Chapter 17 #2
“Sumer is the foundation of all civilization,” Rafe says. “Some people think the biblical matriarchs—Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca—were actually Sumerian priestesses.”
“It makes sense that they were more than wives and mothers,” Dez says, “but what does it have to do with film studies?”
“Film is relatively new,” Rafe says, “but it lives inside traditions that are extremely old. The more you know about where this stuff comes from, the better your work will be. And the dur gives us access to totality, to everything, the full scope of the human experience.” He taps the screen. “It’s all in here.”
“Like … every movie ever made?” Dez says.
“Think bigger,” he says. “Can you?”
“Where’s the camera? Where do we shoot?”
“You don’t shoot as a Visionary. You cull.”
Cull? No.
“I thought we were here to make movies,” Dez says.
Rafe shakes his head. “As a first-year, you’ll find more than enough material within the collective conscious.
You are aware that every story’s already been told?
The trick is in how you rearrange the story.
Look.” He points at the screen, which suddenly floods with a still image, a life-sized black and white photograph of an elegant, elderly woman staring into space with a furrowed brow.
Dez studies the image, then Rafe, confused. “What’s this?”
Rafe touches the screen to zoom in on a tiny caption at the bottom of the image. “This is Lexa O’Rourke. One of America’s finest living poets.” He turns to Dez. “Your first assignment.”
“Why would I make a film about this person?”
“You’re a beginning artist. She’s an accomplished master.”
“I’ve never heard of her. I don’t want this assignment.”
“A true filmmaker can get into any subject matter,” Rafe says.
“I don’t need to be told what to do.”
“Everyone needs an assignment. It’s how you learn. It’s how our system has always worked. By the end of the week, you’ll receive the script that one of the first-year Scribes has been assigned to write about O’Rourke, her life, her poetry. Then you’ll have your work cut out for you.”
“I don’t want my work cut out for me. I already know what film I want to make—”
Rafe presses his palms together, amused. “I can’t believe we’ve gotten this far without me asking all about your artistic passions. Pray tell, and make it as lengthy as possible.”
“I want to make a film about my brother,” she says.
“Not happening.”
“It is happening.”
“I don’t advise it.”
“Why not?” Dez says, anger surging through her.
“Because you’re here to fill a need. All first-years are. Are all assignments created equal? No. But is every single one of them urgent?” He nods. “Let me show you something.”
A bolt of lightning flashes across the full screen, so real Dez jumps. She watches it strike a woman who’d been running across a field toward a child. Arms outstretched, the child screams as the woman lights up.
Writhing. Electric.
The screen cuts to a shot of the same woman in an emergency room, burned and barely alive. Dez grabs hold of her stomach.
Then the frame speeds up—
Taking Dez on a journey of the woman’s body healing, of her learning to walk again, then to run.
Cut to another scene, back in the field. The child is older by a few years. The sky is clear now, but otherwise much is the same. Both of them are running, eyes locked on each other, on the goal of connecting.
The woman lifts and spins the child.
It’s so real, realer than anything Dez has ever seen on film.
When the screen goes dark, Dez is filled with awe. With envy. She turns to Rafe. “Who made that?”
“I did,” he says. “On assignment. Just like you’ve been assigned to O’Rourke. I had no idea who Ida Governs was when I was assigned to make her film, but this was the result.”
“It’s really good.”
“Go on, you can say ‘genius.’”
“It’s fucking great, Rafe. But it doesn’t change my mind.”
Rafe rubs his jaw, impatient. The black and white image of the poet returns to Dez’s Lens.
“There’s a system here you’re not considering,” he says. “Our work is a collaboration. You need a Scribe to write the script. And no one else here gives a damn about your brother.”
“I wouldn’t need a script from anyone else. I could do this on my own,” Dez says, staring at the stranger on the screen, willing her to disappear. Wanting more than anything to see her brother now. This isn’t what she came all the way here to do.
Suddenly, a burning sensation starts in her eyes and travels through her brain. She cries out, feeling as if her mind is being bent. The surround-screen fritzes with static, then fills with an entirely new image.
No, not an image. Footage. Film.
Close on a heart monitor pulsing, a wavy green line.
And then the camera pans out to show a hospital room.
A patient lying in a hospital bed, face and neck wrapped in heavy gauze.
Gaps for eyes and the tubes running out of the patient’s nose and mouth.
Dez stares, wondering what she’s looking at, who she’s looking at.
Not the woman from Rafe’s film—the setting is entirely different.
The heart monitor flatlines.
Doctors and nurses flood the room, wheeling defibrillators, pressing paddles to the patient’s chest.
“Clear,” someone shouts, and the patient jolts beneath the current.
Dez’s eyes focus in on the patient’s hand. On it is an Egyptian Sphinx tattoo.
Which she’d driven her brother to get last fall and had ended up paying for.
Dez staggers toward the screen and touches it.
“Moses?” she whispers.