sudden, she refuses to be touched. I kiss her, she practically starts to cry. And it all started when we got back from Seattle.” [Nor does it seem to help that Navidson and Karen both have among their books Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973), Anne
Hooper’s The Ultimate Sex Book A Therapist’s Guide to the Programs and Techniques That Will Enhance Your Relationship and Transform Your Life (DK Publishing, 1992), X.Y.’s Broken Daisy-Chains (Seattle: Town Over All Press, 1989), Chris Allen’s 1001 Sex Secrets Every Man Should Know
(New York: Avon Books, 1995) as well as Chris Allen’s 1001 Sex Secrets
Every Woman Should Know (New York: Avon Books, 1995).] But the division between them is not just physical.
Karen again: “Doesn’t he see I don’t want him going in there because I love him. You don’t need to be a genius to realize there’s something really bad about that place. Navy, don’t you see that?”
Navidson: “The only thing I want to do is go in there but she’s adamant that I don’t and I love her so I won’t but, well, it’s just killing me. Maybe because I know this is all about her, her fears, her anxieties. She hasn’t even given a thought to what I care about.”
Until finally the lack of physical intimacy and emotional understanding leads both of them to make privately voiced ultimatums.
Karen: “But I will say this, if he goes in there, I’m outta here. Kids and all.”
Navidson: “If she keeps up this cold front, you bet I’m going in there.”
Then one night in early August __________ [74-Zampanô provided the blanks but never filled them in.] and the equally famous __________ drop in for dinner. It is a complete coincidence that they happened to be in D.C. at the same time, but neither one seems to mind the presence of the other. As __________ said, “Any friend of Navy’s is a friend of mine.” Navidson and Karen have known both of them for quite a few years, so the evening is light hearted and filled with plenty of amusing stories. Clearly Karen and Navidson relish the chance to reminisce a little about some good times when things seemed a lot less complicated.
Perhaps a little star struck, Tom says very little. There is plenty of opportunity for a glass of wine but he proves himself by keeping to water, though he does excuse himself from the table once to smoke a joint outside.
(Much to Tom’s surprise and delight, __________ joins him.)
As the evening progresses, _________ harps a little on Navidson’ new found domesticity: “No more Crazy Navy, eh? Are those days gone for good? I remember when you’d party all night, shoot all morning, and then spend the rest of the day developing your film-in a closet with just a bucket and a bulb if you had to. I’m willing to bet you don’t even have a darkroom here.” Which is just a little too much for Navidson to bear:
“Here __________, you wanna see a darkroom, I’ll show you a darkroom.” “Don’t you dare, Navy!” Karen immediately cries. “Come on Karen, they’re our friends,” Navidson says, leading the two celebrities into the living room where he instructs them to look out the window so they can see for themselves his ordinary backyard. Satisfied that they understand nothing but trees and lawn could possibly lie on the other side of the wall, he retrieves the four coloured keys hidden in the antique basinet in the foyer. Everyone is pretty tipsy and the general mood is so friendly and easy it seems impossible to disturb. Which of course all changes when Navidson unlocks the door and reveals the hallway.
__________ takes one look at that dark place and retreats into the kitchen. Ten minutes later __________ is gone. __________ steps up to the threshold, points Navidson’s flashlight at the walls and floor and then retires to the bathroom. A little later ________ is also gone.
Karen is so enraged by the whole incident, she makes Navidson sleep on the couch with his “beloved hallway.”
No surprise, Navidson fails to fall asleep.
He tosses around for an hour until he finally gets up and goes off in search of his camera.
A title card reads: Exploration A
The time stamp on Navidson’s camcorder indicates that it is exactly 3:19 A.M.
“Call me impetuous or just curious,” we hear him mutter as he shoves his sore feet into a pair of boots.” But a little look around isn’t going to hurt.”
Without ceremony, he unlocks the door and slips across the threshold, taking with him only a Hi 8, a MagLite, and his 35mm Nikon. The commentary he provides us with remains very spare: “Cold. Wow, really cold! Walls are dark. Similar to the closet space upstairs.” Within a few seconds he reaches the end. The hallway cannot be more than seventy feet long. “That’s it. Nothing else. No big deal. Over this Karen and I have been fighting.” Except as Navidson swings around, he suddenly discovers a new doorway to the right. It was not there before.
“What the…?”
Navidson carefully nudges his flashlight into this new darkness and discovers an even longer corridor. “This one’s easily.. . I’d say a hundred feet.” A few seconds later, he comes across a still larger corridor branching off to the left. It is at least fifteen feet wide with a ceiling well over ten feet high. The length of this one, however, is impossible to estimate as Navidson’s flashlight proves useless against the darkness ahead, dying long before it can ever come close to determining an end.
Navidson pushes ahead, moving deeper and deeper into the house, eventually passing a number of doorways leading off into alternate passageways or chambers. “Here’s a door. No lock. Hmmm. . . a room, not very big. Empty. No windows. No switches. No outlets. Heading back to the corridor. Leaving the room. It seems colder now. Maybe I’m just getting colder. Here’s another door. Unlocked. Another room. Again no windows.
Continuing on.”
Flashlight and camera skitter across ceiling and floor in loose harmony, stabbing into small rooms, alcoves, or spaces reminiscent of closets, though no shirts hang there. Still, no matter how far Navidson proceeds down this particular passageway, his light never comes close to touching the punctuation point promised by the converging perspective lines, sliding on and on and on, spawning one space after another, a constant stream of corners and walls, all of them unreadable and perfectly smooth.
Finally, Navidson stops in front of an entrance much larger than the rest. It arcs high above his head and yawns into an undisturbed blackness. His flashlight finds the floor but no walls and, for the first time, no ceiling. Only now do we begin to see how big Navidson’s house really is.
Something should be said here about Navidson’s hand. Out of all the footage he personally shoots, there rarely exists a shake, tremble, jerk, or even a case of poor framing. His camera, no matter the circumstances, manages to view the world-even this world-with a remarkable steadiness as well as a highly refined aesthetic sensibility.
Comparisons immediately make Navidson’s strengths apparent. Holloway Roberts’ tape is virtually unwatchable: tilted frames, out of focus, shakes, horrible lighting and finally oblivion when faced with danger. Likewise Karen and Tom’s tapes reflect their inexperience and can only be considered for content. Only the images Navidson shoots capture the otherness inherent in that place. Undeniably Navidson’s experience as a photojournalist gives him an advantage over the rest when focusing on something that is as terrifying as it is threatening. But, of course, there is more at work here than just the courage to stand and focus. There is also the courage to face and shape the subject in an extremely original manner. [75-See Liza Speen’s Images Of Dark; Brassal’s Paris By Night; the tenderly encountered history of rooms in Andrew Bush’s Bonnettstown; work of 0. Winston Link and Karekin Goekjian; as well as some of the photographs by Liicien Aigner, Osbert Lain, Cas Oorthuys, Floris M. Neustiss, Ashim Ghosh, Aimette Lemieux, Irèna lonesco, Cindy Sherman,
Edmund Teske, Andreas Feininger, John Vachon, Tetsuya Ichimura, Sandy
Skoglund, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Beaumont Newhall, James Alinder, Robert
Rauschenberg, Miyaka Ishiuchi, Alfred Eisentaedt, Sabastiao Ribeiro
Salgado, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Adams, Sol Libsohn, Huynh Cong
(“Nick”) Ut, Lester Talkington, William Henry Jackson, Edward Weston,
William Baker, Yousuf Karsh, Adam Clark Vioman, Julia Margaret
Cameron, George Barnard, Lennart Nilsson, Herb Ritts, Nancy Burson
(“Untitled, 1993”), Bragaglia, Henri Cartier-Bresson (“Place de l’Europe”),
William Wegman, Gordon Parks, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Edward Ruscha,
Herbert Pointing, Simpson Kalisher, Bob Adelman, Volkhard Hofer
(“Natural Buildings, 1991”), Lee Friedlander, Mark Edwards, Harry
Callahan, Robert Frank, Baltimore Sun photographer Aubrey Bodine,
Charles Gatewood, Ferenc Berko, Leland Rice, Joan Lyons, Robert
D’Alessandro, Victor Keppler, Larry Fink, Bevan Davies, Lotte Jacobi,
Burk Uzzle, George Washington Wilson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Carleton
Watkins, Edward S. Curtis, Eve Arnold, Michael Lesy (Wisconsin Death
Trip), Aaron Siskind, Kelly Wise, Cornell Capa, Bert Stem, James Van Der Zee, Leonard Freed, Philip Perkis, Keith Smith, Burt Glin, Bill Brandt, LászlO MoholyNagy, Lennart Arthur Rothstein, Louis Stettner, Ray K.
Metzker, Edward W. Quigley, Jim Bengston, Richard Prince, Walter
Chappell, Paz Errazuriz, Rosamond Wolff Purcell, E. J. Marey, Gary
Winogrand, Alexander Gardner, Wynn Bullock, Neal Slavin, Lew Thomas,
Patrick Nagatani, Donald Blumberg, David Plowden, Ernestine Ruben, Will
McBride, David Vestal, Jerry Burchard, George Gardner, Galina Sankova,
Frank Gohike, Olivia Parker, Charles Traub, Ashvin Mehta, Walter
Rosenbium, Bruce Gilden, Imogen Cunningham, Barbara Crane, Lewis
Baltz, Roger Minick, George Krause, Saul Leiter, William Horeis, Ed
Douglas, John Baldessari, Charles Harbutt, Greg McGregor, Liliane
Decock, Lilo Raymond, Hiro, Don Worth, Peter Magubane, Brett Weston,
Jill Freedman, Joanne Leonard, Larry Clark, Nancy Rexroth, Jack Manning,
Ben Shahn, Marie Cosindas, Robert Demachy, Aleksandra Macijauskas, Andreas Serrano, Les Krims, Heinrich Tönnies, George Rodger, Art
Sinsabaugh, Arnold Genthe, Frank Majore, Gertrude Klisebier, Charles
Négre, Harold Edgerton, Shomei Tomatsu, Roy Decarava, Samuel Bourne,
Giuseppe Primoli, Paul Strand, Lewis Hine, William Eggleston, Frank Sutcliffe, Diane Arbus, Daniel Ibis, Raja Lala Deen Dayal, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Walker Evans, Mary Ellen Mark, Timothy O’Sullivan, Jacob A.
Riis, Ian Isaacs, David Epstein, Karl Struss, Sally Mann, P.H. Emerson,
Ansel Adams, Liu Ban Nong, Berencie Abbot, Susan Lipper, Dorthea
Lange, James Balog, Doris Uhnann, William Henry Fox Talbot, John
Thomson, Phillippe Haisman, Morris Engel, Christophe Yve, Thomas
Annan, Alexander Rodchenko, Eliot Elisofon, Eugene Atget, Clarence John
Laughlin, Arthur Leipzig, F. Holland Day, Jack English, Alice Austen,
Bruce Davidson, Eudora Weky, Jimmy Hare, Ruth Orkin, Masahiko
Yoshioka, Paul Outerbridge, Jr., Jerry N. Uelsmann, Louis Jacques Mandè
Daguerre, Emmet Gowin, Cary Wasserman, Susan Meiselas, Naomi
Savage, Henry Peach Robinson, Sandra Eleta, Boris Ignatovich, Eva
Rubinstein, Weegee (Arthur Fellig), Benjamin Stone, Andm Kertész,
Stephen Shore, L.ee Miller, Sid Grossman, Donigan Cumming, Jack
Welpott, David Sims, Detlef Orlopp (“Untitled”), Margaret Bourke-White,
Dmitri Kessel, Val Telberg, Part Blue, Francisco Infante, Jed Fielding, John
Heartfield, Eliot Porter, Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Francis Bruguière,
Jerome Liebling, Eugene Richards, Werner Bischof, Martin Munkacsi,
Bruno Barbey, Linda Connor, Oliver Gagliani, Arno Rafael Minkkinen,
Richard Margolis, Judith Golden, Philip Trager, Scott Hyde, Willard Van
Dyke, Eileen Cowin, Nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon), Roger Mertin,
Lucas Samaras, Raoul Hausmann, Vilem Kriz, Lisette Model, Robert
Leverant, Josef Sudek, Glen Luchford, Edna Bullock, Susan Rankaitis, Gail
Skoff, Frank Hurley, Bank Langmore, Came Mae Weems, Michael Bishop,
Albert and Jean Seeberger, John Gutmann, Kipton Kumler, Joel Sternfeld, Derek Bennett, William Clift, Erica Lennard, Arthur Siegel, Marcia Resnick, Clarence H. White, Fritz Henle, Julio Etchart, Fritz Goro, EJ.
Bellocq, Nathan Lyons, Ralph Gibson, Leon Levinstein, Elaine Mayes,
Arthur Tess, William Larson, Duane Michals, Benno Friedman, Eve
Sonneman, Mark Cohen, Joyce Tenneson, John Pfahl, Doug Prince, Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes, Robert W. Fichter, George A. Tice, John Collier, Anton Bruehl, Paul Martin, Tina Barney, Bob Willoughby, Steven Szabo, Paul Caponigro, Gilles Peress, Robert
Heinecken, Wright Morris, Inez van Lanisweerde, Peter Hujar, Inge
Morath, Judith Joy Ross, Judy Dater, Melissa Shook, Bea Nettles, Dmith
Baltermants, Karl Blossfeldt, Alexander Liberman, Wolfgang Tillmans,
Hans Namuth, Bill Burke, Marion Palfi, Jan Groover, Peter Keetman
(“Porcelain Hands, 1958”), Henry Wessel, Jr., Syl Labrot, Gilles Ehrmann, Tana Hoban, Martine Franck, John Dominis, ilse Bing, Jo Ann Callis, Lou Bernstein, Vinoodh Matadin, Todd Webb, Andre Gelpke (“Chiffre 389506:
Inkognito, 1993″), Thomas F. Barrow, Robert Cumming, Josef Ehm, Mark
Yavno, Tod Papageorge, Ruth Bernhard, Charles Sheeler, Tina Modotti,
Zofia Rydet, M. Alvarez Bravo, William Henry Jackson, Peeter Tooming,
Betty Hahn, T. S. Nagarajan, Meridel Rubinstein, Romano Cagnoni, Robert
Mapplethorpe, Albert Renger-Pazzsch, Stasys Zvirgzdas, Geoff
Winrnngham, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Erich Hartznann, Oscar Bailey,
Herbert List, Mirella Ricciardi, Franco Fontana, Art Kane, Georgij Zelma,
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, Mario Sorrenti, Craig McDean,
Rent Bum, David Douglas Duncan, Tazio Secchiaroli, Joseph D. Jacima,
Richard Baltauss, Richard Misrach, Yoshihiko Ito, Minor White, Ellen
Auerbach, Izis, Deborah Turbeville, Arnold Newman, 65 Tzachi Ostrovsky,
Joel-Peter Witkin, Adam Fuss, Inge Osswald, Enzo Ragazzini, Bill Owens,
Soyna Noskowiak, David Lawrence Levinthal, Mariana Yampoisky,
Juergen Teller, Nancy Honey, Elliott Erwitt, Bill Witt, Taizo Ichinose,
Nicholas Nixon, Allen A. Dutton, Henry Callahan, Joel Meyrowitz,
Wiflaim A. Garnett, Ulf Sjöstedt, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Toni Frissell, John
Blakemore, Roman Vishniac, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Raül Corrales,
Gyorgy Kepes, Joe Deal, David P. Bayles, Michael Snow, Aleksander
Krzywoblocki, Paul Bowen, Laura Gilpin, Andy Warhol, Tuija Lydia
Elisabeth Lindstrom-Caudwell, Corinne Day, Kristen McMenamy, Danny
Lyon, Erich Salomon, Desire Charnay, Paul Kwilecki, Carol Beckwith,
George Citcherson (“Sailing Ships in an Ice Field, 1869”), W. Eugene
Smith, William Klein, José Ortiz-Echague, Eadweard Muybridge, and
David Octavius Hill, August Sander (Antlitz der Zeit), Herbert Bayer, Man
Ray, Alex Webb, Frances B. Johnston, Russell Lee, Suzy Lake, Jack
Delano, Diane Cook, Heinrich Zille, Lyalya Kuznetsova, Miodrag
Djordjevi, Terry Fincher, Joel Meyerowitz, John R. Gossage, Barbara
Morgan, Edouard Boubat, Horst P. Horst, Hippolyte Bayard, Albert Kahn, Karen Helen Knorr, Carlotta M. Corpon, Abigail Heyman, Marion Post
Wolcott, Lillian Bassman, Henry Holmes Smith, Constantine Manos, Gjon
Mili, Michael Nichols, Roger Fenton, Adolph de Meyer, Van Deren Coke,
Barbara Astman, Richard Kirstel, William Notman, Kenneth Josephson,
Louise Dahi-Wolfe, Josef Koudelka, Sarah E. Charlesworth, Erwin
Blumenfeld, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Pirkie Jones, Edward Steichen,
George Hurrell, Steve Fitch, Lady Hawarden, Helmar Lerski, Oscar
Gustave Rejlander, John Thomson, Irving Penn, and Jane Evelyn Atwood (photographs of children at the National School for Blind Youth). Not to mention Suze Randall, Art Wolfe, Charles and Rita Summers, Tom and Pat Leeson, Michael H. Francis, John Botkin, Dan Blackburn, Barbara Ess,
Erwin and Peggy Bauer, Peter Arnold, Gerald Lacz, James Wojcik, Dan
Borris, Melanie Acevedo, Micheal McLaughlin, Damn Haddad, William
Vazquez, J. Michael Myers, Rosa & Rosa, Patricia McDonough, Aldo
Rossi, Mark Weiss, Craig Cutler, David Barry, Chris Sanders, Neil Brown,
James Schnepf, Kevin Wilkes, Ron Simmons, Chip Clark, Ron Kerbo,
Kevin Downey, Nick Nichols; also Erik Aeder, Drew Kampion, Les
Walker, Rob Gilley, Don King, Jeff Hombaker, Alexander Gallardo, Russell
Hoover, Jeff Flindt, Chris Van Lennep, Mike Moir, Brent Humble, Ivan
Ferrer, Don James, John Callahan, Bill Morris, Kimiro Kondo, Leonard
Brady, Fred Swegles, Eric Baeseman, Tsuchiya, Darrell Wong, Warren
Bolster, Joseph Libby, Russell Hoover, Peter Frieden, Craig Peterson, Ted
Grambeau, Gordinho, Steve Wilkings, Mike Foley, Kevin Welsh, LeRoy
Grannis, John Bilderback, Craig Fineman, Michael Grosswendt, Craig
Huglin, Seamas Mercado, John Heath “Doe” Ball, Tom Boyle, Rob Keith,
Vince Cavataio, Jeff Divine, Aaron Loyd, Chris Dyball, Steve Fox, George
Greenough, Aaron Loyd, Ron Stoner, Jason Childs, Kin Kimoto, Chris
Dyball, Bob Barbour, John Witzig, Ben Siegfried, Ron Romanosky, Brian Bielmann, Dave Bjorn, John Severson, Martin Thick (see his profound shot of Dana Fisher cradling a chimpanze rescued from a meat vendor in Zaire), Doug Cockwell, Art Brewer, Fred Swegles, Erik Hans, Mike Baker, John
Scott, Rob Brown, Bernie Baker, William Sharp, Randy Johnson, Nick
Pugay, Tom Servais, Dennis Junor, Eric Baeseman, Sylvain Cazenave,
Woody Woodworth, and of course, J.C. Hemment, David “Chim” Seymour,
Vu Ngoc Tong, William Dinwiddie, James Burton, Mary Wolf, London
Thome, John Gallo, Nguyen Huy, Leonidas Stanson, Pham Co Phac, Kadel & Herbert, Underwood & Underwood, James H. Hare, Tran Oai Dung, Lucian S. Kirtland, Edmond Ratisbonne, Pham Tranh, Luong Tan Tuc,
George Strock, Joe Rosenthal, Ralph Morse, Ho Van De, Nguyen Nhut
Hoa, Nguyen Van Chien, Nguyen Van Thang, Phung Quang Liem, Truong
Phu Thien, John Florea, George Silk, Carl Mydans, Pham Van Kuong,
Nguyen Khac Tam, Vu Hung Dung, Nguyen Van Nang, Yevgeny Khaldei,
To Dinh, Ho Ca, Hank Walker, Tran Ngoc Dang, Vo Duc Hiep, Trinh Dinh
Hy, Howard Breedlove, Nguyen Van Thuan, Vu Hanh, Ly Van Cao, Burr
McIntosh, Ho Van Tu, Helen Levitt, Robert Capa, Ly Eng, Mathew Brady,
Sau Van, Thoi Huu, Leng, Thong Veasna, Nguyen Luong Nam, Huynh Van
Huu, Ngoc Huong, Alan Hirons, Lek, George J. Denoncourt U, Hoang
Chau, Eric Weigand, Pham Vu Binh, Gilles Caron, Tran Binh Khuol, Jerald
Kringle, Le Duy Que, Thanh Tinh, Frederick Sommer, Nguyen Van Thuy,
Robert Moeser, Chhim Sarath, Duong Thanh Van, Howard Nurenberger, Vo Ngoc Khanh, Dang Van Hang, James Pardue, Bui Dinh Thy, Doug Clifford,
Tran Xuan Hy, Nguyen Van ma, Keizaburo Shimamoto, Nguyen Van Ung,
Bob Hodierne, Nguyen Viet Hien, Dinh De, Sun Heang, Tea “Moonface”
Kim Heang, Lyng Nhan, Charles Chellappah, The Dinh, Nguyen Van Nhu,
Ngoc Nhu, John Andescavage, Nguyen Van Huong, Francis Bailly, Georg
Gensluckner, Vo Van Luong, James Denis Gill, Huynh Van Dung, Nguyen Than Hien, Terrence Khoo, Paul Schutzer, Vo Van Quy, Malcolm Browne,
Le Khac Tam, Huynh Van Huong, Do Van Nhan, Franz Dalma, Kyoichi
Sawada, Willy Mettler, James Lohr, Le Kia, Sam Kai Faye, Frank Lee,
Nguyen Van Man, Joseph Tourtelot, Doari Phi Hung, Ty Many, Nguyen
Ngoc Tu, Le Thi Nang, Nguyen Van Chien, Doug Woods, Glen Rasmussen,
Hiromichi Mine, Duong Cong Thien, Bernard B. Fall, Randall Reimer,
Luong Nghia Dung, Bill Hackwell, Pen, Nguyen Duc Thanh, Chea Ho,
Jerry Wyngarden, Vantha, Chip Maury, J. Gonzales, Pierre Jahan, Catherine
Leroy, Leonard Hekel, Kim Van Tuoc, W.B. Bass Jr., Sean Flynn, Heng Ho,
Dana Stone, Nguyen Dung, Landon K. Thome II, Gerard Hebert, Michel
Laurent, Robert Jackson Ellison, Put Sophan, Nguyen Trung Dinh, Huynh
Van Tn, Neil K. Hulbert, James McJunkin, Le Dinh Du, Chhor Vuthi,
Claude Arpin-Pont, Raymond Martinoff, Jean Peraud, Nguyen Huong Nam,
Dickey Chapelle, Lanh Daunh Rar, Bryan Grigsby, Henri Huet, Huynh
Thang My, Peter Ronald Van Thiel, Everette Dixie Reese, Jerry A. Rose,
Oliver E. Noonan, Kim Savath, Bernard Moran, Kuoy Sarun, Do Van Vu, Nguyen Man Hieu, Charles Richard Eggleston, Sam Hel, Nguyen Oanh
Liet, Dick Durance, Vu Van Giang, Bernard Kolenberg, Sou Vichith,
Ronald D. Gallagher, Dan Dodd, Francois Sully, Kent Potter, Alfred
Batungbacal, Dieter Bellendorf, Nick Mills, Ronald L. Haeberle, Terry Reynolds, Leroy Massie, Sam Castan, Al Chang, Philip R. Boehxne. And finally Eddie Adams, Charles Hoff, Lan-y Burrows, and Don McCullin (“American soldiers tending wounded child in a cellar of a house by candlelight, 1968”).] [76-Alison Adrian Burns, another Zampanô reader, told me this list was entirely random. With the possible exception of Brassal, Speen, Bush and Link, Zampanô was not very familiar with photographers. “We just picked the names out of some books and magazines he had lying around,” Burns told me. “I’d describe a picture or two and he’d say no or he’d say fine. A few times he just told me to choose a page and point. Hey, whatever he wanted to do. That was what I was there for. Sometimes though he just wanted to hear about the LA scene, what was happening, what wasn’t, the gloss, the names of clubs and bars. That sort of thing. As far as I know, that list never got written down.”]
As Navidson takes his first step through that immense arch, he is suddenly a long way away from the warm light of the living room. In fact his creep into that place resembles the eerie faith required for any deep sea exploration, the beam of his flashlight scratching at nothing but the invariant blackness.
Navidson keeps his attention focused on the floor ahead of him, and no doubt because he keeps looking down, the floor begins to assume a new meaning. It can no longer be taken for granted. Perhaps something lies beneath it. Perhaps it will open up into some deep fissure.
Suddenly immutable silence rushes in to replace what had momentarily shattered it.
Navidson freezes, unsure whether or not he really just heard something growl.
“I better be able to find my way back,” he finally whispers, which though probably muttered in jest suddenly catches him off guard.
Navidson swiftly turns around. Much to his horror, he can no longer see the arch let alone the wall. He has walked beyond the range of his light. In fact, no matter where he points the flashlight, the only thing he can perceive is oily darkness. Even worse, his panicked turn and the subsequent absence of any landmarks has made it impossible for him to remember which direction he just came from.
“Oh god” he blurts, creating odd repeats in the distance.
He twists around again.
“Hey!” he shouts, spawning a multitude of a’s, then rotates forty- five degrees and yells “Balls!” a long moment of silence follows before he hears the faint halls racing back through the dark. After several more such turns, he discovers a loud “easy” returns a z with the least amount of delay. This is the direction he decides on, and within less than a minute the beam from his flashlight finds something more than darkness.
Quickening his pace slightly, Navidson reaches the wall and the safety he perceives there. He now faces another decision: left or right. This time, before going anywhere, he reaches into his pocket and places a penny at his feet. Relying on this marker, he heads left for a while. When a minute passes and he has still failed to find the entrance, he returns to the penny. Now he moves off to the right and very quickly comes across a doorway, only this one, as we can see, is much smaller and has a different shape than the one he originally came through. He decides to keep walking. When a minute passes and he still has not found the arch, he stops.
“Think, Navy, think,” he whispers to himself, his voice edged slightly with fear.
Again that faint growl returns, rolling through the darkness like thunder.
Navidson quickly does an about face and returns to the doorway. Only now he discovers that the penny he left behind, which should have been at least a hundred feet further, lies directly before him. Even stranger, the doorway is no longer the doorway but the arch he had been looking for all along.
Unfortunately as he steps through it, he immediately sees how drastically everything has changed. The corridor is now much narrower and ends very quickly in a T. He has no idea which way to go, and when a third growl ripples through that place, this time significantly louder, Navidson panics and starts to run.
His sprint, however, lasts only a few seconds. He realizes quickly enough that it is a useless, even dangerous, course of action. Catching his breath and doing his best to calm his frayed nerves, he tries to come up with a better plan.
“Karen!” he finally shouts, a flurry of air-in’s almost instantly swallowed in front of him. “Tom!” he tries, briefly catching hold of the om’s as they too start to vanish, though before doing so completely, Navidson momentarily detects in the last -om a slightly higher pitch entwined in his own voice.
He waits a moment, and not hearing anything else, shouts again:
“I’m in here!” giving rise to tripping nn-ear’s reverberating and fading, until in the next to last instant a sharp cry comes back to him, a child’s cry, calling out for him, drawing him to the right.
By shouting “I’m here” and following the add-ee’s singing off the walls, Navidson slowly begins to make his way through an incredibly complex and frequently disorienting series of turns. Eventually after backtracking several times and making numerous wrong choices, occasionally descending into disturbing territories of silence, the voice begins to grow noticeably louder, until finally Navidson slips around a corner, certain he has found his way out. Instead though, he encounters only more darkness and this time greater quiet. His breathing quickens. He is uncertain which way to go. Obviously he is afraid. And then quite abruptly he steps to the right through a low passageway and discovers a corridor terminating in warm yellow light, lamp light, with a tiny silhouette standing in the doorway, tugging her daddy home with a cry.
Emerging into the safety of his own living room, Navidson immediately scoops Daisy up in his arms and gives her a big hug.
“I had a nightmare,” she says with a very serious nod.
Similar to the Khumbu Icefall at the base of Mount Everest where blue seracs and chasms change unexpectedly throughout the day and night, Navidson is the first one to discover how that place also seems to constantly change. Unlike the Icefall, however, not even a single hairline fracture appears in those walls. Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one. [77-“nothing visible to the eye provides a reason” -a fitting phrase for what’s happened.
And to think my day actually started off pretty well.
I woke up having had an almost wet-dream about Thumper. She was doing this crazy Margaretha Geertruida Zelle dance, veil after colored veil thrown aside, though oddly enough never landing, rather flying around her as if she were in the middle of some kind of gentle twister, these sheer sheets of fabric continuing to encircle her, even as she removes more and more of them, allowing me only momentary glimpses of her body, her smooth skin, her mouth, her waist, her-ah yes, I get a glimpse of that too, and I’m moving towards her, moving past all that interference, certain that with every step I take I’ll soon have her, after all she’s almost taken everything off, no she h taken everything off, her knees are spreading apart, just a few more veils to get past and I’ll be able to see her, not just bits & pieces of her, but all of her, no longer molested by all this nonsense, in fact I’m there already which means I’m about to enter her which apparently is enough to blow the circuit, hit the switch, prohibit that sublime and much anticipated conclusion, leaving me blind in the daylight stream pouring through my window.
Fuck.
I go off to cuff in the shower. At least the water’s hot and there’s enough steam to fog the mirror. Afterwards, I pack my pipe and light up. Wake & Bake. More like Wash & Bake. Half a bowl of cereal and a shot of bourbon later, I’m there, my friendly haze having finally arrived. I’m ready for work.
Parking’s easy to find. On Vista. I jog up to Sunset, even jog up the stairs, practically skipping past the By Appointment Only sign. Why skipping? Because as I step into the Shop I know I’m not even one minute late, which is not usually the case for me. The expression on my boss’s face reveals just how astonishing an achievement this is. I couldn’t care less about him. I want to see Thumper. I want to find out if she’s really wearing any of that diaphanous rainbow fabric I was dreaming about.
Of course she’s not there, but that doesn’t get me down. I’m still optimistic she’ll arrive. And if not today, why fuck, tomorrow’s just another day away.
A sentiment I could almost sing.
I immediately sit down at the side counter and start working, mainly because I don’t want to deal with my boss which could mean jeopardizing my good mood. Of course he couldn’t care less about me or my mood. He approaches, clearing his throat. He will talk, he will ruin everything, except it suddenly penetrates that chalky material he actually insists on calling his brain, that I’m building his precious points, and sure enough this insight prohibits his trap from opening and he leaves me alone.
Points are basically clusters of needles used to shade the skin. They are necessary because a single point amounts to a prick not much bigger than this period “.”. Okay, maybe a little bigger. Anyway, five needles go into what’s called a 5, seven for 7’s and so on-all soldered together towards the base.
I actually enjoy making them. There’s something pleasant about concentrating on the subtle details, the precision required, constantly checking and re-checking to assure yourself that yes indeed the sharps are level, in the correct arrangement, ready at last to be fixed in place with dots of hot solder. Then I re-check all my re-checking: the points must not be too close nor too far apart nor skewed in any way, and only then, if I’m satisfied, which I usually am-though take heed “usually” does not always mean “always”-will I scrub the shafts and put them aside to be sterilized later in the ultrasound or Autoclave.
My boss may think I can’t draw worth shit but he knows I build needles better than anyone. He calls me all the time on my tardiness, my tendency to drift & moither and of course the odds that I’ll ever get to tattoo anything -“Johnny, nothing you do, (shaking his head) no one’s ever gonna wanna make permanent, unless they’re crazy, and let me tell you something Johnny, crazies never pay”-but about my needle making I’ve never heard him complain once.
Anyway, a couple of hours whiz by. I’m finishing up a batch of 5’s-my boss’s cluster of choice-when he finally speaks, telling me to pull some bottles of black and purple ink and fill a few caps while I’m at it. We keep the stuff in a storeroom in back. It’s a sizable space, big enough to fit a small work table in. You have to climb eight pretty steep steps to reach it. That’s where we stock all the extras, and we have extras for almost everything, except light bulbs. For some reason my boss hasn’t picked up any extra light bulbs in a while. Today, of course, I flick the switch, and FLASH! BLAMI POP!, okay scratch the blam, the storeroom bulb burns out. I recommence flicking, as if such insistent, highly repetitive and at this point pointless action could actually resurrect the light. It doesn’t. The switch has been rendered meaningless, forcing me to feel my way around in the dark. I keep the door open so I can see okay, but it still takes me awhile to negotiate the shadows before I can locate the caps and ink.
By now, the sweet effects of my dream, to say nothing of the soft thrumming delivered care of alcohol and Oregon bud, have worn of f, though I still continue to think about Thumper, slowly coming to grips with the fact that she won’t be visiting today. This causes my spirits to drop substantially, until I realize I have no way of knowing that for certain. After all, there’s still half a day left. No, she’s not coming. I know it. I can feel it in my gut. That’s okay.
Tomorrow’s- aw, fuck that.
I start filling caps with purple, concentrating on its texture, the strange hue, imagining I can actually observe the rapid pulse of its bandwidth. These are stupid thoughts, and as if to confirm that sentiment, darkness pushes in on me. Suddenly the slash of light on my hands looks sharp enough to cut me. Real sharp. Move and it will cut me. I do move and guess what? I start to bleed. The laceration isn’t deep but important stuff has been struck, leaking over the table and floor. Lost.
I don’t have long.
Except I’m not bleeding though I am breathing hard. Real hard. don’t need to touch my face to know there are now beads of sweat slipping off my forehead, flicking off my eyelids, streaming down the back of my neck. Cold as hands. Hands of the dead. Something terrible is going on here. Going extremely wrong. Get out, I think. I want to get out. But I can’t move.
Then as if this were nothing but a grim prelude, shit really starts to happen.
There’s that awful taste again, sharp as rust, wrapping around my tongue.
Worse, I’m no longer alone.
Impossible.
Not impossible.
This time it’s human.
Maybe not.
Extremely long fingers.
A sucking sound too. Sucking on teeth, teeth already torn from the gums.
I don’t know how I know this.
But it’s already too late, I’ve seen the eyes. The eyes. They have no whites. I haven’t seen this. The way they glisten they glisten red. Then it begins reaching for me, slowly unfolding itself out of its corner, mad meat all of it, but I understand. These eyes are full of blood.
Except I’m only looking at shadows and shelves.
Of course, I’m alone.
And then behind me, the door closes.
The rest is in pieces. A scream, a howl, a roar. All’s warping, or splintering. That makes no sense. There’s a terrible banging. The air’s rank with stench. At least that’s not a mystery. I know the source. Boy, do I ever. I’ve shit myself. Pissed myself too. I can’t believe it. Urine soaking into my pants, fecal matter running down the back of my legs, I’m caught in it, must run and hide from it, but I still can’t move. In fact, the more I try to escape, the less I can breathe. The more I try to hold on, the less I can focus. Something’s leaving me. Parts of me.
Everything falls apart.
Stories heard but not recalled.
Letters too.
Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp. Cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad perhaps even irreparable way.
Known.
Some.
Call.
Is.
Air.
Am?
Incoherent-yes.
Without meaning-I’m afraid not.
The shape of a shape of a shape of a face dis(as)sembling right before my eyes. What wail embattled break. Like a hawk. Another Maldon or no Maldon at all, on snowy days, or not snowy at all, far beyond the edge of any reasonable awareness. This is what it feels like to be really afraid. Though of course it doesn’t. None of this can truly approach the reality of that fear, there in the midst of all that bedlam, like the sound of a heart or some other unholy blast, desperate & dying, slamming, no banging into the thin wall of my inner ear, paper thin in fact, attempting to shatter inside what had already been shattered long ago.
I should be dead.
Why am I still here?
And as that question appears-concise, in order, properly accented-I see I’m holding onto the tray loaded with all those caps and bottles of black and purple ink. Not only that but I’m already walking as fast as I can through the doorway. The door is open though I did not open it. I stub my toe. I’m falling down the stairs, tripping over myself, hurling the tray in the air, the caps, the ink, all of it, floating now above me, as my hands, independent of anything I might have thought to suggest, reach up to protect my head. Something hisses and slashes out at the back of my neck. It doesn’t matter. Down I go, head first, somersaulting down those eight pretty steep steps, a wild blur, leaving me to passively note the pain spots as they happen: shoulders, hip, elbows, even as I also, at the same time, remain dimly aware of so much ink coming down like a bad rain, splattering around me, everywhere, covering me, even the tray hitting me, though that doesn’t hurt, the caps scattering across the floor, and of course the accompanying racket, telling my boss, telling them all, whoever else was there- What? not that it was over, it wasn’t, not yet.
The wind’s knocked out of me. It’s not coming back. Here’s where I die, I think. And it’s true, I’m possessed by the premonition of what will be, what has to be, my inevitable asphyxiation. At least that’s what they see, my boss and crew, as they come running to the back, called there by all that clatter & mess. What they can’t see though is the omen seen in a fall, my fall, as I’m doused in black ink, my hands now completely covered, and see the floor is black, and-have you anticipated this or should I be more explicit?-jet on jet; for a blinding instant I have watched my hand vanish, in fact all of me has vanished, one hell of a disappearing act too, the already foreseen dissolution of the self, lost without contrast, slipping into oblivion, until mid-gasp I catch sight of my reflection in the back of the tray, the ghost in the way: seems I’m not gone, not quite. My face has been splattered with purple, as have my arms, granting contrast, and thus defining me, marking me, and at least for the moment, preserving me.
Suddenly I can breathe and with each breath the terror rapidly dissipates.
My boss, however, is scared shitless.
“Jesus Christ Johnny,” he says. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Can’t you see I’ve shit myself, I think to shout. But now I see that i haven’t. Except for the ink blotting my threads, my pants are bone dry.
I mumble something about how much my toe hurts.
He takes that to mean I’m alright and won’t try to sue him from a wheelchair.
Later a patron points out the long, bloody scratch on the back of my neck.
I’m unable to respond.
Now though, I realize what I should of said-in the spirit of the dark; in the spirit of the staircase –
“Known some call is air am.”
Which is to say –
“I am not what I used to be.”]
[78-Although Mr. Truant’s asides may often seem impenetrable, they are not without rhyme or reason. The reader who wishes to interpret Mr. Truant on his or her own may disregard this note. Those, however, who feel they would profit from a better understanding of his past may wish to proceed ahead and read his father’s obituary in Appendix IT-i) as well as those letters written by his institutionalized mother in Appendix II-E. – Ed.
After putting his daughter back to bed, Navidson finds Karen standing in the entrance to their room.
“What’s the matter,” she murmurs, still half-asleep. “Go back to sleep. Daisy just had a bad dream.” Navidson starts to go back downstairs.
“I’m sorry Navy,” Karen says quietly. ” I’m sorry I got so mad. It’s not your fault. That thing just scares me. Come back to bed.”
And as they later confide in separate video entries, that night, for the first time in weeks, they made love again, their descriptions running the gamut of anything from ” gentle” and ” comforting” to “familiar” and “very satisfying.” Their bodies had repaired what words never tried to, and at least for a little while they felt close again.
The next morning, with harmony now restored, Navidson cannot bring himself to tell Karen about his visit. Fortunately having nearly gotten lost inside his own house has for the moment diminished his appetite for its darkness. He promises to turn over the initial investigation to Billy Reston:
“Then we’ll call The New York Times, Larry King, whoever, and we’ll move. End of story.” Karen responds to his offer with kisses, clinging to his hand, a stability of sorts once again returning to their lives.
Still the compromise is far from satisfying. As Karen records on her Hi 8: “I told Navy I’ll stay for the first look in there but I’ve also called Mom.
I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”
Navidson admits in his: “I feel lousy about lying to Karen. But I think it’s unreasonable of her to expect me not to investigate. She knows who I am. I think -“
At which point, the study door suddenly swings open and Daisy, wearing a red and gold dress, barges in and begins tugging on her father’s sleeve.
“Come play with me Daddy.”
Navidson lifts his daughter onto his lap.
“Okay. What do you want to play?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Always.”
“What’s always?”
But before she can answer, he starts tickling her around the neck and Daisy dissolves into bursts of delight.
Despite the tremendous amount of material generated by Exploration A, no one has ever commented on the game Daisy wants to play with her father, perhaps because everyone assumes it is either a request “to play always” or just a childish neologism.
Then again, “always” slightly mispronounces “hallways.” It also echoes it.
Raju welcomed the intrusion-something to relieve the loneliness of the place.
-R.K.Narayan
It is impossible to appreciate the importance of space in The Navidson Record without first taking into account the significance of echoes. However, before even beginning a cursory examination of their literal and thematic presence in the film, echoes reverberating within the word itself need to be distinguished.
Generally speaking, echo has two coextensive histories: the mythological one and the scientific one. [46-David Eric Katz argues for a third: the epistemological one. Of course, the implication that the current categories of myth and science ignore the reverberation of knowledge itself is not true. Katz’s treatment of repetition, however, is still highly rewarding. His list of examples in Table iii are particularly impressive. See The Third Beside You: An Analysis of the Epistemological Echo by David Eric Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).] Each provides a slightly different perspective on the inherent meaning of recurrence, especially when that repetition is imperfect.
To illustrate the multiple resonances found in an echo, the Greeks conjured up the story of a beautiful mountain nymph. Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser known version of this myth has Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pieces, burying all of her except her voice. Adonta ta mete. [*-Adonta ta… = “Her still singing limbs.”] [47-Note that luckily in this chapter, Zampanô penciled many of the translations for these Greek and Latin quotations into the margins. I’ve gone ahead and turned them into footnotes.] In both cases, unfulfilled love results in the total negation of Echo’s body and the near negation of her voice. [48-Ivan Largo Stilets, Greek Mythology Again (Boston: Biloquist Press, 1995), p. 343-497; as well as Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, ifi. 356-410.]
But Echo is an insurgent. Despite the divine constraints imposed upon her, she still manages to subvert the gods’ ruling. After all, her repetitions are far from digital, much closer to analog. Echo colours the words with faint traces of sorrow (The Narcissus myth) or accusation (The Pan myth) never present in the original. As Ovid recognized in his Metamorphoses:
Spreta latet silvis pudibundaque frondibus ora protegit et solis ex jib vivit in antris; sed tamen haeret amor crescitque dolore repulsae; extenuant vigiles corpus miserabile curae adducitque cutem macies et in aera sucus corporis omnis abit; vox tantum atque ossa supersunt: vox manet, ossa ferunt lapidis traxisse figuram. Inde latet silvis nulloque in monte videtur, omnibus auditur: sonus est, qui vivit in i11a.
[*-Eloquently translated by Horace Gregory as: “So she was turned away! To hide her face, her lips, her guilt among the trees) Even their leaves, to haunt caves of the forest,! To feed her love on melancholy sormw/ Which, sleepless, turned her body to a shade) First pale and wrinkled, then a sheet of air) Then bones, which some say turned to thinworn rocks; / And last her voice remained. Vanished in forest) Far from her usual walks on hills and valleys,! She’s heard by all who call; her voice has life.” The Metamorphoses by Ovid. (New York: A Mentor Book, 1958), p.
97.]
To repeat: her voice has life. It possesses a quality not present in the original, revealing how a nymph can return a different and more meaningful story, in spite of telling the same story. [49-Literary marvel Miguel de Cervantes set down this compelling passage in his Don Quixote (Part One, Chapter Nine):
Ia verdad, cuya madre es la historia, émula del tiempo, depdsito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir. [51-Which Anthony Bonner translates
as”.. . truth, whose mother Is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future.” – Ed.]
Much later, a yet untried disciple of arms had the rare pleasure of meeting the extraordinary Pierre Menard in a Paris café following the second world war. Reportedly Menard expounded on his distinct distaste for Madelines but never mentioned the passage (and echo of Don Quixote ) he had penned before the war which had subsequently earned him a fair amount of literary fame: la verdad, cuya madre es Ia historia, émula del tiempo, depOsito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir.
This exquisite variation on the passage by the “ingenious layman” is far too dense to unpack here. Suffice it to say Menard’s nuances are so fine they are nearly undetectable, though talk with the Framer and you will immediately see how haunted they are by sorrow, accusation, and sarcasm.]
[50-Exactly How the fuck do you write about “exquisite variation” when both passages are exactly the same?
I’m sure the late hour has helped, add to that the dim light in my room, or how poorly I’ve been sleeping, going to sleep but not really resting, if that’s possible, though let me tell you, sitting alone, awake to nothing else but this odd murmuring, like listening to the penitent pray-you know it’s a prayer but you miss the words-or better yet listening to a bitter curse, realizing a whole lot wrong’s being ushered into the world but still missing the words, me like that, listening in my way by comparing in his way both Spanish fragments, both written out on brown leaves of paper, or no, that’s not right, not brown, more like, oh I don’t know, yes brown but in the failing light appearing almost colored or the memory of a color, somehow violent, or close to that, or not at all, as I just kept reading both pieces over and over again, trying to detect at least one differing accent or letter, wanting to detect at least one differing accent or letter, getting almost desperate in that pursuit, only to repeatedly discover perfect similitude, though how can that be, right? if it were perfect it wouldn’t be similar it would be identical, and you know what? I’ve lost this sentence, I can’t even finish it, don’t know how-
Here’s the point: the more I focused in on the words the farther I seemed from my room. No sense where either, until all of a sudden along the edges of my tongue, towards the back of my mouth, I started to taste something extremely bitter, almost metallic. I began to gag. I didn’t gag, but I was certain I would. Then I got a whiff of that same something awful I’d detected outside of the Shop in the hail. Faint as hell at first until I knew I’d smelled it and then it wasn’t faint at all. A whole lot of rot was suddenly packed up my nose, slowly creeping down my throat, closing it off. I started to throw up, watery chunks of vomit flying everywhere, sluicing out of me onto the floor, splashing onto the wall, even onto this. Except I only coughed. I didn’t cough. I lightly cleared my throat and then the smell was gone and so was the taste. I was back in my room again, looking around in the dim light, jittery, disoriented but hardly fooled.
I put the fragments back in the trunk. Walked the perimeter of my room. Glass of bourbon. A toke on a blunt. There we go. Bring on the haze. But who am I kidding? I can still see what’s happening. My line of defense has not only failed, it failed long ago. Don’t ask me to define the line either or why exactly it’s needed or even what it stands in defense against. I haven’t the foggiest idea.
This much though I’m sure of: I’m alone in hostile territories with no clue why they’re hostile or how to get back to safe havens, an Old Haven, a lost haven, the temperature dropping, the hour heaving & pitching towards a profound darkness, while before me my idiotic amaurotic Guide laughs, actually cackles is more like it, lost in his own litany of inside jokes, completely out of his head, out of focus too, zonules of Zinn, among other things, having snapped long ago like piano wires, leaving me with absolutely no Sound way to determine where the hell I’m going, though right now going to hell seems like a pretty sound bet.
In his own befuddled way, John Hollander has given the world a beautiful and strange reflection on love and longing. To read his marvelous dialogue on echo [52-See John Hollander’s The Figure of Echo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). ] is to find its author standing perfectly still in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes wild with a cascade of internal reckonings, lips acting out some unintelligible discourse, inaudible to the numerous students who race by him, noting his mad appearance and quite rightly offering him a wide berth as they escape into someone else’s class. [53-Kelly Chamotto makes mention of Hollander in her essay “Mid-
Sentence, Mid-Stream” in Glorious Garrulous Graphomania ed. T. N
Joseph Truslow (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), p. 345.]
Hollander begins with a virtual catalogue of literal echoes. For example, the Latin “decem lam annos aetatem trivi in Cicerone” echoed by the Greek “one!” [“I’ve spent ten years on Cicero” “Ass!”] Or “Musarum studia” (Latin) described by the echo as “dia” (Greek). [“The Muses’ studies” “divine ones.”] Or Narcissus’ rejection “Emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri” to which Echo responds “sit tibi copia nostri.” [Narcissus: “May I die before I give you power over me.” Echo: “I give you power over me.”] On page 4, he even provides a woodcut from Athanasius Kircher’s Neue Hall -und Thonkunst (Nordlingen, 1684) illustrating an artificial echo machine designed to exchange ” clamore” for four echoes:” amore,” “more,” “ore,” and finally “re.” [“O outcry” returns as “love,” “delays,” “hours” and “king.”] Nor does Hollander stop there. His slim volume abounds with examples of textual transfiguration, though in an effort to keep from repeating the entire book, let this heart-wrenching interchange serve as a final example:
Chi dara fine a! gran dolore? L’ore.
[“Who will put an end to this great sadness?” “The hours passing”]
While The Figure of Echo takes special delight in clever word games, Hollander knows better than to limit his examination there. Echo may live in metaphors, puns and the suffix-solis ex jib vivit in antris [“Literatures rocky caves”] [54-“From that time on she lived in lonely caves.” – Ed.] – but her range extends far beyond those literal walls. For instance, the rabbinical bat kol means “daughter of a voice” which in modern Hebrew serves as a rough equivalent for the word “echo.” Milton knew it “God so commanded, and left that Command! Sole Daughter of his voice.” [55-
John Milton’s Paradise Lost, IX, 653-54.] So did Wordsworth: “stern
Daughter of the Voice of God.” Quoting from Henry Reynold’s
Mythomystes (1632), Hollander evidences religious appropriation of the ancient myth (page 16):
This Winde is (as the before-mentioned lamblicus, by consent of his other fellow Cabalists sayes) the Symbole of the Breath of God; and Ecco, the reflection of this divine breath, or spirit upon us; or (as they interpret it) the daughter of the divine voice; which through the beatifying splendor it shedds and diffuses through the Soule, is justly worthy to be reverenced and adored by us. This Ecco descending upon a Narcissus, or such a Soule as (impurely and vitiously affected) slights, and stops his eares to the Divine voice, or shutts his harte from divine Inspirations, through his being enamour’d of not himselfe, but his owne shadow meerely . . . he becomes thence . . . an earthy, weake, worthiesse thing, and fit sacrifize for
only etemall oblivion…
Thus Echo suddenly assumes the role of god’s messenger, a female Mercury or perhaps even Prometheus, decked in talaria, with lamp in hand, descending on fortunate humanity.
In 1989, however, the noted southern theologian Hanson Edwin Rose dramatically revised this reading. In a series of lectures delivered at Chapel Hill, Rose referred to “God’s Grand Utterance” as “The Biggest Bang Of Them All.” After discussing in depth the difference between the Hebrew davhar and the Greek logos, Rose took a careful accounting of St. John, chapter 1, Verse 1 -“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It was a virtuoso performance but one that surely would have been relegated to those dusty shelves already burdened with a thousand years of seminary discourse had he not summed up his ruminations with this incendiary and sill infamous conclusion:
“Look to the sky, look to yourself and remember: we are only god’s echoes and god is Narcissus.” [56-Hanson Edwin Rose, Creationist Myths
(Detroit, Michigan: Pneuma Publications, 1989), p. 219.]
Rose’s pronouncement recalls another equally important meditation:
Why did god create a dual universe?
So he might say,
“Be not like me. I am alone.” And it might be heard.
[57-These lines have a familiar ring though I’ve no clue why or where
I’ve heard them before.]
[58-Though we were ultimately unsuccessful, all efforts were made to determine who wrote the above verse. We apologize for this inconsistency. Anyone who can provide legitimate proof of authorship will be credited In future editions. – Ed.]
There is not time or room to adequately address the complexity inherent in this passage, aside from noting how the voice is returned-or figuratively echoed-not with an actual word but with the mere understanding that it was received, listened to, or as the text explicitly states “heard.” What the passage occludes, no doubt on purpose, is how such an understanding might be attained.
Interestingly enough, for all its marvelous observation, The Figure of Echo contains a startling error, one which performs a poetic modulation on a voice sounded over a century ago. While discussing Wordsworth’s poem “The Power of Sound” Hollander quotes on page 19 the following few lines:
Ye Voices, and ye Shadows
And Images of voice – to hound and horn
From rocky steep and rock-bestudded meadows
Flung back, and in the sky’s blue care reborn –
[Italics added for emphasis]
Perhaps it is simply a typographical error committed by the publisher.
Or perhaps the publisher was dutifully transcribing an error committed by Hollander himself, not just a scholar but a poet as well, who in that tiny slip where an “r” replaced a “v” and an “s” miraculously vanished reveals his own relation to the meaning of echo. A meaning Wordsworth did not share. Consider the original text:
Ye Voices, and ye Shadows
And Images of voice-to hound and horn
From rocky steep and rock-bestudded meadows
Flung back, and, in the sky’s blue caves reborn – [Italics added for emphasis]
[59-William Wordsworth, The Poems Of William Wordsworth, ed.
Nowell Charles Smith, M.A. vol. 1. (London: Methuen and Co., 1908), p. 395. Also of some interest is Alice May Williams letter to the observers at
Mount Wilson (CAT. #0005) in which she writes: “I believe that sky opens & closes on certain periods, When you see all that cloud covering the sky right up, & over. Those clouds are called. Blinds, shutters, & verandahs. Sometimes that sky opens underneath.” See No One May Ever Have The Same Knowledge Again: Letters to Mount Wilson Observatory 1915-1 935, edited and transcribed by Sarah Simons (West Covina, California: Society For the Diffusion of Useful Information Press, 1993), p. 11.]
While Wordsworth’s poetics retain the literal properties and stay within the canonical jurisdiction of Echo, Hollander’ s find something else, not exactly ‘religious’-that would be hyperbole-but ‘compassionate’, which as an echo of humanity suggests the profoundest return of all.
Aside from recurrence, revision, and commensurate symbolic reference, echoes also reveal emptiness. Since objects always muffle or impede acoustic reflection, only empty places can create echoes of lasting clarity.
Ironically, hollowness only increases the eerie quality of otherness inherent in any echo. Delay and fragmented repetition create a sense of another inhabiting a necessarily deserted place. Strange then how something so uncanny and outside of the self, even ghostly as some have suggested, can at the same time also contain a resilient comfort: the assurance that even if it is imaginary and at best the product of a wall, there is still something else out there, something to stake out in the face of nothingness.
Hollander is wrong when he writes on page 55:
The apparent echoing of solitary words [reminds] us … that acoustical echoing in empty places can be a very common auditory emblem, redolent of gothic novels as it may be, of isolation and often of unwilling solitude. This is no doubt a case of natural echoes conforming to echo’s mythographic mocking, rather than affirming, role. In an empty hall that should be comfortably inhabited, echoes of our voices and motions mock our very presence in the hollow space.
It is not by accident that choirs singing Psalms are most always recorded with ample reverb. Divinity seems defined by echo. Whether the Vienna Boys Choir or monks chanting away on some chart climbing CD, the hallowed always seems to abide in the province of the hollow. The reason for this is not too complex. An echo, while implying an enormity of a space, at the same time also defines it, limits it, and even temporarily inhabits it.
When a pebble falls down a well, it is gratifying to hear the eventual plunk. If, however, the pebble only slips into darkness and vanishes without a sound, the effect is disquieting. In the case of a verbal echo, the spoken word acts as the pebble and the subsequent repetition serves as “the plunk.”
In this way, speaking can result in a form of “seeing.”
For all its merits, Hollander’s book only devotes five pages to the actual physics of sound. While this is not the place to dwell on the beautiful and complex properties of reflection, in order to even dimly comprehend the shape of the Navidson house it is still critical to recognize how the laws of physics in tandem with echo’s mythic inheritance serve to enhance echo’s interpretive strength.
The descriptive ability of the audible is easily designated with the following formula:
Sound + Time = Acoustic Light
As most people know who are versed in this century’s technological effects, exact distances can be determined by timing the duration of a sound’s round trip between the deflecting object and its point of origin. This principle serves as the basis for all the radar, sonar and ultrasonics used every day around the world by air traffic controllers, fishermen, and obstetricians. By using sound or electromagnetic waves, visible blips may be produced on a screen, indicating either a 747, a school of salmon, or the barely pumping heart of a fetus.
Of course echolocation has never belonged exclusively to technology.
Microchiroptera (bats), Cetacean (porpoises and toothed whales), Deiphinis deiphis (dolphins) as well as certain mammals (flying foxes) and birds (oilbirds) all use sound to create extremely accurate acoustic images. However, unlike their human counterparts, neither bats nor dolphins require an intermediary screen to interpret the echoes. They simply “see” the shape of sound.
Bats, for example, create frequency modulated [FMJ images by producing constant-frequency signals [0.5 to 100+ ms] and FM signals [0.5 to 10 msj in their larynx. The respondent echoes are then translated into nerve discharges in the auditory cortex, enabling the bat not only to determine an insect’s velocity and direction (through synaptic interpretation of Doppler shifts) but pinpoint its location to within a fraction of a millimeter. [60-See D. R. Griffin, Listening in the Dark (1986).]
As Michael J. Buckingham noted in the mid-80s, imaging performed by the human eye is neither active nor passive. The eye does not need to produce a signal to see nor does an object have to produce a signal in order to be seen. An object merely needs to be illuminated. Based on these observations, the afready mentioned formula reflects a more accurate understanding of vision with the following refinement:
Sound + Time = Acoustic Touch
As Gloucester murmured, “I see it feelingly.” [61-King Lear, IV, vi, 147.]
Unfortunately, humans lack the sophisticated neural hardware present in bats and whales. The blind must rely on the feeble light of fingertips and the painful shape of a cracked shin. Echolocation comes down to the crude assessment of simple sound modulations, whether in the dull reply of a tapping cane or the low, eerie flutter in one simple word-perhaps your word-flung down empty hallways long past midnight.
[62-You don’t need me to point out the intensely personal nature of this passage. Frankly I’d of rec’d a quick skip past the whole echo ramble were it not for those six lines, especially the last bit “- perhaps your word -” conjuring up, at least for me, one of those deep piercing reactions, the kind that just misses a ventricle, the old man making his way-feeling his way-around the walls of another evening, a slow and tedious progress but one which begins to yield, somehow, the story of his own creature darkness, taking me completely by surprise, a sudden charge from out of the dullest moment, jaws lunging open, claws protracting, and just so you understand where I’m coming from, I consider “… long past midnight” one claw and “empty hallways” another.
Don’t worry Lude didn’t buy it either but at least he bought a couple of rounds.
Two nights ago, we were checking out the Sky Bar, hemorrhaging dough on drinks, but Lude could only cough hard and then laugh real coronary like: “Hoss, a claw’s made of bone just like a stilt’s made of steel.”
“Sure” I said.
But it was loud there and the crowd kept both of us from hearing correctly. And while I wanted to believe Lude’s basics, I couldn’t. There was something just so awful in the old man’s utterance. I felt a terrible empathy for him then, living in that tiny place, permeated with the odor of age, useless blinks against the darkness. His word-my word, maybe even your word-added to this, and ringing inside me like some awful dream, over and over again, modulating slightly, slowly pitching my own defenses into something entirely different, until the music of that recurrence drew into relief my own scars drawn long ago, over two decades ago, and with more than a claw, a stiletto or even an ancient Samuel O’Reilly @ 1891, and these scars torn, ripped, bleeding and stuttering-for they are first of all his scars-the kind only bars of an EKG can accurately remember, a more precise if incomplete history, Q waves deflecting downward at what must be considered the commencement of the QRS complex, telling the story of a past infarction, that awful endurance and eventual letting go, the failure which began it all in the first place, probably right after one burning maze but still years ahead of the Other loss, a horrible violence, before the coming of that great Whale, before the final drift, nod, macking skid, twist and topple-his own burning-years before the long rest, coming along in its own way, its own nightmare, perhaps even in the folds of another unprotected sleep (so I like to imagine), silvering wings fragmenting then scattering like fish scales flung on the jet stream, above the clouds and every epic venture still suggested in those delicate, light-cradled borders- Other Lands-sweeping the world like a whisper, a hand, even if salmon scales still slip through words as easily as palmed prisms of salt will always slip through fingers, shimmering, raining, confused, and no matter how spectacular forever unable to prevent his fall, down through the silver, the salmon, away from the gold and the myriad of games held in just that word, suggesting it might have even been Spanish gold, though this makes no differance, still tumbling in rem-, dying and -embered, even? or never, in a different light, and not waking this time, before the hit, but sleeping right through it, the slamming into the ground, at terminal velocity too, the pound, the bounce, What kind of ground-air emergency code would that mark mean? the opposition of L’s? Not understood? Probably just X marks the spot: Unable To Proceed- then in the awful second arc and second descent, after the sound, the realization of what Sleep has just now delivered, that bloody handmaiden, this time her toiling fingers wet with boiling deformation, oozing in the mutilations of birth, heartless & unholy, black with afterbirth, miscreated changeling and foul, what no one beside him could prevent, but rather might have even caused, and mine too, this unread trauma, driving him to consciousness with a scream, not even a word, a scream, and even that never heard, so not a scream but the clutch of life held by will alone, no 911, no call at all, just his own misunderstanding of the reality that had broken into the Hall, the silence then of a woman and an only son, describing in an agonizing hour all it takes to let go, broken, bleeding, ragged, twisted, savaged, torn and dying too, so permanently wronged, though for how many years gone untold, unseen, reminiscent of another silver shape, so removed and yet so dear, kept on a cold gold chain, years on, this fistful of twitching injured life, finally recovering on its own until eventually like a seed conceived, born and grown, the story of its injured beat survives long enough to destroy and devour by the simple telling of its fall, all his hope, his home, his only love, the very color of his flesh and the dark marrow of his bone.
“You okay Truant?” Lude asked.
But I saw a strange glimmer everywhere, confined to the sharp oscillations of yellow & blue, as if my retinal view suddenly included along with the reflective blessings of light, an unearthly collusion with scent & sound, registering all possibilities of harm, every threat, every move, even with all that grinning and meeting and din.
A thousand and one possible claws.
Of course, Lude didn’t see it. He was blind. Maybe even right. We drove down Sunset and soon veered south into the flats. A party somewhere. An important gathering of B heads and coke heads. Lude would never feel how “empty hallways long past midnight” could slice inside of you, though I’m not so sure he wasn’t sliced up just the same. Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the HeyI’m-Bleeding part. To feel though, you have to care and as we walked out onto the blue-lit patio and discovered a motorcycle sputtering up oil and bubbles from the bottom of the pool while on the diving board two men shoved flakes of ice up a woman’s bleeding nostrils, her shirt off, her bra nearly transparent, I knew Lude would never care much about the dead. And maybe he was right. Maybe some things are best left untouched. Of course he didn’t know the dead like I did. And so when he absconded with a bottle of Jack from the kitchen, I did my best to join him. Obliterate my own cavities and graves.
But come morning, despite my headache and the vomit on my shirt, I knew I’d failed.
Inside me, a long dark hallway already caressed the other music of a single word, and what’s worse, despite the amazements of chemicals, continued to grow.]
The study of architectural acoustics focuses on the rich interplay between sound and interior design. Consider, for example, how an enclosed space will naturally increase sound pressure and raise the frequency. Even though they are usually difficult to calculate, resonance frequencies, also known as eigenfrequencies or natural frequencies, can be easily determined for a perfectly rectangular room with hard smooth walls. The following formula describes the resonance frequencies [f] in a room with a length of L, width of W, and height of H, where the velocity of sound equals c:
f = C/2 [(flIL)2 + (m/W)2 + (P/H)21 1/2 Hz
Notice that if L, W, and H all equal oo, f will equal 0.
Along with resonance frequencies, the study of sound also takes into account wave acoustics, ray acoustics, diffusion, and steady-state pressure level, as well as sound absorption and transmission through walls. A careful examination of the dynamics involved in sound absorption reveals how incident sound waves are converted to energy. (In the case of porous material, the subsurface lattice of interstices translates sound waves into heat.) Nevertheless, above and beyond the details of frequency shifts and volume fluctuations-the physics of ‘otherness’ -what matters most is a sound’s delay. [63-Further attention should probably be given to sabins and Transmission Loss as described by TL = 10 log 1/ r dB, where r= a transmission coefficient and a high TL indicates a high sound insulation. Unfortunately, one could write several lengthy books on sound alone in The Navidson Record. Oddly enough, with the sole exception of Kellog
Pequity’s article on acoustic impedance in Navidson’s house (Science, April 1995, p. 43), nothing else has been rendered on this particularly resonant topic. On the subject of acoustic coefficience, however, see Ned Noi’s
“Echo’s Verse” in Science News, v. 143, February 6, 1993, p. 85.]
Point of fact, the human ear cannot distinguish one sound wave from the same sound wave if it returns in less than 50 milliseconds. Therefore for anyone to hear a reverberation requires a certain amount of space. At 68 degrees Fahrenheit sound travels at approximately 1,130 ft per second. A reflective surface must stand at least 56 1/2 ft away in order for a person to detect the doubling of her voice. [64-Parallel surfaces will create a flutter echo, though frequently a splay of as little as 16mm (5/8 inch) can prevent the multiple repetitions.]
In other words, to hear an echo, regardless of whether eyes are open or closed, is to have already “seen” a sizable space.
Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate.
And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.
[65-There is something more at work here, some sort of antithetical reasoning and proof making, and what about light?, all of which actually made sense to me at a certain hour before midnight or at least came close to making sense. Problem was Lude interrupted my thoughts when he came over and after much discussion (not to mention shots of tequila and a nice haircut) convinced me to share a bag of mushrooms with him and in spite of getting violently ill in the aisle of a certain 7-Eleven (me; not him) led me to an after hours party where I soon became engrossed in a green-eyed brunette (Lucy) who had no intention of letting our dance end at the club, and yet even in our sheet twisting, lightless dance on my floor, her own features, those pale legs, soft arms, the fragile collar bone tracing a shadow of (-can’t write the word-), invariably became entwined and permanently??? entangled, even entirely replaced??? by images of a completely different woman; relatively new, or not new at all, but for reasons unknown to me still continuing to endure as a center to my thoughts; her-
-first encountered in the company of Lude and my boss at a place my boss likes to call The Ghost. The problem is that in his mind The Ghost actually refers to two places: The Garden of Eden on La Brea and The Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset. How or why this came about is impossible to trace. Private nomenclature seems to rapidly develop in tight set-upon circles, though truth be told we were only set-upon on a good day, and tight here should be taken pretty loosely.
How then, you ask, do you know what’s being referred to when The Ghost gets mentioned?
You don’t.
You just end up at one or the other. Often the Rainbow. Though not always the Rainbow. You see, how my boss defines The Ghost varies from day to day, depending mostly on his moods and appetites. Consequently, the previously mentioned “pretty loosely” should probably be struck and restated as “very, very loosely.”
Anyway, what I’m about to tell you happened on one of those rare evenings when we actually all got together. My boss was chattering incessantly about his junk days in London and how he’d contemplated sobriety and what those contemplations had been like. Eventually he detoured into long winded non-stories about his Art School experiences in Detroit,-lots of “Hey, my thing for that whole time thing was really a kinda art thing or something”-which was about when I hauled out my pad of sketches, because no matter what you made of his BS you still couldn’t fault him for his work. He was one of best, and every tatted local knew it.
Truth be known, I’d been waiting for this chance for a while, keen on getting his out-of-the-Shop perspective on my efforts, and what efforts they were-diligent designs sketched over the months, intended someday to live in skin, each image carefully wrapped and coiled in colors of cinnabar, lemon, celadon and indigo, incarnated in the scales of dragons, the bark of ancient roods, shields welded by generations cast aside in the oily umber of shadow & blood not to speak of lifeless trees prevailing against indifferent skies or colossal vessels asleep in prehistoric sediment, miles beneath even the faintest suggestion of light-at least that’s how I would describe them- every one meticulously rendered on tracing paper, cracking like fire whenever touched, a multitude of pages, which my boss briefly examined before handing them back to me.
“Take up typing,” he grunted.
Well that’s nice, I thought.
At least the next step was clear.
Some act of violence would be necessary.
And so it was that before another synapse could fire within my bad-off labyrinthine brain, he was already lying on the floor. Or I should say his mangled body was lying on the floor. His head remained in my hands. Twisted off like a cap. Not as difficult as I’d imagined. The first turn definitely the toughest, necessitating the breaking of cervical vertebrae and the snapping of the spinal cord, but after that, another six or so turns, and voilà-the head was off. Nothing could be easier. Time to go bowling.
My boss smiled. Said hello.
But he wasn’t smiling or saying hello to me.
Somehow she was already standing there, right in front of him, right in front of me, talking to him, reminiscing, touching his shoulder, even winking at me and Lude.
Wow. Out of nowhere. Out of the blue.
Where had she come from? Or for that matter, when?
Of course my boss didn’t introduce her. He just left me to gape. I couldn’t even imagine twisting off his head for a second time as that would of meant losing sight of her. Which I found myself quite unwilling to do.
Fortunately, after that evening, she began dropping by the Shop alot, always wearing these daisy sunglasses and each time taking me completely offguard.
She still drives me nuts. Just thinking of her now and I’m lost, lost in the smell of her, the way of her and everything she conjures up inside me, a mad rush of folly & oddly muted lusts, sensations sublimated faster than I can follow, into- oh hell I don’t know what into, I probably shouldn’t even be using a word like sublimate, but that’s beside the point, her hair reminding me of a shiny gold desert wind brazed in a hot August sun, hips curving like coastal norths, tits rising and falling beneath her blue sweatshirt the way an ocean will do long after the storm has passed. (She’s always a little out of breath when she climbs the flight of stairs leading up to the Shop.) One glance at her, even now in the glass of my mind, and I want to take off, travel with her, who knows where either, somewhere, my desire suddenly informed by something deeper, even unknown, pouring into me, drawn off some peculiar reserve, tracing thoughts of the drive she and I would take, lungs full of that pine rasping air, outracing something unpleasant, something burning, in fact the entire coast along with tens of thousands of acres of inland forest is burning but we’re leaving, we’re getting away, we’re free, our hands battered by the clutch of holding on-I don’t know what to, but holding just the same-and cheeks streaked with wind tears; and now that I think of it I guess we are on a motorcycle, a Triumph?, isn’t that what Lude always talks about buying?, ascending into colder but brighter climes, and I don’t know anything about bikes let alone how to drive one. And there I go again. She does that to me. Like I already said, drives me nuts.
“Hello?”
That was the first word she ever said to me in the Shop. Not like “Hi” either. More like “Hello, is anyone home?” hence the question mark. I wasn’t even looking at her when she said it, just staring blankly down at my equally blank pad of tracing paper, probably thinking something similar to all those ridiculous, sappy thoughts I just now recounted, about road trips and forest fires and motorcycles, remembering her, even though she was right there in front of me, only a few feet away.
“Hey asshole,” my boss shouted. “Hang up her fucking pants. What’s the matter with you?”
Something would have to be done about him.
But before I could hurl him through the plate glass window into the traffic below, she smiled and handed me her bright pink flip-flops & white Adidas sweats. My boss was lucky. This magnificent creature had just saved his life.
Gratefully I received her clothes, lifting them from her Lingers tips like they were some sacred vesture bestowed upon me by the Virgin Mary herself. The hard part, I found, was trying not to stare too long at her legs. Very tricky to do. Next to impossible, especially with her just standing there in a black G-string, her bare feet sweating on the naked floor.
I did my best to smile in a way that would conceal my awe.
“Thank you,” I said, thinking I should kneel.
“Thank you,” she insisted.
Those were the next two words she ever said to me, and wow, I don’t know why but her voice went off in my head like a symphony. A great symphony. A sweet symphony. A great-fucking-sweet symphony. I don’t know what I’m saying. I know absolutely shit about symphonies.
“What’s your name?” The total suddenly climbing to an impossible six words.
“Johnny,” I mumbled, promptly earning four more words. And just like that.
“Nice to meet you,” she said in a way that almost sounded like a psalm. And then even though she clearly enjoyed the effect she was having on me, she turned away with a wink, leaving me to ponder and perhaps pray.
At least I had her ten words: “hello thank you what’s your name nice to meet you.” Ten whole fucking words. Wow. Wow. Wow. And hard as this may be for you to believe, I really was reeling. Even after she left the Shop an hour or so later, I was still giving serious thought to petitioning all major religions in order to have her deified.
In fact I was so caught up in the thought of her, there was even a moment where I failed to recognize my boss. I had absolutely no clue who he was. I just stared at him thinking to myself, “Who’s this dumb mutant and how the hell did he get up here?” which it turns out I didn’t think at all but accidentally said aloud, causing all sorts of mayhem to ensue, not worth delving into now.
Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you’ve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you’ve got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into.
Quick second note: if that last paragraph didn’t apply to you, you may skip it and proceed to this next part.
As for her real name, I still don’t know it. She’s a stripper at some place near the airport. She has a dozen names. The first time she came into the Shop, she wanted one of her tattoos retouched. “Just an inch away from my perfectly shaved pussy,” she announced very matter-a-factly, only to add somewhat coyly, slipping two fingers beneath her G-string and pulling it aside; no need to wink now: “The Happiest Place On Earth.”
Suffice it to say, the second I saw that rabbit the second I started calling her Thumper.
I do admit it seems a little strange, even to me, to realize that even after four months I’m still swept up in her. Lude sure as hell doesn’t understand it. One- because I’ve fallen for a stripper: “fuck a’ and ‘fall for’ have very different meanings, Hoss. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do.”; and two- because she’s older than me: “If you’re gonna reel for a stripper,” he advises. “You should at least reel for a young one. They’re sexier and not as bent.” Which is true, she does have a good six years on me, but what can I say? I’m taken; I love how enthralled she remains by this festival of living, nothing reserved or even remotely ashamed about who she is or what she does, always talking blue streak to my boss about her three year old child, her boyfriend, her boyfriends, the hand jobs she gets extra for, eleven years of sobriety, her words always winding up the way it feels to wake up wide awake, everything about her awakening at every moment, alive to the world and its quirky opportunities, a sudden rite of spring, Thumper’s spring, though spring’s already sprung, rabbit rabbit, and now April’s ruling April’s looming April’s fooling, around, in yet another round, for this year’s ruling April fool.
Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous.
Even worse, I feel like I could continue in that vein for years, maybe even decades.
And yet, listen to this, to date I’ve hardly said a word to her. Don’t have a decent explanation for my silence either. Maybe it’s my boss and his guard dog glare. Maybe it’s her. I suspect it’s her. Every time she visits (though I admit there haven’t been that many visits), she overwhelms me. It doesn’t matter that she always gives me a wink and sometimes even a full throated laugh when I call her “Thumper”, “Hi Thumper” “Bye Thumper” the only words I can really muster, she still really only exists for me as a strange mixture of daydream and present day edge, by which I mean something without a past or a future, an icon or idyll of sorts, for some reason forbidden to me, but seductive beyond belief and probably relief, her image feeling permanently fixed within me, but not new, more like it’s been there all along, even if I know that’s not true, and come last night going so far as to entwine, entangle and finally completely replace her with the (- can’t write the word-) of-
-Thumper’s flashing eyes, her aching lips, her heart-ending moans, those I had imagined, an ongoing list, so minute and distracting that long after, when the sheets were gathered, wet with sex, cold with rest, I did not know who lay beside me (-) and seeing this stranger, the vessel of my dreams, I withdrew to the toilet, to the shower, to my table, enough racket and detachment to communicate an unfair request, but poor her she heard it and without a word dressed, and without a smile requested a brush, and without a kiss left, leaving me alone to return to this passage where I discovered the beginnings of a sense long since taken and strewn, leading me away on what I guess amounts to another hopeless digression.
Perhaps when I’m finished I’ll remember what I’d hoped to say in the first place. [66-Mr. Truant declined to comment further on this particular passage. – Ed.]
As tape and film reveal, in the month following the expansion of the walls bracketing the book shelves, Billy Reston made several trips to the house where despite all efforts to the contrary, he continued to confirm the confounding impossibility of an interior dimension greater than an exterior one.
Navidson skillfully captures Reston’s mental frustration by focusing on the physical impediments his friend must face within a house not designed with the disabled in mind. Since the area in question is in the master bedroom, Reston must make his way upstairs each time he wishes to inspect the area.
On the first visit, Tom volunteers to try and carry him.
“That won’t be necessary” Reston grunts, effortlessly swinging out of his chair and dragging himself up to the second story using only his arms. “You got a pair of guns there, don’t you partner.” The engineer is only slightly winded.
“Too bad you forgot your chair,” Tom adds dryly.
Reston looks up in disbelief, a little surprised, maybe even a bit shocked, and then bursts out laughing.
“Well, and fuck you.”
In the end, Navidson is the one who hauls up the wheelchair.
[67-Yesterday I managed to get Maus Fife-Harris on the phone. She’s a UC Irvine PhD candidate in Comp Lit who apparently always objected to the large chunks of narrative Zampanô kept asking her to write down. “I told him all those passages were inappropriate for a critical work, and if he were in my class I’d mark him down for it. But he’d just chuckle and continue. It bothered me a little but the guy wasn’t my student and he was blind and old, so why should I care? Still, I did care, so I’d always protest when he asked me to write down a new bit of narrative. ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’ I demanded one time. ‘You’re writing like a freshman.’ And he replied-I remember this very distinctly ‘We always look for doctors but sometimes we’re lucky to find a frosh.’ And then he chuckled again and pressed on.” Not a bad way to respond to this whole fucking book, if you ask me.]
Still, no matter how many times Reston wheels from the children’s bedroom to the master bedroom or how carefully he examines the strange closet space, the bookshelves, or the various tools Tom and Will have been measuring the house with, he can provide no reasonable explanation for what he keeps referring to as “a goddamn spatial rape.”
By June-as the date on the Hi 8 tape indicates-the problem still remains unsolved. Tom, however, realizes he cannot afford to stay any longer and asks Reston to give him a lift to Charlottesville where he can catch a ride up to Dulles.
It is a bright summer morning when we watch Tom emerge from the house. He gives Karen a quick kiss good-bye and then kneels down to present Chad and Daisy with a set of neon yellow dart guns.
“Remember kids,” he tells them sternly. “Don’t shoot each other. Aim at the fragile, expensive stuff.”
Navidson gives his brother a lasting hug.
“I’ll miss you, man.”
“You got a phone,” Tom grins.
“It even rings,” Navidson adds without missing a beat.
While there is no question the tone of this exchange is jocular and perhaps even slightly combative, what matters most here is unspoken. The way Tom’s cheeks burn with a sudden flush of color. Or the way Navidson quickly tries to wipe something from his eyes. Certainly the long, lingering shot of Tom as he tosses his duffel bag in the back of Reston’s van, waving the camera good-bye, reveals to us just how much affection Navidson feels for his brother.
Strangely enough, following Tom’s departure, communication between Navidson and Karen begins to radically deteriorate.
An unusual quiet descends on the house.
Karen refuses to speak about the anomaly. She brews coffee, calls her mother in New York, brews more coffee, and keeps track of the real estate market in the classifieds.
Frustrated by her unwillingness to discuss the implications of their strange living quarters, Navidson retreats to the downstairs study, reviewing photographs, tapes, even-as a few stills reveal-compiling a list of possible experts, government agencies, newspapers, periodicals, and television shows they might want to approach.
At least both he and Karen agree on one thing: they want the children to stay out of the house. Unfortunately, since neither Chad nor Daisy has had a real opportunity to make any new friends in Virginia, they keep to themselves, romping around the backyard, shouting, screaming, stinging each other with darts until eventually they drift farther and farther out into the neighborhood for increasingly longer spates of time.
Neither Karen nor Navidson seems to notice.
The alienation of their children finally becomes apparent to both of them one evening in the middle of July.
Karen is upstairs, sitting on the bed playing with a deck of Tarot cards. Navidson is downstairs in his study examining several slides returned from the lab. News of Oliver North’s annulled conviction plays on the TV. In the background, we can hear Chad and Daisy squealing about something, their voices peeling through the house, the strained music of their play threatening at any instant to turn into a brawl.
With superb cross-cutting, Navidson depicts how both he and Karen react to the next moment. Karen has drawn another card from the deck but instead of adding it to the cross slowly forming before her crossed legs, the occult image hangs unseen in the air, frozen between her two fingers, Karen’s eyes already diverted, concentrating on a sound, a new sound, almost out of reach, but reaching her just the same. Navidson is much closer. His children’s cries immediately tell him that they are way out of bounds.
Karen has only just started to head downstairs, calling out for Chad and Daisy, her agitation and panic increasing with every step, when Navidson bolts out of the study and races for the living room.
The terrifying implication of their children’s shouts is now impossible to miss. No room in the house exceeds a length of twenty-five feet, let alone fifty feet, let alone fifty-six and a half feet, and yet Chad and Daisy’s voices are echoing, each call responding with an entirely separate answer.
In the living room, Navidson discovers the echoes emanating from a dark doorless hallway which has appeared out of nowhere in the west wall. [68-There’s a problem here concerning the location of “The Five and a Half Minute Hallway.” Initially the doorway was supposed to be on the north wall of the living room (page 4), but now, as you can see for yourself.
that position has changed. Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe there’s some underlying logic to the shift. Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine.]Without hesitating, Navidson plunges in after them. Unfortunately the living room Hi 8 cannot follow him nor for that matter can Karen. She freezes on the threshold, unable to push herself into the darkness toward the faint flicker of light within. Fortunately, she does not have to wait too long. Navidson soon reappears with Chad and Daisy in each arm, both of them still clutching a homemade candle, their faces lit like sprites on a winter’s eve.
This is the first sign of Karen’s chronic disability. Up until now there has never been even the slightest indication that she suffers from crippling claustrophobia. By the time Navidson and the two children are safe and sound in the living room, Karen is drenched in sweat. She hugs and holds them as if they had just narrowly avoided some terrible fate, even though neither Chad nor Daisy seems particularly disturbed by their little adventure. In fact, they want to go back. Perhaps because of Karen’s evident distress, Navidson agrees to at least temporarily make this new addition to their house off limits.
For the rest of the night, Karen keeps a tight grip on Navidson. Even when they finally slip into bed, she is still holding his hand.
“Navy, promise me you won’t go in there again.”
“Let’s see if it’s even here in the morning.” “It will be.”
She lays her head down flat on his chest and begins to cry.
“I love you so much. Please promise me. Please.”
Whether it is the lasting flush of terror still in Karen’s cheeks or her absolute need for him, so markedly different from her frequently aloof posture, Navidson cradles her in his arms like a child and promises.
Since the release of The Navidson Record, Virginia Posah has written extensively about Karen Green’s adolescent years. Posah’s thin volume entitled Wishing Well (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996) represents one of the few works which while based on the Navidsons’ experience still manages to stand on its own merits outside of the film.
Along with an exceptional background in everything ranging from Kate
Chopin, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, Autobiography of a Schizophrenic
Girl: The True Story of “Renee”, Francesca Block’s Weetzie Bat books to Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia and more importantly Carol Gilligan’s landmark work In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Posah has spent hundreds of hours researching the early life of Karen Green, analyzing the cultural forces shaping her personality, ultimately uncovering a remarkable difference between the child she once was and the woman she eventually became. In her introduction (page xv), Posah provides this brief overview:
When Diderot told the teenage Sophie Volland “You all die at fifteen” he could have been speaking to Karen Green who at fifteen did die.
To behold Karen as a child is nearly as ghostly an experience as the house itself. Old family films capture her athletic zeal, her unguarded smiles, the tomboy spirit which sends her racing through the muddy flats of a recently drained pond. She’s awkward, a little clumsy, but rarely selfconscious, even when covered in mud.
Former teachers claim she frequently expressed a desire to be president, a nuclear physicist, a surgeon, even a professional hockey player. All her choices reflected unattenuated self-confidence – a remarkably healthy sign for a thirteen year old girl.
Along with superb class work, she excelled in extra-curricular activities. She loved planning surprise parties, working on school productions, and even on occasion taking on a schoolyard bully with a bout of fists. Karen Green was exuberant, feisty, charming, independent, spontaneous, sweet, and most of all fearless.
By the time she turned fifteen, all of that was gone. She hardly spoke in class. She refused to function in any sort of school event, and rather than discuss her feelings she deferred the world with a hard and perfectly practiced smile.
Apparently-if her sister is to be believed
– Karen spent every night of her fourteenth year composing that smile in front of a blue plastic handled mirror. Tragically her creation proved flawless and though her near aphonia should have alarmed any adept teacher or guidance counselor, it was invariably rewarded with the pyritic prize of high school popularity.
Though Posah goes on to discuss the cultural aspects and consequences of beauty, these details in particular are most disturbing, especially in light of the fact that little of their history appears in the film.
Considering the substantial coverage present in The Navidson Record, it is unsettling to discover such a glaring omission. In spite of the enormous quantity of home footage obviously available, for some reason calamities of the past still do not appear. Clearly Karen’s personal life, to say nothing of his own life, caused Navidson too much anxiety to portray either one particularly well in his film. Rather than delve into the pathology of Karen’s claustrophobia, Navidson chose instead to focus strictly on the house.
[69-Fortunately a few years before The Navidson Record was made Karen took part in a study which promised to evaluate and possibly treat her fear. After the film became something of a phenomenon, those results surfaced and were eventually published in a number of periodicals. The Anomic Mag based out of Berkeley (v. 87, n. 7, April, 1995) offered the most comprehensive account of that study as it pertained to Karen Green:
… Subject #0027-00-8785 (Karen Green) suffers severe panic attacks when confronting dark, enclosed spaces, usually windowless and unknown (e.g. a dark room in an unfamiliar building). The attacks are consistently characterized by (1) accelerated heart rate (2) sweating (3) trembling (4) sensation of suffocation (5) feeling of choking (6) chest pain (7) severe dizziness (8) derealization (feelings of unreality) and eventual depersonalization (being detached from oneself) (9) culmination in an intense fear of dying. See DSM4V “Criteria for Panic Attack.” … Diagnosis- subject suffers from Specific Phobia (formally known as
Simple Phobia); Situational type. See DSM-TV “Diagnostic criteria for 300.29 Specific Phobia.”… Because behavioral-cognitive techniques have thus far failed to modify perspectives on anxiety-provoking stimuli, subject was considered ideal for current pharmacotherapy study … Initially subject received between 100-200 mg/ day of Tofranil (Imipramine) but with no improvement switched early on to a B-adrenergic blocker (Propranolol). An increase in vivid nightmares caused her to switch again to the MAOI (Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor) Tranylcyprornine. Still dissatisfied with the results, subject switched to the SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) Fluoxetine, commonly known as Prozac. Subject responded well and soon showed increased tolerance when intentionally exposed to enclosed, dark spaces. Unfortunately moderate weight gain and orgasmic dysfunction caused the subject to drop out of the study… Subject apparently relies now on her own phobia avoidance mechanisms, choosing to stay clear of enclosed, unknown spaces (i.e. elevators, basements, unfamiliar closets etc., etc.), though occasionally when attacks become “more frequent”… she returns to Prozac for short periods of time … See
David Kahn’s article “Simple Phobias: The Failure of Pharmacological
Intervention”; also see subject’s results on Sheehan Clinician Rated Anxiety
Scale as well as Sheehan Phobia Scale. [70-See Exhibit Six.]
While the report seems fairly comprehensive, there is admittedly one point which remains utterly perplexing. Other publications repeat verbatim the ambiguous phrasing but still fail to shed light on the exact meaning of those six words: “occasionally when attacks become ‘more frequent.’ ” At least the implication seems clear, vicissitudes in Karen’s life, whatever those may be, affect her sensitivity to space. In her article “Significant (OT)Her” published in The Psychology Quarterly (v. 142, n. 17, December 1995, p. 453) Celine Berezin, M.D. observes that “Karen’s attacks, which I suspect stem from early adolescent betrayal, increase proportionally with the level of intimacy-or even the threat of potential intimacy-she experiences whether with Will Navidson or even her children.”
Also see Steve Sokol and Julia Carter’s Women Who Can’t Love; When a Woman’s Fear Makes Her Run from Commitment and What a Smart Man
Can Do About It (New Hampshire: T. Devans and Company, 1978).]
Of course by the following morning, Karen has already molded her desperation into a familiar pose of indifference.
She does not seem to care when they discover the hallway has not vanished. She keeps her arms folded, no longer clinging to Navidson’s hand or stroking her children.
She removes herself from her family’s company by saying veiy little, while at the same time maintaining a semblance of participation with a smile.
Virginia Posah is right. Karen’s smile is tragic because, in spite of its meaning, it succeeds in remaining so utterly beautiful.
The Five and a Half Minute Hallway in The Navidson Record differs slightly from the bootleg copy which appeared in 1990. For one thing, in addition to the continuous circumambulating shot, a wider selection of shots has made the coverage of the sequence much more thorough and fluid. For another, the hallway has shrunk. This was impossible to see in the VHS copy because there was no point of comparison. Now, however, it is perfectly clear that the hallway which was well over sixty feet deep when the children entered it is now a little less than ten feet.
Context also significantly alters “The Five and a Half Minute Hallway.” A greater sense of the Navidsons and their friends and how they all interact with the house adds the greatest amount of depth to this quietly evolving enigma. Their personalities almost crowd that place and suddenly too, as an abrupt jump cut redelivers Tom from Massachusetts and Billy Reston from Charlottesville, the UVA professor once again wheeling around the periphery of the angle, unable to take his eyes off the strange, dark corridor. Unlike The Twilight Zone, however, or some other like cousin where understanding comes neat and fast (i.e. This is clearly a door to another dimension! or This is a passage to another world-with directions!) the hallway offers no answers. The monolith in 2001 seems the most appropriate cinematic analog, incontrovertibly there but virtually inviolate to interpretation. [71-Consider Drew Bluth’s “Summer’s Passage” in Architectural Digest, v. 50, n. 10, October 1993, p. 30.] Similarly the hallway also remains meaningless, though it is most assuredly not without effect. As Navidson threatens to reenter it for a closer inspection, Karen reiterates her previous plea and injunction with a sharp and abrupt rise in pitch.
The ensuing tension is more than temporary.
Navidson has always been an adventurer willing to risk his personal safety in the name of achievement. Karen, on the other hand, remains the standard bearer of responsibility and is categorically against risks especially those which might endanger her family or her happiness. Tom also shies from danger, preferring to turn over a problem to someone else, ideally a police officer, fireman, or other state paid official. Without sound or movement but by presence alone, the hallway creates a serious rift in the Navidson household.
Bazine Naodook suggests that the hallway exudes a “conflict creating force”: “It’s those oily walls radiating badness which maneuver Karen and
Will into that nonsensical fight.” [72-Bazine Naodook’s The Bad Bodhi
Wall (Marina Del Rey: Bix Oikofoe Publishing House, 1995), p. 91.] Naodook’s argument reveals a rather tedious mind. She feels a need to invent some non-existent “darkforce” to account for all ill will instead of recognizing the dangerous influence the unknown naturally has on everyone.
A couple of weeks pass. Karen privately puzzles over the experience but says very little. The only indication that the hallway has in some way intruded on her thoughts is her newfound interest in Feng Shui. In the film, we can make out a number of books lying around the house, including The
Elements of Feng Shui by Kwok Man-Ho and Joanne O’Brien (Element Books: Shaftesbury, 1991), Feng Shui Handbook: A Practical Guide to Chinese Geomancy and Environmental Harmony by Derek Walters (Aquarian Press, 1991), interior Design with Feng Shui by Sarah Rosbach
(Rider: London, 1987) and The 1 Ching or Book of Changes, 3rd Edition translated by Richard Witheim (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).
There is a particularly tender moment as Chad sits with his mother in the kitchen. She is busily determining the Kua number (a calculation based on the year of birth) for everyone in the family, while he is carefully making a peanut butter and honey sandwich.
“Mommy” Chad says quietly after a while.
“Hmm?”
“How do I get to become President when I grow up?”
Karen looks up from her notebook. Quite unexpectedly, and with the simplest question, her son has managed to move her.
“You study hard at school and keep doing what you’re doing, then you can be whatever you want.” Chad smiles.
“When I’m President, can I make you Vice President?”
Karen’s eyes shine with affection. Putting aside her Feng Shui studies, she reaches over and gives Chad a big kiss on his forehead.
“How about Secretary of Defense?”
During all this, Tom earns his keep by installing a door to close off the hallway. First, he mounts a wood frame using some of the tools he brought from Lowell and a few more he rented from the local hardware store. Then he hangs a single door with 24-gauge hot-dipped, galvanized steel skins and an acoustical performance rating coded at ASTM E413-70T- STC 28. Last but not least, he puts in four Schlage dead bolts and colour codes the four separate keys: red, yellow, green, and blue.
For a while Daisy keeps him company, though it remains hard to determine whether she is more transfixed by Tom or the hallway. At one point she walks up to the threshold and lets out a little yelp, but the cry just flattens and dies in the narrow corridor.
Tom seems noticeably relieved when he finally shuts the door and turns over the four locks. Unfortunately as he twists the last key, the accompanying sound contains a familiar ring. He grips the red kye and tries it again. As the dead bolt glances the strike plate, the resulting click creates an unexpected and very unwelcome echo.
Slowly, Tom unlocks the door and peers inside.
Somehow, and for whatever reason, the thing has grown again.
Intermittently, Navidson opens the door himself and stares down the hallway, sometimes using a flashlight, sometimes just studying the darkness itself.
“What do you do with that?” Navidson asks his brother one evening.
“Move,” Tom replies.
Sadly, even with the unnatural darkness now locked behind a steel door, Karen and Navidson still continue to say very little to each other, their own feelings seemingly as impossible for them to address as the meaning of the hallway itself.
Chad accompanies his mother to town as she searches for various Feng Shui objects guaranteed to change the energy of the home, while Daisy follows her father around the house as he paces from room to room, talking vehemently on the phone with Reston, trying to come up with a feasible and acceptable way to investigate the phenomenon lurking in his living room, until finally, in the middle of all this, he lifts his daughter onto his shoulders. Unfortunately as soon as Karen returns, Navidson sets Daisy back down on the floor and retreats to the study to continue his discussions alone.
With domestic tensions proving a little too much to stomach, Tom escapes to the garage where he works for a while on a doll house he has started to build for Daisy, [73-See Lewis Marsano’s “Tom’s 1865 Shelter” in This Old House, September/October 1995, p. 87.] until eventually he takes a break, drifting out to the backyard to get high and hot in the sun, pointedly walking around the patch of lawn the hallway should for all intents and purposes occupy. Before long, both Chad and Daisy are sidling up to this great bear snoring under a tree, and even though they start to tie his shoe laces together, tickle his nostrils with long blades of grass, or use a mirror to focus the sun on his nose, Tom remains remarkably patient. He almost seems to enjoy their mischief, growling, yawning, playing along, putting both of them in a headlock, Chad and Daisy laughing hysterically, until finally all three are exhausted and snoozing into dusk.
Considering the complexity of Karen and Navidson’s relationship, it is fortunate our understanding of their problems is not left entirely up to interpretation. Some of their respective views and feelings are revealed in their video journal entries.
“Sex, sex, sex,” Karen whispers into her camcorder. “It was like we just met when we got here. The kids would go out and we’d fuck in the kitchen, in the shower. We even did it in the garage. But ever since that closet thing appeared I can’t. I don’t know why. It terrifies me.”
On the same subject, Navidson offers a similar view: “When we first moved here, Karen was like a college co-ed. Anywhere, anytime. Now all of a sudden, she refuses to be touched. I kiss her, she practically starts to cry. And it all started when we got back from Seattle.” [Nor does it seem to help that Navidson and Karen both have among their books Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973), Anne
Hooper’s The Ultimate Sex Book A Therapist’s Guide to the Programs and Techniques That Will Enhance Your Relationship and Transform Your Life (DK Publishing, 1992), X.Y.’s Broken Daisy-Chains (Seattle: Town Over All Press, 1989), Chris Allen’s 1001 Sex Secrets Every Man Should Know
(New York: Avon Books, 1995) as well as Chris Allen’s 1001 Sex Secrets
Every Woman Should Know (New York: Avon Books, 1995).] But the division between them is not just physical.
Karen again: “Doesn’t he see I don’t want him going in there because I love him. You don’t need to be a genius to realize there’s something really bad about that place. Navy, don’t you see that?”
Navidson: “The only thing I want to do is go in there but she’s adamant that I don’t and I love her so I won’t but, well, it’s just killing me. Maybe because I know this is all about her, her fears, her anxieties. She hasn’t even given a thought to what I care about.”
Until finally the lack of physical intimacy and emotional understanding leads both of them to make privately voiced ultimatums.
Karen: “But I will say this, if he goes in there, I’m outta here. Kids and all.”
Navidson: “If she keeps up this cold front, you bet I’m going in there.”
Then one night in early August __________ [74-Zampanô provided the blanks but never filled them in.] and the equally famous __________ drop in for dinner. It is a complete coincidence that they happened to be in D.C. at the same time, but neither one seems to mind the presence of the other. As __________ said, “Any friend of Navy’s is a friend of mine.” Navidson and Karen have known both of them for quite a few years, so the evening is light hearted and filled with plenty of amusing stories. Clearly Karen and Navidson relish the chance to reminisce a little about some good times when things seemed a lot less complicated.
Perhaps a little star struck, Tom says very little. There is plenty of opportunity for a glass of wine but he proves himself by keeping to water, though he does excuse himself from the table once to smoke a joint outside.
(Much to Tom’s surprise and delight, __________ joins him.)
As the evening progresses, _________ harps a little on Navidson’ new found domesticity: “No more Crazy Navy, eh? Are those days gone for good? I remember when you’d party all night, shoot all morning, and then spend the rest of the day developing your film-in a closet with just a bucket and a bulb if you had to. I’m willing to bet you don’t even have a darkroom here.” Which is just a little too much for Navidson to bear:
“Here __________, you wanna see a darkroom, I’ll show you a darkroom.” “Don’t you dare, Navy!” Karen immediately cries. “Come on Karen, they’re our friends,” Navidson says, leading the two celebrities into the living room where he instructs them to look out the window so they can see for themselves his ordinary backyard. Satisfied that they understand nothing but trees and lawn could possibly lie on the other side of the wall, he retrieves the four coloured keys hidden in the antique basinet in the foyer. Everyone is pretty tipsy and the general mood is so friendly and easy it seems impossible to disturb. Which of course all changes when Navidson unlocks the door and reveals the hallway.
__________ takes one look at that dark place and retreats into the kitchen. Ten minutes later __________ is gone. __________ steps up to the threshold, points Navidson’s flashlight at the walls and floor and then retires to the bathroom. A little later ________ is also gone.
Karen is so enraged by the whole incident, she makes Navidson sleep on the couch with his “beloved hallway.”
No surprise, Navidson fails to fall asleep.
He tosses around for an hour until he finally gets up and goes off in search of his camera.
A title card reads: Exploration A
The time stamp on Navidson’s camcorder indicates that it is exactly 3:19 A.M.
“Call me impetuous or just curious,” we hear him mutter as he shoves his sore feet into a pair of boots.” But a little look around isn’t going to hurt.”
Without ceremony, he unlocks the door and slips across the threshold, taking with him only a Hi 8, a MagLite, and his 35mm Nikon. The commentary he provides us with remains very spare: “Cold. Wow, really cold! Walls are dark. Similar to the closet space upstairs.” Within a few seconds he reaches the end. The hallway cannot be more than seventy feet long. “That’s it. Nothing else. No big deal. Over this Karen and I have been fighting.” Except as Navidson swings around, he suddenly discovers a new doorway to the right. It was not there before.
“What the…?”
Navidson carefully nudges his flashlight into this new darkness and discovers an even longer corridor. “This one’s easily.. . I’d say a hundred feet.” A few seconds later, he comes across a still larger corridor branching off to the left. It is at least fifteen feet wide with a ceiling well over ten feet high. The length of this one, however, is impossible to estimate as Navidson’s flashlight proves useless against the darkness ahead, dying long before it can ever come close to determining an end.
Navidson pushes ahead, moving deeper and deeper into the house, eventually passing a number of doorways leading off into alternate passageways or chambers. “Here’s a door. No lock. Hmmm. . . a room, not very big. Empty. No windows. No switches. No outlets. Heading back to the corridor. Leaving the room. It seems colder now. Maybe I’m just getting colder. Here’s another door. Unlocked. Another room. Again no windows.
Continuing on.”
Flashlight and camera skitter across ceiling and floor in loose harmony, stabbing into small rooms, alcoves, or spaces reminiscent of closets, though no shirts hang there. Still, no matter how far Navidson proceeds down this particular passageway, his light never comes close to touching the punctuation point promised by the converging perspective lines, sliding on and on and on, spawning one space after another, a constant stream of corners and walls, all of them unreadable and perfectly smooth.
Finally, Navidson stops in front of an entrance much larger than the rest. It arcs high above his head and yawns into an undisturbed blackness. His flashlight finds the floor but no walls and, for the first time, no ceiling. Only now do we begin to see how big Navidson’s house really is.
Something should be said here about Navidson’s hand. Out of all the footage he personally shoots, there rarely exists a shake, tremble, jerk, or even a case of poor framing. His camera, no matter the circumstances, manages to view the world-even this world-with a remarkable steadiness as well as a highly refined aesthetic sensibility.
Comparisons immediately make Navidson’s strengths apparent. Holloway Roberts’ tape is virtually unwatchable: tilted frames, out of focus, shakes, horrible lighting and finally oblivion when faced with danger. Likewise Karen and Tom’s tapes reflect their inexperience and can only be considered for content. Only the images Navidson shoots capture the otherness inherent in that place. Undeniably Navidson’s experience as a photojournalist gives him an advantage over the rest when focusing on something that is as terrifying as it is threatening. But, of course, there is more at work here than just the courage to stand and focus. There is also the courage to face and shape the subject in an extremely original manner. [75-See Liza Speen’s Images Of Dark; Brassal’s Paris By Night; the tenderly encountered history of rooms in Andrew Bush’s Bonnettstown; work of 0. Winston Link and Karekin Goekjian; as well as some of the photographs by Liicien Aigner, Osbert Lain, Cas Oorthuys, Floris M. Neustiss, Ashim Ghosh, Aimette Lemieux, Irèna lonesco, Cindy Sherman,
Edmund Teske, Andreas Feininger, John Vachon, Tetsuya Ichimura, Sandy
Skoglund, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Beaumont Newhall, James Alinder, Robert
Rauschenberg, Miyaka Ishiuchi, Alfred Eisentaedt, Sabastiao Ribeiro
Salgado, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Adams, Sol Libsohn, Huynh Cong
(“Nick”) Ut, Lester Talkington, William Henry Jackson, Edward Weston,
William Baker, Yousuf Karsh, Adam Clark Vioman, Julia Margaret
Cameron, George Barnard, Lennart Nilsson, Herb Ritts, Nancy Burson
(“Untitled, 1993”), Bragaglia, Henri Cartier-Bresson (“Place de l’Europe”),
William Wegman, Gordon Parks, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Edward Ruscha,
Herbert Pointing, Simpson Kalisher, Bob Adelman, Volkhard Hofer
(“Natural Buildings, 1991”), Lee Friedlander, Mark Edwards, Harry
Callahan, Robert Frank, Baltimore Sun photographer Aubrey Bodine,
Charles Gatewood, Ferenc Berko, Leland Rice, Joan Lyons, Robert
D’Alessandro, Victor Keppler, Larry Fink, Bevan Davies, Lotte Jacobi,
Burk Uzzle, George Washington Wilson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Carleton
Watkins, Edward S. Curtis, Eve Arnold, Michael Lesy (Wisconsin Death
Trip), Aaron Siskind, Kelly Wise, Cornell Capa, Bert Stem, James Van Der Zee, Leonard Freed, Philip Perkis, Keith Smith, Burt Glin, Bill Brandt, LászlO MoholyNagy, Lennart Arthur Rothstein, Louis Stettner, Ray K.
Metzker, Edward W. Quigley, Jim Bengston, Richard Prince, Walter
Chappell, Paz Errazuriz, Rosamond Wolff Purcell, E. J. Marey, Gary
Winogrand, Alexander Gardner, Wynn Bullock, Neal Slavin, Lew Thomas,
Patrick Nagatani, Donald Blumberg, David Plowden, Ernestine Ruben, Will
McBride, David Vestal, Jerry Burchard, George Gardner, Galina Sankova,
Frank Gohike, Olivia Parker, Charles Traub, Ashvin Mehta, Walter
Rosenbium, Bruce Gilden, Imogen Cunningham, Barbara Crane, Lewis
Baltz, Roger Minick, George Krause, Saul Leiter, William Horeis, Ed
Douglas, John Baldessari, Charles Harbutt, Greg McGregor, Liliane
Decock, Lilo Raymond, Hiro, Don Worth, Peter Magubane, Brett Weston,
Jill Freedman, Joanne Leonard, Larry Clark, Nancy Rexroth, Jack Manning,
Ben Shahn, Marie Cosindas, Robert Demachy, Aleksandra Macijauskas, Andreas Serrano, Les Krims, Heinrich Tönnies, George Rodger, Art
Sinsabaugh, Arnold Genthe, Frank Majore, Gertrude Klisebier, Charles
Négre, Harold Edgerton, Shomei Tomatsu, Roy Decarava, Samuel Bourne,
Giuseppe Primoli, Paul Strand, Lewis Hine, William Eggleston, Frank Sutcliffe, Diane Arbus, Daniel Ibis, Raja Lala Deen Dayal, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Walker Evans, Mary Ellen Mark, Timothy O’Sullivan, Jacob A.
Riis, Ian Isaacs, David Epstein, Karl Struss, Sally Mann, P.H. Emerson,
Ansel Adams, Liu Ban Nong, Berencie Abbot, Susan Lipper, Dorthea
Lange, James Balog, Doris Uhnann, William Henry Fox Talbot, John
Thomson, Phillippe Haisman, Morris Engel, Christophe Yve, Thomas
Annan, Alexander Rodchenko, Eliot Elisofon, Eugene Atget, Clarence John
Laughlin, Arthur Leipzig, F. Holland Day, Jack English, Alice Austen,
Bruce Davidson, Eudora Weky, Jimmy Hare, Ruth Orkin, Masahiko
Yoshioka, Paul Outerbridge, Jr., Jerry N. Uelsmann, Louis Jacques Mandè
Daguerre, Emmet Gowin, Cary Wasserman, Susan Meiselas, Naomi
Savage, Henry Peach Robinson, Sandra Eleta, Boris Ignatovich, Eva
Rubinstein, Weegee (Arthur Fellig), Benjamin Stone, Andm Kertész,
Stephen Shore, L.ee Miller, Sid Grossman, Donigan Cumming, Jack
Welpott, David Sims, Detlef Orlopp (“Untitled”), Margaret Bourke-White,
Dmitri Kessel, Val Telberg, Part Blue, Francisco Infante, Jed Fielding, John
Heartfield, Eliot Porter, Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Francis Bruguière,
Jerome Liebling, Eugene Richards, Werner Bischof, Martin Munkacsi,
Bruno Barbey, Linda Connor, Oliver Gagliani, Arno Rafael Minkkinen,
Richard Margolis, Judith Golden, Philip Trager, Scott Hyde, Willard Van
Dyke, Eileen Cowin, Nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon), Roger Mertin,
Lucas Samaras, Raoul Hausmann, Vilem Kriz, Lisette Model, Robert
Leverant, Josef Sudek, Glen Luchford, Edna Bullock, Susan Rankaitis, Gail
Skoff, Frank Hurley, Bank Langmore, Came Mae Weems, Michael Bishop,
Albert and Jean Seeberger, John Gutmann, Kipton Kumler, Joel Sternfeld, Derek Bennett, William Clift, Erica Lennard, Arthur Siegel, Marcia Resnick, Clarence H. White, Fritz Henle, Julio Etchart, Fritz Goro, EJ.
Bellocq, Nathan Lyons, Ralph Gibson, Leon Levinstein, Elaine Mayes,
Arthur Tess, William Larson, Duane Michals, Benno Friedman, Eve
Sonneman, Mark Cohen, Joyce Tenneson, John Pfahl, Doug Prince, Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes, Robert W. Fichter, George A. Tice, John Collier, Anton Bruehl, Paul Martin, Tina Barney, Bob Willoughby, Steven Szabo, Paul Caponigro, Gilles Peress, Robert
Heinecken, Wright Morris, Inez van Lanisweerde, Peter Hujar, Inge
Morath, Judith Joy Ross, Judy Dater, Melissa Shook, Bea Nettles, Dmith
Baltermants, Karl Blossfeldt, Alexander Liberman, Wolfgang Tillmans,
Hans Namuth, Bill Burke, Marion Palfi, Jan Groover, Peter Keetman
(“Porcelain Hands, 1958”), Henry Wessel, Jr., Syl Labrot, Gilles Ehrmann, Tana Hoban, Martine Franck, John Dominis, ilse Bing, Jo Ann Callis, Lou Bernstein, Vinoodh Matadin, Todd Webb, Andre Gelpke (“Chiffre 389506:
Inkognito, 1993″), Thomas F. Barrow, Robert Cumming, Josef Ehm, Mark
Yavno, Tod Papageorge, Ruth Bernhard, Charles Sheeler, Tina Modotti,
Zofia Rydet, M. Alvarez Bravo, William Henry Jackson, Peeter Tooming,
Betty Hahn, T. S. Nagarajan, Meridel Rubinstein, Romano Cagnoni, Robert
Mapplethorpe, Albert Renger-Pazzsch, Stasys Zvirgzdas, Geoff
Winrnngham, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Erich Hartznann, Oscar Bailey,
Herbert List, Mirella Ricciardi, Franco Fontana, Art Kane, Georgij Zelma,
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, Mario Sorrenti, Craig McDean,
Rent Bum, David Douglas Duncan, Tazio Secchiaroli, Joseph D. Jacima,
Richard Baltauss, Richard Misrach, Yoshihiko Ito, Minor White, Ellen
Auerbach, Izis, Deborah Turbeville, Arnold Newman, 65 Tzachi Ostrovsky,
Joel-Peter Witkin, Adam Fuss, Inge Osswald, Enzo Ragazzini, Bill Owens,
Soyna Noskowiak, David Lawrence Levinthal, Mariana Yampoisky,
Juergen Teller, Nancy Honey, Elliott Erwitt, Bill Witt, Taizo Ichinose,
Nicholas Nixon, Allen A. Dutton, Henry Callahan, Joel Meyrowitz,
Wiflaim A. Garnett, Ulf Sjöstedt, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Toni Frissell, John
Blakemore, Roman Vishniac, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Raül Corrales,
Gyorgy Kepes, Joe Deal, David P. Bayles, Michael Snow, Aleksander
Krzywoblocki, Paul Bowen, Laura Gilpin, Andy Warhol, Tuija Lydia
Elisabeth Lindstrom-Caudwell, Corinne Day, Kristen McMenamy, Danny
Lyon, Erich Salomon, Desire Charnay, Paul Kwilecki, Carol Beckwith,
George Citcherson (“Sailing Ships in an Ice Field, 1869”), W. Eugene
Smith, William Klein, José Ortiz-Echague, Eadweard Muybridge, and
David Octavius Hill, August Sander (Antlitz der Zeit), Herbert Bayer, Man
Ray, Alex Webb, Frances B. Johnston, Russell Lee, Suzy Lake, Jack
Delano, Diane Cook, Heinrich Zille, Lyalya Kuznetsova, Miodrag
Djordjevi, Terry Fincher, Joel Meyerowitz, John R. Gossage, Barbara
Morgan, Edouard Boubat, Horst P. Horst, Hippolyte Bayard, Albert Kahn, Karen Helen Knorr, Carlotta M. Corpon, Abigail Heyman, Marion Post
Wolcott, Lillian Bassman, Henry Holmes Smith, Constantine Manos, Gjon
Mili, Michael Nichols, Roger Fenton, Adolph de Meyer, Van Deren Coke,
Barbara Astman, Richard Kirstel, William Notman, Kenneth Josephson,
Louise Dahi-Wolfe, Josef Koudelka, Sarah E. Charlesworth, Erwin
Blumenfeld, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Pirkie Jones, Edward Steichen,
George Hurrell, Steve Fitch, Lady Hawarden, Helmar Lerski, Oscar
Gustave Rejlander, John Thomson, Irving Penn, and Jane Evelyn Atwood (photographs of children at the National School for Blind Youth). Not to mention Suze Randall, Art Wolfe, Charles and Rita Summers, Tom and Pat Leeson, Michael H. Francis, John Botkin, Dan Blackburn, Barbara Ess,
Erwin and Peggy Bauer, Peter Arnold, Gerald Lacz, James Wojcik, Dan
Borris, Melanie Acevedo, Micheal McLaughlin, Damn Haddad, William
Vazquez, J. Michael Myers, Rosa & Rosa, Patricia McDonough, Aldo
Rossi, Mark Weiss, Craig Cutler, David Barry, Chris Sanders, Neil Brown,
James Schnepf, Kevin Wilkes, Ron Simmons, Chip Clark, Ron Kerbo,
Kevin Downey, Nick Nichols; also Erik Aeder, Drew Kampion, Les
Walker, Rob Gilley, Don King, Jeff Hombaker, Alexander Gallardo, Russell
Hoover, Jeff Flindt, Chris Van Lennep, Mike Moir, Brent Humble, Ivan
Ferrer, Don James, John Callahan, Bill Morris, Kimiro Kondo, Leonard
Brady, Fred Swegles, Eric Baeseman, Tsuchiya, Darrell Wong, Warren
Bolster, Joseph Libby, Russell Hoover, Peter Frieden, Craig Peterson, Ted
Grambeau, Gordinho, Steve Wilkings, Mike Foley, Kevin Welsh, LeRoy
Grannis, John Bilderback, Craig Fineman, Michael Grosswendt, Craig
Huglin, Seamas Mercado, John Heath “Doe” Ball, Tom Boyle, Rob Keith,
Vince Cavataio, Jeff Divine, Aaron Loyd, Chris Dyball, Steve Fox, George
Greenough, Aaron Loyd, Ron Stoner, Jason Childs, Kin Kimoto, Chris
Dyball, Bob Barbour, John Witzig, Ben Siegfried, Ron Romanosky, Brian Bielmann, Dave Bjorn, John Severson, Martin Thick (see his profound shot of Dana Fisher cradling a chimpanze rescued from a meat vendor in Zaire), Doug Cockwell, Art Brewer, Fred Swegles, Erik Hans, Mike Baker, John
Scott, Rob Brown, Bernie Baker, William Sharp, Randy Johnson, Nick
Pugay, Tom Servais, Dennis Junor, Eric Baeseman, Sylvain Cazenave,
Woody Woodworth, and of course, J.C. Hemment, David “Chim” Seymour,
Vu Ngoc Tong, William Dinwiddie, James Burton, Mary Wolf, London
Thome, John Gallo, Nguyen Huy, Leonidas Stanson, Pham Co Phac, Kadel & Herbert, Underwood & Underwood, James H. Hare, Tran Oai Dung, Lucian S. Kirtland, Edmond Ratisbonne, Pham Tranh, Luong Tan Tuc,
George Strock, Joe Rosenthal, Ralph Morse, Ho Van De, Nguyen Nhut
Hoa, Nguyen Van Chien, Nguyen Van Thang, Phung Quang Liem, Truong
Phu Thien, John Florea, George Silk, Carl Mydans, Pham Van Kuong,
Nguyen Khac Tam, Vu Hung Dung, Nguyen Van Nang, Yevgeny Khaldei,
To Dinh, Ho Ca, Hank Walker, Tran Ngoc Dang, Vo Duc Hiep, Trinh Dinh
Hy, Howard Breedlove, Nguyen Van Thuan, Vu Hanh, Ly Van Cao, Burr
McIntosh, Ho Van Tu, Helen Levitt, Robert Capa, Ly Eng, Mathew Brady,
Sau Van, Thoi Huu, Leng, Thong Veasna, Nguyen Luong Nam, Huynh Van
Huu, Ngoc Huong, Alan Hirons, Lek, George J. Denoncourt U, Hoang
Chau, Eric Weigand, Pham Vu Binh, Gilles Caron, Tran Binh Khuol, Jerald
Kringle, Le Duy Que, Thanh Tinh, Frederick Sommer, Nguyen Van Thuy,
Robert Moeser, Chhim Sarath, Duong Thanh Van, Howard Nurenberger, Vo Ngoc Khanh, Dang Van Hang, James Pardue, Bui Dinh Thy, Doug Clifford,
Tran Xuan Hy, Nguyen Van ma, Keizaburo Shimamoto, Nguyen Van Ung,
Bob Hodierne, Nguyen Viet Hien, Dinh De, Sun Heang, Tea “Moonface”
Kim Heang, Lyng Nhan, Charles Chellappah, The Dinh, Nguyen Van Nhu,
Ngoc Nhu, John Andescavage, Nguyen Van Huong, Francis Bailly, Georg
Gensluckner, Vo Van Luong, James Denis Gill, Huynh Van Dung, Nguyen Than Hien, Terrence Khoo, Paul Schutzer, Vo Van Quy, Malcolm Browne,
Le Khac Tam, Huynh Van Huong, Do Van Nhan, Franz Dalma, Kyoichi
Sawada, Willy Mettler, James Lohr, Le Kia, Sam Kai Faye, Frank Lee,
Nguyen Van Man, Joseph Tourtelot, Doari Phi Hung, Ty Many, Nguyen
Ngoc Tu, Le Thi Nang, Nguyen Van Chien, Doug Woods, Glen Rasmussen,
Hiromichi Mine, Duong Cong Thien, Bernard B. Fall, Randall Reimer,
Luong Nghia Dung, Bill Hackwell, Pen, Nguyen Duc Thanh, Chea Ho,
Jerry Wyngarden, Vantha, Chip Maury, J. Gonzales, Pierre Jahan, Catherine
Leroy, Leonard Hekel, Kim Van Tuoc, W.B. Bass Jr., Sean Flynn, Heng Ho,
Dana Stone, Nguyen Dung, Landon K. Thome II, Gerard Hebert, Michel
Laurent, Robert Jackson Ellison, Put Sophan, Nguyen Trung Dinh, Huynh
Van Tn, Neil K. Hulbert, James McJunkin, Le Dinh Du, Chhor Vuthi,
Claude Arpin-Pont, Raymond Martinoff, Jean Peraud, Nguyen Huong Nam,
Dickey Chapelle, Lanh Daunh Rar, Bryan Grigsby, Henri Huet, Huynh
Thang My, Peter Ronald Van Thiel, Everette Dixie Reese, Jerry A. Rose,
Oliver E. Noonan, Kim Savath, Bernard Moran, Kuoy Sarun, Do Van Vu, Nguyen Man Hieu, Charles Richard Eggleston, Sam Hel, Nguyen Oanh
Liet, Dick Durance, Vu Van Giang, Bernard Kolenberg, Sou Vichith,
Ronald D. Gallagher, Dan Dodd, Francois Sully, Kent Potter, Alfred
Batungbacal, Dieter Bellendorf, Nick Mills, Ronald L. Haeberle, Terry Reynolds, Leroy Massie, Sam Castan, Al Chang, Philip R. Boehxne. And finally Eddie Adams, Charles Hoff, Lan-y Burrows, and Don McCullin (“American soldiers tending wounded child in a cellar of a house by candlelight, 1968”).] [76-Alison Adrian Burns, another Zampanô reader, told me this list was entirely random. With the possible exception of Brassal, Speen, Bush and Link, Zampanô was not very familiar with photographers. “We just picked the names out of some books and magazines he had lying around,” Burns told me. “I’d describe a picture or two and he’d say no or he’d say fine. A few times he just told me to choose a page and point. Hey, whatever he wanted to do. That was what I was there for. Sometimes though he just wanted to hear about the LA scene, what was happening, what wasn’t, the gloss, the names of clubs and bars. That sort of thing. As far as I know, that list never got written down.”]
As Navidson takes his first step through that immense arch, he is suddenly a long way away from the warm light of the living room. In fact his creep into that place resembles the eerie faith required for any deep sea exploration, the beam of his flashlight scratching at nothing but the invariant blackness.
Navidson keeps his attention focused on the floor ahead of him, and no doubt because he keeps looking down, the floor begins to assume a new meaning. It can no longer be taken for granted. Perhaps something lies beneath it. Perhaps it will open up into some deep fissure.
Suddenly immutable silence rushes in to replace what had momentarily shattered it.
Navidson freezes, unsure whether or not he really just heard something growl.
“I better be able to find my way back,” he finally whispers, which though probably muttered in jest suddenly catches him off guard.
Navidson swiftly turns around. Much to his horror, he can no longer see the arch let alone the wall. He has walked beyond the range of his light. In fact, no matter where he points the flashlight, the only thing he can perceive is oily darkness. Even worse, his panicked turn and the subsequent absence of any landmarks has made it impossible for him to remember which direction he just came from.
“Oh god” he blurts, creating odd repeats in the distance.
He twists around again.
“Hey!” he shouts, spawning a multitude of a’s, then rotates forty- five degrees and yells “Balls!” a long moment of silence follows before he hears the faint halls racing back through the dark. After several more such turns, he discovers a loud “easy” returns a z with the least amount of delay. This is the direction he decides on, and within less than a minute the beam from his flashlight finds something more than darkness.
Quickening his pace slightly, Navidson reaches the wall and the safety he perceives there. He now faces another decision: left or right. This time, before going anywhere, he reaches into his pocket and places a penny at his feet. Relying on this marker, he heads left for a while. When a minute passes and he has still failed to find the entrance, he returns to the penny. Now he moves off to the right and very quickly comes across a doorway, only this one, as we can see, is much smaller and has a different shape than the one he originally came through. He decides to keep walking. When a minute passes and he still has not found the arch, he stops.
“Think, Navy, think,” he whispers to himself, his voice edged slightly with fear.
Again that faint growl returns, rolling through the darkness like thunder.
Navidson quickly does an about face and returns to the doorway. Only now he discovers that the penny he left behind, which should have been at least a hundred feet further, lies directly before him. Even stranger, the doorway is no longer the doorway but the arch he had been looking for all along.
Unfortunately as he steps through it, he immediately sees how drastically everything has changed. The corridor is now much narrower and ends very quickly in a T. He has no idea which way to go, and when a third growl ripples through that place, this time significantly louder, Navidson panics and starts to run.
His sprint, however, lasts only a few seconds. He realizes quickly enough that it is a useless, even dangerous, course of action. Catching his breath and doing his best to calm his frayed nerves, he tries to come up with a better plan.
“Karen!” he finally shouts, a flurry of air-in’s almost instantly swallowed in front of him. “Tom!” he tries, briefly catching hold of the om’s as they too start to vanish, though before doing so completely, Navidson momentarily detects in the last -om a slightly higher pitch entwined in his own voice.
He waits a moment, and not hearing anything else, shouts again:
“I’m in here!” giving rise to tripping nn-ear’s reverberating and fading, until in the next to last instant a sharp cry comes back to him, a child’s cry, calling out for him, drawing him to the right.
By shouting “I’m here” and following the add-ee’s singing off the walls, Navidson slowly begins to make his way through an incredibly complex and frequently disorienting series of turns. Eventually after backtracking several times and making numerous wrong choices, occasionally descending into disturbing territories of silence, the voice begins to grow noticeably louder, until finally Navidson slips around a corner, certain he has found his way out. Instead though, he encounters only more darkness and this time greater quiet. His breathing quickens. He is uncertain which way to go. Obviously he is afraid. And then quite abruptly he steps to the right through a low passageway and discovers a corridor terminating in warm yellow light, lamp light, with a tiny silhouette standing in the doorway, tugging her daddy home with a cry.
Emerging into the safety of his own living room, Navidson immediately scoops Daisy up in his arms and gives her a big hug.
“I had a nightmare,” she says with a very serious nod.
Similar to the Khumbu Icefall at the base of Mount Everest where blue seracs and chasms change unexpectedly throughout the day and night, Navidson is the first one to discover how that place also seems to constantly change. Unlike the Icefall, however, not even a single hairline fracture appears in those walls. Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one. [77-“nothing visible to the eye provides a reason” -a fitting phrase for what’s happened.
And to think my day actually started off pretty well.
I woke up having had an almost wet-dream about Thumper. She was doing this crazy Margaretha Geertruida Zelle dance, veil after colored veil thrown aside, though oddly enough never landing, rather flying around her as if she were in the middle of some kind of gentle twister, these sheer sheets of fabric continuing to encircle her, even as she removes more and more of them, allowing me only momentary glimpses of her body, her smooth skin, her mouth, her waist, her-ah yes, I get a glimpse of that too, and I’m moving towards her, moving past all that interference, certain that with every step I take I’ll soon have her, after all she’s almost taken everything off, no she h taken everything off, her knees are spreading apart, just a few more veils to get past and I’ll be able to see her, not just bits & pieces of her, but all of her, no longer molested by all this nonsense, in fact I’m there already which means I’m about to enter her which apparently is enough to blow the circuit, hit the switch, prohibit that sublime and much anticipated conclusion, leaving me blind in the daylight stream pouring through my window.
Fuck.
I go off to cuff in the shower. At least the water’s hot and there’s enough steam to fog the mirror. Afterwards, I pack my pipe and light up. Wake & Bake. More like Wash & Bake. Half a bowl of cereal and a shot of bourbon later, I’m there, my friendly haze having finally arrived. I’m ready for work.
Parking’s easy to find. On Vista. I jog up to Sunset, even jog up the stairs, practically skipping past the By Appointment Only sign. Why skipping? Because as I step into the Shop I know I’m not even one minute late, which is not usually the case for me. The expression on my boss’s face reveals just how astonishing an achievement this is. I couldn’t care less about him. I want to see Thumper. I want to find out if she’s really wearing any of that diaphanous rainbow fabric I was dreaming about.
Of course she’s not there, but that doesn’t get me down. I’m still optimistic she’ll arrive. And if not today, why fuck, tomorrow’s just another day away.
A sentiment I could almost sing.
I immediately sit down at the side counter and start working, mainly because I don’t want to deal with my boss which could mean jeopardizing my good mood. Of course he couldn’t care less about me or my mood. He approaches, clearing his throat. He will talk, he will ruin everything, except it suddenly penetrates that chalky material he actually insists on calling his brain, that I’m building his precious points, and sure enough this insight prohibits his trap from opening and he leaves me alone.
Points are basically clusters of needles used to shade the skin. They are necessary because a single point amounts to a prick not much bigger than this period “.”. Okay, maybe a little bigger. Anyway, five needles go into what’s called a 5, seven for 7’s and so on-all soldered together towards the base.
I actually enjoy making them. There’s something pleasant about concentrating on the subtle details, the precision required, constantly checking and re-checking to assure yourself that yes indeed the sharps are level, in the correct arrangement, ready at last to be fixed in place with dots of hot solder. Then I re-check all my re-checking: the points must not be too close nor too far apart nor skewed in any way, and only then, if I’m satisfied, which I usually am-though take heed “usually” does not always mean “always”-will I scrub the shafts and put them aside to be sterilized later in the ultrasound or Autoclave.
My boss may think I can’t draw worth shit but he knows I build needles better than anyone. He calls me all the time on my tardiness, my tendency to drift & moither and of course the odds that I’ll ever get to tattoo anything -“Johnny, nothing you do, (shaking his head) no one’s ever gonna wanna make permanent, unless they’re crazy, and let me tell you something Johnny, crazies never pay”-but about my needle making I’ve never heard him complain once.
Anyway, a couple of hours whiz by. I’m finishing up a batch of 5’s-my boss’s cluster of choice-when he finally speaks, telling me to pull some bottles of black and purple ink and fill a few caps while I’m at it. We keep the stuff in a storeroom in back. It’s a sizable space, big enough to fit a small work table in. You have to climb eight pretty steep steps to reach it. That’s where we stock all the extras, and we have extras for almost everything, except light bulbs. For some reason my boss hasn’t picked up any extra light bulbs in a while. Today, of course, I flick the switch, and FLASH! BLAMI POP!, okay scratch the blam, the storeroom bulb burns out. I recommence flicking, as if such insistent, highly repetitive and at this point pointless action could actually resurrect the light. It doesn’t. The switch has been rendered meaningless, forcing me to feel my way around in the dark. I keep the door open so I can see okay, but it still takes me awhile to negotiate the shadows before I can locate the caps and ink.
By now, the sweet effects of my dream, to say nothing of the soft thrumming delivered care of alcohol and Oregon bud, have worn of f, though I still continue to think about Thumper, slowly coming to grips with the fact that she won’t be visiting today. This causes my spirits to drop substantially, until I realize I have no way of knowing that for certain. After all, there’s still half a day left. No, she’s not coming. I know it. I can feel it in my gut. That’s okay.
Tomorrow’s- aw, fuck that.
I start filling caps with purple, concentrating on its texture, the strange hue, imagining I can actually observe the rapid pulse of its bandwidth. These are stupid thoughts, and as if to confirm that sentiment, darkness pushes in on me. Suddenly the slash of light on my hands looks sharp enough to cut me. Real sharp. Move and it will cut me. I do move and guess what? I start to bleed. The laceration isn’t deep but important stuff has been struck, leaking over the table and floor. Lost.
I don’t have long.
Except I’m not bleeding though I am breathing hard. Real hard. don’t need to touch my face to know there are now beads of sweat slipping off my forehead, flicking off my eyelids, streaming down the back of my neck. Cold as hands. Hands of the dead. Something terrible is going on here. Going extremely wrong. Get out, I think. I want to get out. But I can’t move.
Then as if this were nothing but a grim prelude, shit really starts to happen.
There’s that awful taste again, sharp as rust, wrapping around my tongue.
Worse, I’m no longer alone.
Impossible.
Not impossible.
This time it’s human.
Maybe not.
Extremely long fingers.
A sucking sound too. Sucking on teeth, teeth already torn from the gums.
I don’t know how I know this.
But it’s already too late, I’ve seen the eyes. The eyes. They have no whites. I haven’t seen this. The way they glisten they glisten red. Then it begins reaching for me, slowly unfolding itself out of its corner, mad meat all of it, but I understand. These eyes are full of blood.
Except I’m only looking at shadows and shelves.
Of course, I’m alone.
And then behind me, the door closes.
The rest is in pieces. A scream, a howl, a roar. All’s warping, or splintering. That makes no sense. There’s a terrible banging. The air’s rank with stench. At least that’s not a mystery. I know the source. Boy, do I ever. I’ve shit myself. Pissed myself too. I can’t believe it. Urine soaking into my pants, fecal matter running down the back of my legs, I’m caught in it, must run and hide from it, but I still can’t move. In fact, the more I try to escape, the less I can breathe. The more I try to hold on, the less I can focus. Something’s leaving me. Parts of me.
Everything falls apart.
Stories heard but not recalled.
Letters too.
Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp. Cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad perhaps even irreparable way.
Known.
Some.
Call.
Is.
Air.
Am?
Incoherent-yes.
Without meaning-I’m afraid not.
The shape of a shape of a shape of a face dis(as)sembling right before my eyes. What wail embattled break. Like a hawk. Another Maldon or no Maldon at all, on snowy days, or not snowy at all, far beyond the edge of any reasonable awareness. This is what it feels like to be really afraid. Though of course it doesn’t. None of this can truly approach the reality of that fear, there in the midst of all that bedlam, like the sound of a heart or some other unholy blast, desperate & dying, slamming, no banging into the thin wall of my inner ear, paper thin in fact, attempting to shatter inside what had already been shattered long ago.
I should be dead.
Why am I still here?
And as that question appears-concise, in order, properly accented-I see I’m holding onto the tray loaded with all those caps and bottles of black and purple ink. Not only that but I’m already walking as fast as I can through the doorway. The door is open though I did not open it. I stub my toe. I’m falling down the stairs, tripping over myself, hurling the tray in the air, the caps, the ink, all of it, floating now above me, as my hands, independent of anything I might have thought to suggest, reach up to protect my head. Something hisses and slashes out at the back of my neck. It doesn’t matter. Down I go, head first, somersaulting down those eight pretty steep steps, a wild blur, leaving me to passively note the pain spots as they happen: shoulders, hip, elbows, even as I also, at the same time, remain dimly aware of so much ink coming down like a bad rain, splattering around me, everywhere, covering me, even the tray hitting me, though that doesn’t hurt, the caps scattering across the floor, and of course the accompanying racket, telling my boss, telling them all, whoever else was there- What? not that it was over, it wasn’t, not yet.
The wind’s knocked out of me. It’s not coming back. Here’s where I die, I think. And it’s true, I’m possessed by the premonition of what will be, what has to be, my inevitable asphyxiation. At least that’s what they see, my boss and crew, as they come running to the back, called there by all that clatter & mess. What they can’t see though is the omen seen in a fall, my fall, as I’m doused in black ink, my hands now completely covered, and see the floor is black, and-have you anticipated this or should I be more explicit?-jet on jet; for a blinding instant I have watched my hand vanish, in fact all of me has vanished, one hell of a disappearing act too, the already foreseen dissolution of the self, lost without contrast, slipping into oblivion, until mid-gasp I catch sight of my reflection in the back of the tray, the ghost in the way: seems I’m not gone, not quite. My face has been splattered with purple, as have my arms, granting contrast, and thus defining me, marking me, and at least for the moment, preserving me.
Suddenly I can breathe and with each breath the terror rapidly dissipates.
My boss, however, is scared shitless.
“Jesus Christ Johnny,” he says. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Can’t you see I’ve shit myself, I think to shout. But now I see that i haven’t. Except for the ink blotting my threads, my pants are bone dry.
I mumble something about how much my toe hurts.
He takes that to mean I’m alright and won’t try to sue him from a wheelchair.
Later a patron points out the long, bloody scratch on the back of my neck.
I’m unable to respond.
Now though, I realize what I should of said-in the spirit of the dark; in the spirit of the staircase –
“Known some call is air am.”
Which is to say –
“I am not what I used to be.”]
[78-Although Mr. Truant’s asides may often seem impenetrable, they are not without rhyme or reason. The reader who wishes to interpret Mr. Truant on his or her own may disregard this note. Those, however, who feel they would profit from a better understanding of his past may wish to proceed ahead and read his father’s obituary in Appendix IT-i) as well as those letters written by his institutionalized mother in Appendix II-E. – Ed.
After putting his daughter back to bed, Navidson finds Karen standing in the entrance to their room.
“What’s the matter,” she murmurs, still half-asleep. “Go back to sleep. Daisy just had a bad dream.” Navidson starts to go back downstairs.
“I’m sorry Navy,” Karen says quietly. ” I’m sorry I got so mad. It’s not your fault. That thing just scares me. Come back to bed.”
And as they later confide in separate video entries, that night, for the first time in weeks, they made love again, their descriptions running the gamut of anything from ” gentle” and ” comforting” to “familiar” and “very satisfying.” Their bodies had repaired what words never tried to, and at least for a little while they felt close again.
The next morning, with harmony now restored, Navidson cannot bring himself to tell Karen about his visit. Fortunately having nearly gotten lost inside his own house has for the moment diminished his appetite for its darkness. He promises to turn over the initial investigation to Billy Reston:
“Then we’ll call The New York Times, Larry King, whoever, and we’ll move. End of story.” Karen responds to his offer with kisses, clinging to his hand, a stability of sorts once again returning to their lives.
Still the compromise is far from satisfying. As Karen records on her Hi 8: “I told Navy I’ll stay for the first look in there but I’ve also called Mom.
I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”
Navidson admits in his: “I feel lousy about lying to Karen. But I think it’s unreasonable of her to expect me not to investigate. She knows who I am. I think -“
At which point, the study door suddenly swings open and Daisy, wearing a red and gold dress, barges in and begins tugging on her father’s sleeve.
“Come play with me Daddy.”
Navidson lifts his daughter onto his lap.
“Okay. What do you want to play?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Always.”
“What’s always?”
But before she can answer, he starts tickling her around the neck and Daisy dissolves into bursts of delight.
Despite the tremendous amount of material generated by Exploration A, no one has ever commented on the game Daisy wants to play with her father, perhaps because everyone assumes it is either a request “to play always” or just a childish neologism.
Then again, “always” slightly mispronounces “hallways.” It also echoes it.
