3
Das Urteil
To Jim
Lazenby
An introduction has many features,
because there are subsets which occupy a niche in the family of
prefaces. One is written far beyond the day that the introduction was
written for, and will tell people certain things that have become
known in the interval. other introductions are to lay down hints
which need to be known, but are not part of the action. This is not
as obscure as you might think, for early versions of concert works
have the same problem, for example Berlioz originally had more
complex introductions to "Symphonie Fantiques", but
withdrew them after they had worn out there welcome, and thus, they
were known, but no longer ascribed.
Of
course, this preface is exactly of this kind. There needs to be some
hint, which if the hint is satisfied, will become known, and if it is
not, doesn't need to be known. But there is the warm, and that
someday some bleary eyed scholar will come across this, and realize
that it is actually important. But by this time you and I will be
dead.
What
would like to be said, but not in the actual context, is two
inspirations for this work, which are in fact said, but only
indirectly. One is the classic film by Wong Kar-Wai, inappropriately
termed “In the Mood for Love”, though that is an afterthought
based on something which it needed to be called. In Cantonese, it has
a different title entirely, which has that brief collision, in the
name of a expression. The other part is even more obscure, but when
given the first hint, will suggest itself almost instantly.
These facts are actually in the work, and elliptically
so, there is also the part where the directors name is spelled out in
the first letters of the section. That is to say, taking the first
letter the directors name will be spelled out. With these two hints
the flow of the language will make a great deal more sense. But you
have to see it with your own eyes, because more spelling out would
ruin the effect. And once in a while, someone will see this on their
own, and even if the author is dead, there will be a reflection. That
is, of course, if anyone reads this work at all. But time is on the
side of the work living, because it is not the first work that I have
finished.
Poem
it is a resonance moment,
a moment in soundtrack expanded,
but not a moment in film,
a beautiful moment that never was.
