Films w/in Films
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Love that Bea. She also came up with a third movie this morning. OK, retracing memory as usual: we’re making a movie, “On the Griot Trail,” about Papa Susso and I searching for the essence of the oral tradition, the living meaning of the oral historians/musicians we call griots, as part of a larger project I’m working on to bring to light, via poetry, the plight of the world’s endangered languages. But deaths in the family and a broken camera have changed our modus operandi: Papa has returned to Banjul to spend time with family and celebrate Tabaschi (L’Aïd el-Kebir), leaving his son, the marvelous griot and sound tech, Karamo Susso, to carry the torch. And because the price of DHL-ing another camera costs as the same as flying here, the wild and wonderful Philadelphia poet/photographer Lamont Steptoe has joined us with two cameras, as second camera/still photographer/jolt of energy.
The second film is a short, stand-alone we’re going to shoot in Timbuktu. A “Heart of Darkness” where Kurtz is a poet. In fact, he’s the Beat poet Ted Joans, who divided his time in the 60s-80s between US-Paris-Timbuktu. The Niger becomes a river of time – I’m traveling back to see Ted like I tried to do in 1975 while working on a play, “Bicentennial Suicide,” in the middle of the Sahra. I came down from Morocco through Algeria and made it into Mali at the desert outpost Tessalit where I spent the night in jail for having no visa, and then was shipped off for Tamanrasset, Algeria. But that’s another story.
This short “film within a film,” will be based on Ted’s poem, “Timbuktu Tit Tat Toe,” about the gentrification of the town (circa 1968!)*. Ted’s widow (he died in 2003), Lenora Castiglia, sent us an incredible poem epistle detailing her trip with Ted back to Timbuktu around 1986. We’ll also be using a piece I’ve written, “Once Upon a Place,” a bit of Georges Simenon’s “Tropic Moon” about Gabon in 1933. And I’m sure some of Lamont’s work will get in there too – he’s Ted, morphing from Karamo (who morphed from Papa!) (Got it?). I love films!
Bea’s new film idea (hereby copyrighted, as are the poems above) is “3 Ghosts” – all subjective POV and “signs” of the speakers – footprints or cushions puffing back up as they stand up, etc. Finally the three come together in the desert, approach a mirror, Finis. Throughout the film, everybody uses “We” as in “We’re hungry” and “Where are we going?” even though there are no Others. We learn that the word “I” has been lost from the language.
It’s been so hot the last couple days that we even used the AC for the last hour to Mopti – Karamo has been battling sinusitis. He started antibiotics yesterday and seems better today. I have no idea how the heat is affecting us, except to say, like all of Africa, it is. No one knows what day it is. As Janis Joplin said, July 4, 1970, Calgary, the day she kissed me (again, that’s another story), “It’s all one day, man.”
(* You can find this poem in Ted’s last published work, Teducation, published by Coffee House Press – shout out to founder Allan Kornblum.)
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/
The second film is a short, stand-alone we’re going to shoot in Timbuktu. A “Heart of Darkness” where Kurtz is a poet. In fact, he’s the Beat poet Ted Joans, who divided his time in the 60s-80s between US-Paris-Timbuktu. The Niger becomes a river of time – I’m traveling back to see Ted like I tried to do in 1975 while working on a play, “Bicentennial Suicide,” in the middle of the Sahra. I came down from Morocco through Algeria and made it into Mali at the desert outpost Tessalit where I spent the night in jail for having no visa, and then was shipped off for Tamanrasset, Algeria. But that’s another story.
This short “film within a film,” will be based on Ted’s poem, “Timbuktu Tit Tat Toe,” about the gentrification of the town (circa 1968!)*. Ted’s widow (he died in 2003), Lenora Castiglia, sent us an incredible poem epistle detailing her trip with Ted back to Timbuktu around 1986. We’ll also be using a piece I’ve written, “Once Upon a Place,” a bit of Georges Simenon’s “Tropic Moon” about Gabon in 1933. And I’m sure some of Lamont’s work will get in there too – he’s Ted, morphing from Karamo (who morphed from Papa!) (Got it?). I love films!
Bea’s new film idea (hereby copyrighted, as are the poems above) is “3 Ghosts” – all subjective POV and “signs” of the speakers – footprints or cushions puffing back up as they stand up, etc. Finally the three come together in the desert, approach a mirror, Finis. Throughout the film, everybody uses “We” as in “We’re hungry” and “Where are we going?” even though there are no Others. We learn that the word “I” has been lost from the language.
It’s been so hot the last couple days that we even used the AC for the last hour to Mopti – Karamo has been battling sinusitis. He started antibiotics yesterday and seems better today. I have no idea how the heat is affecting us, except to say, like all of Africa, it is. No one knows what day it is. As Janis Joplin said, July 4, 1970, Calgary, the day she kissed me (again, that’s another story), “It’s all one day, man.”
(* You can find this poem in Ted’s last published work, Teducation, published by Coffee House Press – shout out to founder Allan Kornblum.)
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/
