I Want It All | Real Stories Gallery

Shooting the Making Of Tristan’s Moon

Today, I started filming some of the making of Tristan’s Moon.

I have thirteen minutes (way too long and I will have to cut it back to maybe two minutes) of working with two photographs.

One of the photos is deliberately ripped in half so that the two halves of the torn photo will fit on two opposite pages of the book.

One of the photos tore slightly but I was able to fix it with acrylic.

Acrylic gel was applied to both photos (now actually three), and as soon as that is dry, probably tonight, I will film how the photography fits into the book.

One of the photos has tristan wearing his black leather jacket. How he LOVED that thing.

In Paris, he hardly ever took it off.

I have never shot a video that is the making of a book.

“I want it all” just about says it all if you were to sum Tristan’s parts into an orbitlogue algorithm.

Tristan’s Moon is an orbitlogue.

An orbilogue is a “the story of” but not in the proper unfolding order (you must have a beginning, you must have a middle where the middle is the middle, and you must have an end where the end is back where you started one more time as the dragon chases its tale) you have come to depend on the stupid bullshit you depend on.

The beginning is the end is the middle is fraught with sensuality and conflict is the unfolding is the dance on a stage where his image and his camouflage was seductive, is the muscle that moves a misbegotten old North Sea to crash against the rocks and layering.

You never really know if a video will work or it won’t work.

Mainly, they never really work for me.

I never see them again. I never play them. I do not look back. Not really.

My job as filmmaker is to tell you a story the way I saw the thing played out and that will not be the way anyone else understood the thing.

So I am compelled to make it present. I am driven to make it now.

I am determined to make it hover above the beast and see it through the eyes of the players I have never accessed before so where does that put US. US. Now. It puts me in your head.

I get to play in there for three minutes of making you see Tristan.

In fragments. Always fragments. Fuck the past.

I cannot regard it with sadness. It only happened.

I want to paint with all the colors that are unfolding as I write this.

You, the undead. You think you have forever. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Your safety nets are illusions.

You are the skinnylimp crow of a starving child from Somalia in a Kenyan refugee concentration camp being thrown into the pit that is the grave that is the pit that is an afternoon of flies.

You are that child. You are that war.

You are that camp.

You are that road.

You are those people.

You are the hunger.

You are not safe.

You are me.

I want it all.

High As A CatGut Rope Can Swing

It will be over in a minute. I was first here early spring. It was still cold then, and the sky was a dull bluegrey of whispered resonance.

The sign says do not enter. I would strongly suggest that you follow what is a wise suggestion.

This is DrugTown. Some people call it DogTown because everyone has a pit bull. Allow me to repeat that: Everyone has a pit bull.

Duhhh. You arrive with either money, a gun, money and a gun, or you are a meth junkie and crazy as it gets even for DogTown.

I do not know this to be true but I believe it: most urban America has a DogTown. Many Americans will tell you that they are afraid of pit bulls which is why there are pit bulls. But who do you think mainly owns these dogs in DogTown. Oh, Americans.

God, Country, and you gotcher dog.

You have a stash of pharmaceuticals in that apartment shit hole you live in, too. Just because you can smell the crank does not mean you are compelled to drink the Kool-Aide.

Americans love to get righteously moral about drug dealing. It’s criminal. But who do you think is buying all this shit. Oh, Americans.

They will kill you in DrugTown. All they have to do is open the front door and the dog might get out. I am here to tell you it will. They will shoot you dead just like that in DogTown and not think two cents about it. Problem solved.
Anyone they do not know is a problem.

I had to bring Tristan down from the Planetoid Paranormal Paranoia in the middle of the night once and there we were in DogTown.

Any whore will tell you where to park. You do not need to find them. They will find you. They will know who you are in thirty seconds anyway because they will run your plates. A pimp can do it from a smartphone.

They know what you want. It will be over in a minute.

If you are a meth junkie, they would rather you move along. Meth has a bad reputation even in the land of meth.

Tristan had no idea where we were. Or why we were where we were. Tristan was hurtling straight into a sun only he could see.

I did bring him down. It can be done. The thing about pharmaceuticals is that they work. Finding them is the problem.

No one in DogTown is a pharmacist. They don’t live here.

Here in the HIV ghetto.

Fuck me. These are the same people you sit with at the AIDS clinic waiting room. They will sell you their antivirals and you will pay and pay.

The drug Tristan had flipped out on is called Sustiva. Tristan hadn’t even hit puberty, and this drug had soaked his demented brain which can be a good thing.

It can penetrate the brain barrier. Many antivirals cannot. But Sustiva and LSD are a lot alike.

I have all these memories now mauling my brain with witch’s brew and frogs and reptile juice of pulling drugs down from the sky like a pianissimo can reverberate in softness just behind the eyes.

“Are there spaceships.”

“Yes, Tristan. We are waiting for the spaceships.”

The spaceships arrived. Then, it was over in a minute. I have written about drug dealing before. None of it could possibly be true.

I only want to bring the kid home. DogTown or no DogTown. Spaceships coming and going. Quiet as the dead. Even now. I am embalmed. An apparition at a burial. I only want to bring the kid home. I put the iPod ear plugs in his ears. His smile could have illuminated even yet the way. It will be over in a minute. And we left DogTown as if we had arrived just blown in high as a catgut rope can swing all the way to heaven.

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