Ash Cinema: four

He taught me most of what I know about music. He loved Debussy and Satie, Wagner and Prokofiev, but was especially fond of Pärt and Glass. I remember lying in the dark with him, Spiegel im Spiegel giving texture to the room.

‘I’ve been listening to this since before you were born.’ His breath came slow, on the precipice of dreams.

‘You’ve spent more time asleep than I have alive.’

His silent laughter, ‘That’s probably true.’ His voice was lower when he was falling asleep like he talked at the bottom of a lake and only the ripples reached my head pressed to his stomach. The violin, not crying, but breathing, exhaling and inhaling existence. Life captured between the tightrope that binds piano to violin.

I sat up and sidled into him, my head on his shoulder, taking in the scent of his armpit, the sweat and musk that saturated every room of his house. ‘What does this remind you of?’

‘Hm.’ His eyes opened and he woke a little so as to converse in the realm of the waking. ‘I get caught remembering a lot of things when I’m alone. Things I don’t like to remember but don’t want to forget.’

‘Other women?’ I twirled his grey chest hairs between my fingers.

‘Yes. Older women, mostly.’

‘Did you love them?’

He exhaled through his nose, ‘Sometimes I think I loved them all.’

‘But you don’t believe that?’

‘Heh, no. No, if I loved any of them, it was only one.’

‘Tell me about her.’

‘You know about her.’

‘I know. But I like to know. I like hearing about you. You become so different in reverie.’

‘Reverie, eh?’

‘I’m still young enough to learn new words. Now, tell me.’

He laughed, his chest rose with a big inhale, the kind of inhale that could keep me inside him. That’s how he breathed, hugely, and I tried, when he did, to get as much of me inside as possible, so I could always be with him, so he would take me with him, even after death, I’d be inside him. He’d smell me, feel me, so he could find his way home, to me. ‘Genevieve. I met her a long time ago. I was older than you are now, just out of high school when I met her. She was a local painter of some repute, had been on the circuit for fifteen years already. There was a mural competition in town and I went to film it. It ended up being in my first film, the one you saw at the library, but you know that. She, Genevieve, god, she was beautiful. Short black hair, skin pale as porcelain, high cheekbones, square jaw, and greeneyes. Irish, full blood, even born there. She came to america around the time I was born and she was ready to start her career.

‘I don’t know why I went there to film a painting competition. I never knew, but back then it didn’t matter what I filmed. I just had to film things. Nothing could be more boring than watching someone paint, which I didn’t realize until about an hour into it. An hour had passed but it looked as if they had only started, which they had. They don’t do painting competitions like that anymore but it was a different world then. People read poetry to each other, painted in public, sang and danced. It was a bohemian life, the kind Godard hinted at and Rimbaud exemplified. The French were always good at that sort of thing, being artists. So, I’m filming this and realizing it’s going nowhere. I was set far enough back to see everyone and would adjust my focus on one painter for a while then switch and so on. Well, needless to say I was bored and knew anyone else would be bored, too, but, instead of going home, I picked an artist, Genevieve, and focused solely on her. Why I picked her, heh, I wish I could say there was some deep meaning buried at the core of me but it was because I had never seen anyone so pretty. Even covered with paint, she was angelic.

‘Anyway, I folded up my tripod and decided to hold the camera, a Super 8. I asked her if it was okay if I filmed her. She scowled at me, mouth open only just, disgusted. That was her response. Well, that and she launched paint over my head onto the wall she was working on. I figured I didn’t need her permission, so I started filming. I moved slowly to keep the image steady. Concentric circles around her capturing not just the mural in progress but also her. Mostly her. I followed the violent gestures of her arm, the contortions of her face, the smiles, the way she wiped her face and left paint there. Her body moved electrically, charged with energy. There was a violence, a chaos to her, and it showed in her work. Abstract but also with a keen eye to form and an angry yet beautiful aesthetic. The image was of three women, I think. I don’t even remember anymore it’s been so long. So long even since I’ve watched my movies. But the bodies were made with a mix of motherly tenderness and petulance, abhorrence. She loved her art but wanted to destroy it. It was evident in her every movement, not just while she was painting, but even when she wasn’t. I captured all of this, the process more than the product itself. I told the story of her mind by watching her body and she spoke to me in the language of arms and legs rather than words. Without that, my career never would’ve happened the way it did. I probably would’ve been making films like everyone else and I’d still have work, or at least funding.’

I pressed my cheek to his, the cool hairs of his beard brushed my cheek, and I kissed him, his warm lips like a river between the jungle of his greybeard. Then, his eyelids, I kissed them and his forehead, his ears, his neck. ‘What happened next?’ I moved further down his body while he talked, feeling the warmth travel down him into his penis pressing against me.

His hands in my hair, I could feel his gentle movements, his hips, his back. ‘I filmed her until she was done. Two days of filming from morning to night. I caught everything, the cigarettes she smoked during her breaks, the way she stubbed them out, how her eyes avoided me, all the food she didn’t eat, all the drinks she didn’t drink. Just tea with her, always. I spent weeks editing it and ended up with a thirty minute montage of her at the competition only accompanied by the three versions of Spiegel im Spiegel. I made it all fit together, cut it all up, made it into something it wasn’t meant to be. I stopped caring about time, how this happened before this or that happened before that. I made an exploration of her mind, of her body, and I took the beginnings and ends and middles and mixed them up, tied them all together, and created what is now left to the world. The curves of her legs, the hairs on her arms, the quivering of her lip when she spent an hour crying after the competition ended. I can’t even remember if any footage of the actual mural made it into the film. I didn’t care anymore. What matters was the song and the body. I wanted to capture her. Her very essence, her lifeforce, all of her violence and bombasity, and then layer it onto this, this gentleness, this tranquillity that I saw in her when she collapsed. She lost the competition but I found where she lived and went to her house.

He was hard and I knew he was struggling but I teased him, drew him out, blowing on his penis, putting it in my mouth for only an instant, then withdrawing, kissing his thighs, caressing his balls, moving up and putting his penis against my stomach, touching it with my inner thigh, but never allowing him inside, even though his hips quivered, trying to find me. He could smell me, how wet I was, because he always knew. He controlled his breathing and continued even though he suffered so, his voice getting higher with every passing minute. ‘She wouldn’t let me in at first but eventually she opened the door and let me show her what I had done. In silence, she watched the entire thing without looking at me, sipping from her cup of tea. When it was over she didn’t turn from the screen, just stared at the nothing there. After a while I stood up and collected my things. I was putting the film in my bag when I saw her standing beside me. She said, What made you film me like that? I don’t know, I said. What made you come here to show me that? I wanted you to see it. And? I don’t know, I said. Her face was inches from mine. I could see the wrinkles the edge of her eyes, the wear. Her face had started to sag. She was two decades older than me and she lived hard, furiously. It showed but it made me want her more, not less. I wanted her age, her wisdom, the lifeforce that pushed and pulsed inside her. There was a sadness to her eyes, a loneliness, but, more than that, she was determined, singleminded, indefatigable. Before I really knew what I was doing, I kissed her and she was already naked with my dick in her hand, but not rubbing it, just holding it, claiming it, maybe.’

I felt the surging of his penis, not just from my touch, but the remembrance of his past, his idealised version of sex with Genevieve. ‘Was that the only time?’ I licked his tip, my tongue dancing on it.

His breath was short, his heartbeat fast, all concentration keeping him from coming. ‘No, I moved in with her shortly after. We made many films together. Only a few exist anymore, I think.’

‘She was your first great muse and collaborator.’

‘She was the vision, the reason to all of my work.’

‘And you loved her.’

‘Yes.’ Ready to burst, his voice thick but higher pitched.

‘How long were you with her?’ I kissed his thighs, his penis hard and wet, glimmering in the faint light.

‘Ten years.’

‘I wasn’t even born yet.’

‘No,’ his voice cracking, my touch soft.

I took him in my mouth and swallowed him, all of him, to keep him with me always, to leave his scent inside of me so he could find me, his home.