THIS OUR STILL LIFE
Transcript
2011
57 Minutes
00.00
00.10
Female voice: Bonjour
Male voice: Part one, without vocal illustration, but it’s not only that. Imagine things.
Child’s voice: In the background a house lies. Where is this place?
Male voice: Your first look at something that’s always there.
Child’s voice: No sign of anything or anyone. Just smoke, twirling up in the sky and disappearing to nowhere.
Male Voice: We must grasp the essence of the thing.
Male Voice: Who said those words?
Male Voice: Visualize the scene. Hear the voices. Let the accounts come to life.
Andrew Kotting: Leila?
Child’s Voice: I can see the lambs, the cows and all the animals. At night in the summer I can see the sheep’s eyes glinting in the moonlight.
Andrew Kotting: Sing me a song. Do ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’.
Eden Kotting: Ba ba black sheep have you any wool? Yes sir, Yes sir, Three bags full. One for the master, One for the dame, And one for the little girl who lives down the lane.
Male Voice: Look at my beans, I got for our cow. Halcyon it was, oh yes dream, A liquid, caring, micro climate, ageing performing it’s filtering duty. Ha. And the then, the now. Look at my beans, I got for our cow.
Male Voice: White washing billows on the line.
Male Voice: Look at my beans, I got for our cow. The lone not names now. Look at the Beans I got for the cow.
Male Voice: This way of doing things is bound to lead to trouble.
Male Voice: And it is the sort of place, where you find yourself believing in things that you might never accept in more ordinary surroundings.
Female Voice: Within the shadow land of trees.
Male Voice: I listen carefully as he tells me about his memories.
(Subtitle- IN 1989. WE LEFT LONDON. AND HEADED FOR THE HILLS. THE RIVER’S NOT WIDE. AND WE WERE CROSSING IT. TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE.)
Male Voice: Um. West and away from here to heaven, still is the land. The farms of homes lie lost in even.
05.10
Male Voice: Still is the land.
Male Voice: It is an area of mystery. Much of it is still unexplored.
Male Voice: In the Pyrenees, a mountain range diving France from Spain.
Andrew Kotting: Um, this is looking down onto Louyre. I’m zooming out but, it’s down there. And this is a 360 degree pan. And I’m on the little bit, the ridge, in front of the Montange de Frau , which is there. Coming round towards the town mine and then round towards the Gorge de Frau. And the Gorge, down to Louyre and the valley towards the Plateau de Sol.
Male Voice: On se leve, tous les matins, au même heure, à les six heures.
Voice: Either peasants or societies are unnaturally isolated, in some sense, with people in this kind of extremity of solitariness.
Voice: Well no, I don’t think it is legitimate, my own feeling about it is that, their isolation is a convenient one rather than an unnatural one, do you see what I mean?
Voice: Yes, I do see, but I’m not sure about the word convenient here. It depends how far you see intentions as being readable and –
Eden Kotting: Readable. I’m looking at Eden. When I was a baby
Female Voice: Regard comme elle tremble
(Subtitles: LOOK HOW SHE TREMBLES AS SHE REMEMBERS THE PAST. THIS MULTITUDE OF THINGS MIGHT BE ATTRIBUTED TO THE STRUCTURE OF TIMES GONE. BUT THE BATTLE AGAINST LOGIC IS ALWAYS LOST WITH HER BECAUSE OF THE MOVEMENT OF THE PAST. WE ARE LEFT WITH THIS THEIR STILL LIFE. WHY ARE YOU FRIGHTENED OF THE PAST? BECAUSE THE PAST LIES BEYOND THE WAYBACK.)
Male Voice: Dig deeper. Dig deeper.
(Subtitles: AND CAN NEVER BE REMEMBERED PROPERLY)
Male Voice: Oh you amusing little infant.
Male Voice: By word or by action, that he was not going to cure the woman’s daughter. The child’s first relationship, the one with the mother.
Eden Kotting: The past is over and we move along towards a brighter future.
Male Voice: Use natural, easy to understand, language that encourages reading.
(Subtitles: WELLBEING COMES OVER ME INTERMITTENTLY. LIKE PRESENTLY)
Voice: The open window.
10.02
Male Voice: Well, where do they live, do they just live and listen to traffic going past the windows.
Male Voice: What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East and Juliet is the Sun.
Female Voice: This world, my world, confined by a window square.
(Subtitles: WE HUNT AND WE ARE ONLY ALIVE IN THOSE MOMENTS WHEN WE IMPROVISE. NO SCHEDULE. JUST SMALL SURPRISES AND THE SMELL OF DAMP BEDS.)
Male Voice: I have seen roses damasked red, white.
Whisper: Oh rose, thou art sick, the invisible worm lies in the night in the howling storm and has found out thy bed of crimson joy and it’s dark secret love does thy life destroy.
Child’s Voice: The Branch from the old Oak tree, the rotten and decaying branch of the old Oak tree.
Male Voice: What?
Child’s Voice: A tree. A tree has birds. A tree has leaves.
Female Voice: No feet are so sawn through as a sawn tree that stands long, then with one blinding run and blundering tear of last despair, scattering it’s brains and branches on the air, slumps, lumps, pitches headlong and thuds a log clodded clean.
Female Voice: They’re beginning to ask questions. Why should people make war with each other? Cause each other pain? On quite another scale, why break a branch off a tree just to give a nature lesson about it?
Male Voice: If you don’t hit it, it won’t fall.
Joey Kotting: Open up, it’s the police! Open up! It’s the police, open up! Open up I said! We’re going to break the door in! .... You moved!
Male Voice: But later that day. Flowers. I see men. Because I observe what seemed to be trees but they are walking about.
(Subtitles: AND IN THOSE MOMENTS OUR STILL LIFE BECOMES EVER SO STILL)
Andrew Kotting: You look like the um, the lilac, Leila.
Leila: I am the lilac…what lilac?
Male Voice: These descriptions of things are bigger than the ones we’ve heard before, and that itself is quite a difficult thing to make happen.
Male Voice: Butterflies.
Male Voice: Most people can get one idea or a good start, but to push that beginning idea on to the end is much more difficult, because the idea they start with goes on, develops, gets bigger, finishes up larger than when it started. But it’s not only that. Not one flower’s got a whole garden to its use, the lives of other people or things, still getting that genuine close up view in the middle of quite complicated ideas and subjects. These boys and girls have pushed out a bit in their thoughts, yet they’re still talking about things as they really see them, still getting that genuine close up view in the middle of quite complicated ideas and subjects.
15.37
Voice: Red.
Andrew Kotting: Tell me about red.
Voice: Red is the colour of tomatoes and strawberries.
Andrew Kotting: Is that it? It’s the colour of your dress, isn’t it?
Eden Kotting: Yes.
Voice: Refrigerator
Eden Kotting; No. Orange.
Andrew Kotting: You think your dress is orange?
Eden Kotting: Yes.
Female Voice: Only now. Only you are aware of time. And only now can you stand aside and see of your fellow men, small insects, creatures of the lowest order, defenceless against the remorseless, the one way current. Stand aside and watch and wait and look. The buzz of bees at high still noon. The buzz of bees at high still noon The buzz of bees at high still noon; The buzz of bees at high still noon. This world, my world, is my world.
Male Voice: Honey.
(Subtitles: FOR MOST DISINTEGRATION STARTS WITH SOLITARY CONFINEMENT OR ISOLATED EXISTENCE)
Andrew Kotting: Very good, Eden
(Subtitles BUT FOR US IT WAS DIFFERENT)
Voice: And, I think, on the one hand, that it is true: there will always be people.
Male Voice: Visualise the scene, hear the voices and let the accounts come to life.
Male Voice: Look! Don’t you realise that this is not that way to live? Look!
Male Voice: Soon our anxieties about the future will be over.
Female Voice: Beware the soft, mountainous surge of time.
Child’s Voice: Time was asleep. Soundless. Just me, staring upwards, thinking idle think.
Male Voice: The place of the gods is taken, is taken by the angelic conspiracy by God creating the fall, particular time sequence which we call the world.
Female Voice: Now be aware the soft, mountainous surge of time.
Male Voice: Can we do better? Or is the pattern of the past the template for the future?
Male Voice: And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes.
Male Voice: Why?
Male Voice: Slow, slow, slow to go. Hope holds up its head - and only the windows of his wounds were wide open. The sky closed up its’ eye
20.03
Male Voice: Seeing is believing. And, did you know, seeing is believing.
Male Voice: The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook and so does the bourgeoisie.
Leila: And I think that’s the end of the sentence.
Eden Kotting: Yellow.
Andrew Kotting: It was a grey day on Sunday. It was a grey day on Sunday.
Can you try and say that? Say ‘It’
Eden Kotting: It
Andrew Kotting: ‘Was’
Eden Kotting: Was
Andrew Kotting: ‘A’
Eden Kotting: A
Andrew Kotting: ‘Grey’
Eden Kotting: Grey
Andrew Kotting: ‘Day’
Eden Kotting: Day
Andrew Kotting: ‘On’
Eden Kotting: On
Andrew Kotting: What’s the last word?
Eden Kotting: Sunday.
Andrew Kotting: Very Good. It was a grey day on Sunday.
Leila: Space.
Andrew Kotting: It’s not a grey day today though, is it? It’s windy and sunny.
Leila: What did you do? What’s that picture of?
Eden Kotting: Drawing.
Leila: Drawing? What did you draw?
Eden Kotting: Look.
Andrew Kotting: What’s that old -?
Leila: A furry melon.
Andrew Kotting: That manky melon. Manky melon, manky melon.
Eden Kotting: Dream.
Leila: What did you do?
Child’s Voice: It is evening now. The flames of their campfire reflect on their jewellery. A girl is dancing in the light of the fire. The light of the flames is on the trees. It is getting darker now.
Male Voice: Words used here indicate intense emotions.
Female Voice: Defenceless against the remorseless, the one way current. Stand aside and watch, and wait and look.
Male Voice: Followed by.
Female Voice: What’s that land at the oceans end?
(Subtitles: TIMES GONE WEIGH HEAVY ON THIS HEART)
Child’s Voice: Puff, puff, puff goes the engine. Bang, bang, splosh into the mud.
Male Voice: Does that description appeal to you?
Child’s Voice: The dredger, the grab bites up the slushy mud like a giant eating his sandwich, the mud is a horrible black colour, slimey, bugle, sluggish.
Male Voice: In connection with unit 4, the artist in society
(Subtitles: WARHOL’S DICTUM AS CREPESCULAR VISION)
Male Voice: Is it legitimate to assume from that you are concerned?
Female Voice: Incident in a country lane.
Andrew Kotting: Look at the size of that Eden
Eden Kotting: Yes. It’s BIG.
Andrew Kotting: It’s very big isn’t it? Look at that. Can you see it? Do you want to put it on your hand? Put your hand out. How does that feel? Let’s put it back over there.
Male Voice: It was a stark encounter. But they stood their ground.
Male Voice: I think some of the criticism, where there is criticism, stems from the idea that perhaps you enjoy puddling in the mess.
Male Voice : No, it’s not that I enjoy the puddling in the mess, but if there’s a mess I feel that it’s our duty to look at it.
25.13
Male Voice: Whatever one may think of birds, the example that had been set was wrong.
Child’s Voice: I stay there all year round, in the snow, in the rain, in the sun, in the hail.
Male Voice: Is it legitimate to assume from that, that you are concerned with people in this kind of extremity of solitariness?
Andrew Kotting: It’s dancing Eden. Are you gonna kiss him? Turn him into a prince. Leila will kiss him. You’ll kiss him?
Leila: I don’t want to kiss him, he doesn’t want to be kissed.
Andrew Kotting: He’s looking at himself, look through the camera. Who’s that?
Leila: Take him back outside now, he doesn’t like being inside really.
Andrew Kotting: Shall we play him some of your music, Eden?
Leila: I think he’s heard it.
Subtitles: I OFTEN LEAVE THE HOUSE AND HEAD INTO THE FOREST, I LOOK BACK CONVINCED THAT INSIDE WE ARE NOT ALONE, LIGHTS ARE ON IN THE ATTIC AND SHADOWS ARE MOVING, THEY ARE NOT MY SHADOWS)
Andrew Kotting: When I come to the forest, at night, I turn the lights on inside and there’s movement. There’s movement inside the house. There’s movement inside the house.
(Subtitles: WITH GHOSTS OF THE PAST ENVELOPING I SEEK SOLACE IN THE EMOTION OF THE PAST.)
Male Voice: An emotion or situation that is otherwise forever past and lost. They’re complete, and absolutely living in themselves.
Andrew Kotting: Go on then, tell me about lunar phases. Eden.
Male Voice: The moon spins exactly once on its rotational axis during-
Eden Kotting: It’s giving me a headache.
Andrew Kotting: It’s giving you a headache?
Eden Kotting: It’s too loud.
Andrew Kotting: Has that got Mercury on it?
Eden Kotting: Papa it’s too loud.
Andrew Kotting: Tell me about Mercury.
Male Voice: From one extreme to the other.
Male Voice: Snow means loneliness for me. Scaffold patterns.
Female Voice: A merry day, a cold, cold day.
Female Voice: Snow. Went out, came in, cold.
Male Voice: What really counts in the world is conscientiousness, the young people.
30.06
Male Voice: They are complete, and absolutely living in themselves.
Male Voice: If snow be white, why then her breasts are done. If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
Male Voice: A winter snow ball.
(Subtitles: THEY HUNKER DOWN, BURN WOOD AND WAIT FOR BLACK WIRES TO GROW UPON HER HEAD)
Male Voice: Why are some better equipped to ride out the storm than others?
(Subtitles: WHAT FACTORS MIGHT EXPLAIN THE HOPE THAT THIS STRUCTURE CAN REMAIN FOEVER)
Male Voice: Yes, it is humbling to realise how insignificant we seem to be. Why?
(Subtitles: IT’S CHANGED. IT’S UNBELIEVABLE HOW IT’S CHANGED. JESUS LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THEM THEY’RE ENORMOUS. LOOK AT THE CLAWS.)
Male Voice: The majestic animal’s in these Pyrenean reserves offer a vivid reminder of the wildlife that once abounded in these mountains: wolves, bears, lynx, bison, bears, wolves, animals. Some thoughtful visitors wonder what the future holds for the few that remain.
Female Voice: Autumn had changed to Winter. The dancing colours of the morning had gone, leaving instead the bare, searching fingers of the trees and the misty face of Winter.
Female Voice: Snow. Went out, came in, cold. By the fire, I’m warm again.
Eden Kotting: Warm again. It’s cold outside.
Andrew Kotting: Here we go. What do you find on a farm? Beginning with the letter ‘P’.
Leila: On a farm beginning with a ‘P’?
Andrew Kotting: Yes?
Eden Kotting: Pig
Andrew Kotting: Very good. Don’t forget to get it in the right order, bell first please. Okay, a town in Europe beginning with the letter ‘L’. Yes?
Eden Kotting: London.
Andrew Kotting: London, very good.
Leila: It’s a city. It’s bigger than a town.
Andrew Kotting: Yes, it’s not bad though. Okay.
Leila: Lewisham. Is that a town?
Andrew Kotting: Hang on Leila, we’re moving on.
Leila: Luton!
Andrew Kotting: A subject that you learn at school. Something that you learn at school, beginning with the letter ‘W’.
Eden Kotting: Writing.
Andrew Kotting: Very good.
Leila: That’s drawing.
Andrew Kotting: She said ‘writing’. Did you say writing or drawing?
Eden Kotting: Writing.
Andrew Kotting: What letter does it begin with?
Leila: Did you? What did you say? Truthfully.
Andrew Kotting: Writing or drawing?
35.00
Eden Kotting: Writing.
Andrew Kotting: What letter does it begin with?
Eden Kotting: ‘W’.
Andrew Kotting: ‘W’, very good. She gets it mummy
Leila: I think there was a bit of cheating going on there.
Andrew Kotting: ‘Butterflies from oven in Louyre’. Is this one of your still lives, that you drew me? Very good.
Male Voice: Both males and females utter a variety of calls, or short bursts of sound that have distinct meanings.
Male Voice: I would’ve thought a story of this sort was almost dependant on an intense belief in some theocratic division, some hierarchy.
Male Voice : Well whether you believe it or not, you must have gods in a story of this kind.
Female Voice: Good people give attention and listen for a while, to an interesting ditty which can not fail to make you smile, so all draw near and lend an ear while I relate a theme.
Female Voice: Green, life, spring woods, damp green dripping cave, the green green mound of a rich duct, green, life.
Male Voice: It’s quite interesting, that still life.
Andrew Kotting: Right are you ready to light your candles? So how old are you this year?
Eden Kotting: Twenty two.
Andrew Kotting: Twenty two. It wasn’t that long ago, just yesterday, you seemed to be eleven.
Eden Kotting: Papa it’s hot.
Andrew Kotting: Did you say it’s hot?
Eden Kotting: Yes it’s good. A good drink.
Andrew Kotting: Good. Let’s see you blow them out. No, let Eden have a go, Mummy.
Leila: She is having a go.
Andrew Kotting: She’s not, blow Eden, and again.
Voices: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Eden, happy birthday to you.
Leila: Hip hip hooray.
Nigel: Hip hip hooray!
Leila: Look at me Eden. What is it?
Eden Kotting: Egg.
Andrew Kotting: What’s it made of?
Eden Kotting: Chocolate.
Male Voice: And constantly rid ourselves of whatever is wrong, Ibid pages 15 to 16.
Male Voice: When the World seems to have too much wrong with it, then satire takes a hand, like a musical note, even the same line, like a musical tune coming back again.
40.06
Male Voice: We must have faith in the masses and we must
have faith in the party. These are two cardinal principles, if we
duck these principles we shall accomplish nothing, we shall lose our
bearings and vacillate now to the left and now to the right, and the
work will suffer.
(Subtitles: VIRAL MASS CULTURE NETWORKS WITH SPECTACLE BOTH EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE)
Male Voice: As a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself.
(Subtitles: Papa)
Male Voice: May first, two thousand eight.
(Subtitles: Papa)
Male Voice: Somebody there makes us want to drink the river. Somebody wants to thirst.
Voice: I walk in the water and I see my pink skin, I’m crying out to the water, I’m all alone except for my shadow and a little round stone.
Male Voice: The most pathetic of our kind look naked in the bath, not nude.
Eden Kotting: Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones.
Male Voice: Sometimes the mood of the modern World is one of escape into another element.
(Subtitles: IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE OR MIGHT EVEN BECOME THE WORK OF ART.)
Voice: Water overflowing with thick, aged, rotting people. I think we are growing old.
Eden Kotting: I’m hiding from the Big Guns. That’s what I’m doing.
Male Voice: One is working from oneself it’s said, it’s a tape worm inside one unreeling, certainly.
Eden Kotting: I’m happy now. I’m looking at the rattle snake.
Male Voice: A long summer day.
Male Voice: It is usually the male of the species that sings.
Andrew Kotting: Sing now, I can’t hear you.
Andrew Kotting: Is that song any good?
Eden Kotting: Yeah
Andrew Kotting: You want to hear it again? What you want to hear it twice? Hang on a minute. Here we go from the top.
Male Voice: Reflections in a forest.
Andrew Kotting: This is looking down onto Louyre, it’s down there and I’m on the little bit, the ridge of the valley towards Plateau de Sol
Male Voice: Butterflies. Smaller flowers receive constant visits from blue butterflies and copper butterflies of the Mycenae family.
Eden Kotting: Papa I’m happy
45.09
Eden Kotting: Papa look.
Andrew Kotting: Yeah?
Eden Kotting: Look.
Andrew Kotting: Can I have a look? I’m just going to film- I’m filming these butterflies on the buddleia, there’s another bee that’s landed.
Eden Kotting: Can Eden see?
Andrew Kotting: You can look at it afterwards.
Eden Kotting: Thank you.
Andrew Kotting: The bee landed on my stomach.
Eden Kotting: What did you say?
Andrew Kotting: That bee landed on my stomach.
Female Voice: So quiet I got a buzz in my ear, as if you bees were looking for wax in my ear.
(Subtitles: TO MAKE MEANINGFUL THAT WHICH IS MEANINGESS)
Male Voice: It had some of the biggest dreams and the densest undergrowth. It is an area of mystery, much of it is still unexplored. And it is the sort of place where you find yourself believing in things that you might never accept in more ordinary surroundings. Even so, I refuse to believe it.
Eden Kotting: Papa can I do more painting?
Andrew Kotting: Do more painting? What have we been doing?
Eden Kotting: Fruit.
Andrew Kotting: In a still life?
Eden Kotting: Papa look at my hand.
Andrew Kotting: You did a great job, Eden.
Male Voice: On a blank sheet of paper, free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted. But if the circumstances force us to fight, we can fight to the finish. If anyone attacks us and if the conditions are favourable for battle, we will certainly act in self-defence to wipe them out resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely. We do not strike rashly, but when we do strike we must win. We must never be cowed by the bluster of reactionaries. We are for peace.
Male Voice: A court a montre la premiere radio.
Male Voice: Music, which may help to reduce pain.
Male Voice: There’s a sense of continuous change, each character feels himself to be part of a story that’s forever continuing. However, everything’s declining in it’s faith.
49.36
(Subtitles: SUB TEXT ALLOWS YOU TO HAVE THE LAST
WORD WITHOUT EVEN STARTING A CONVERSATION. I’M DRAGGING THINGS OUT OF MY
NOSE AGAIN)
Male Voice: I would have thought at story of this sort was almost dependant upon an intense belief in some theocratic division, some hierarchy.
Male Voice: Yes, indeed that’s where the theocratic hierarchy comes in, the man of the twentieth century must of course see that you must have, whether you believe in them or not, you must have gods in a story of this kind.
Male Voice: What?
Male Voice: The place of the gods is taken.
Male Voice: Do not be mislead, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes.
(Subtitles: RELIGION SO OFTEN DISAPPOINTS IT’S CUSTOMERS)
Female Voice: Infinite time, liquid in the room, the flood tide of time pulsing through the world.
(Subtitles: Papa I’m happy. FAMILIAL DEEDS BRING NEW DREAD BECAUSE THE GRASS GROWS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VALLEY)
Eden Kotting: Hello. Eden.
Andrew Kotting: No, my name is Eden.
Eden Kotting: My name is Eden.
Andrew Kotting: What’s the name of this house?
Eden Kotting: Louyre.
Voice: But to push that beginning idea on to the end is much more difficult, because the idea they started with goes on, develops, gets bigger, finishes up larger than when it started. But it’s not only that.
Eden Kotting: Hello.
Child’s Voice: Then we got up, made our coffee and switched to another channel.
Male Voice: Yes, your choice of music is no minor matter
Eden Kotting: Papa it’s finished.
Andrew Kotting: It has finished. Are you happy?
Male Voice: Except I’ll stop now, for fear of doing by half, and drink the cans I swapped for your calf.
55.02
Male Voice: Look at the cash I swapped for the vache.
Male Voice: My firmness makes my circle jump and makes me end where I begun.
