The Screening Room
By sean mcnulty
- 293 reads
There were no seats in the screening room so everyone squatted down or lay on the floor. Devin found himself beside Sasdy and immediately had to listen to him detail new developments in the philosophy of humanism; it was hard to follow and there was a certain amount of anger in Sasdy’s voice as he spoke about it.
Elder invited Imogen to hunker down beside him near the screen but now he was up before her waving his arms around pedagogically while delivering a short introductory lecture on the footage they had so far filmed and the future content he hoped they would produce together.
A draught in the room from all the moving about made the screen behind Elder pontificating sway gently like the water in an unworried pond. When he said screening room, he really meant a screening room because it was a large professional-looking cinema screen, five feet high and six wide – it was the wall basically, but not a basic wall. A bare and basic wall might have sufficed, but not here, no, here you had only the very finest in reflective white vinyl. On either side of the screen, you had two tall speakers with serious yellow eyes on the front like they were two owls standing there evaluating humanity. It started the blood up in Devin, a surge of enthusiasm, for he had not been to the pictures in many years. Not even with Imogen in the courting period had he arranged for them to attend one of those bloody cut-em-ups that were now all the rage with young couples of their age bracket. Imogen didn’t like horror films at all, while Devin had just forgotten about them, mislaid the very idea of motion pictures somewhere inside that head of his, and now miraculously they had been rediscovered, and so this joy, which he hadn’t entertained since seeing Mary Poppins in the Broadway on the Falls at the age of maybe oh eight, was something he should really thank these hippies for if the opportunity arose.
In the centre of the room, Knox was standing at a small table with a Bell and Howell projector on it, silver on all sides but with golden edges, a signal to those who didn’t know that Elder had all the best stuff. The man himself then stepped out before everyone, in presentation mode, caressing his beard like a thousand year old aristocrat.
--Okay, very lovely. Folks, we’ll now view all that we’ve shot in the last few days with our good friend Knox here to give Imogen...and her friend...a good idea of where we’re at. I would also like to take this time to thank dear Imogen for coming and to welcome her once again...and her friend from the beautiful though of course currently hard-come-by city of Belfast...to our warm haven here in the midlands. Our little film document is bound to be uplifted by their presence. Very lovely indeed. Please, all of you, enjoy.
Knox fed the film strip through the projector with the ease of an expert, which impressed Devin given the cameraman’s clearly lightheaded way of being; the man hadn’t been asked here to amuse evidently. As the curtains closed and the room darkened, the clicking and clacking of the projector became more frequent and suddenly the film blasted onto the screen with a tremendous noise in tow.
CLICK-WHIRRRR
FLICKFLICKFLICK...
The first image showed Crispin Collins. He had his acoustic guitar and was wearing a stars-and-stripes bandana. He mouthed a few words and then began strumming the guitar...but there was no sound apart from the FLICKFLICKFLICK...
--Where’s the sound? cried Crispin. You can’t hear me. I did a whole song here.
--Hold on, said Knox. I’ll fix it.
Knox footered about in the dark for a moment and after dealing with more mysterious dials and switches, Crispin could be heard singing through the speakers.
Nobody wants to be
Hollow to the core
Nobody wants to be
An unopened door
Nobody wants to be
Hollow to the core
Nobody wants to be
Yeah
Holler to me, holler to me, hey
Have your muffins ready, baby
Have your muffins ready, baby
Holler
Holler
Holler
Have your muffins ready, baby
Sasdy leaned in to Devin.
--Shocking, isn’t he?
--It’s not that bad, replied Devin.
--Willie Nelson’s got nothing to be fretting over.
Then the image changed again.
CLICK-WHIRRRR
FLICKFLICKFLICK...
--I would say temperance has already been achieved, hasn’t it? said Sullivan. I mean, I’ve been off it for a lock of months now.
He was sitting at the kitchen table. Sitting across from him was Ismay Tasse, penetrating him with her eyes, but more like a detective after a confession than a therapist after a recovery.
Sullivan looked up and saw the camera in their faces.
--Ah, don’t film this, will you not?
CLICK-WHIRRRR
FLICKFLICKFLICK
In the next shot, you could see Everly on a stepladder in the living room. She had overalls on and a paintbrush and was in the process of creating one of her lotuses on the wall. When she realised the camera was behind her, she sighed and got off the ladder, placed the brush down on top of it.
--You’re finished? asked Knox.
--Yes, she replied.
--It doesn’t look finished.
--Leave it, she said, walking off all annoyed.
CLICK-WHIRRRR
FLICKFLICKFLICK
The image then shifted to a bookshelf, one of many in Elder’s house. You could hear Knox behind the camera coughing and mumbling to himself something about how he could do with a hit right now as he collected prosaic cutaways in a workmanlike manner. The books the shot dragged slowly past included:
W.L.M Williams: Profile Distinction and the Better Self
Mary Musgrove: The Spectral Armies of Scepticism
Dr. Maxwell Huston: We We Together
Werner Meyer: Devils and Doppelgangers
Pat Behan (ed): The Sociological Yearbook of Martian Visitations in Britain and Ireland
H.P Scott: Legendary Hexes for Wives and Husbands
Dr. Sandra Holt: Group Influence and Bathroom Dynamics
Charles Rabinowitch: Persuasions of the Sad
Jean Wallis: Shamans, Shape-shifters and Paul McCartney
CLICK-WHIRRRR
FLICKFLICKFLICK...
Exterior. Lens flare. Camera aimed at the sky. The image trembled as though the cameraman had been shaken greatly by the confronting infinite. Or weakened by some other stimuli. Delirium Tremens. And then the shadow of a most elegant butterfly, swan-laking past the screen and then vanishing in the light as though in that moment transported magically by an invisible power. Or it might have merely been scratches on the film, for there were a few of those for sure.
The shot pulled away from the sky and there in the frame was Sasdy and MacKenna. They were at back of the house standing over a cabbage patch, smoking cigarettes. The camera crept up behind them.
--Everly’ll kill the pair of you if she catches you smoking over the cabáiste, Knox said to them.
--Where are we supposed to go? responded Sasdy.
--Over there. Knox pointed to a sycamore tree that could be seen at the side of the house, left of the frame.
Sasdy and MacKenna acquiesced and moved out towards the tree. Knox kept the camera trained on them and followed. Just before they reached the sycamore tree, Sasdy looked over his shoulder.
--Can you roll us a spliffer?
--Ye...
CLICK-WHIRRRR
FLICKFLICKFLICK
Interior. A wide, woody and mostly dark loft. Shafts of sunbeam flashed through two skylights in separate parts of the room, directing eerie spotlights onto the wooden floor. Away from the spotlights but visible in the haze created by them was a lone figure on a chair – a shrivelled, emaciated and motionless shape. The resting figure was a few yards away from the camera. You could hear Knox breathing as he filmed the shape and some voices whispering indecipherable words behind him.
--Who’s that? Devin turned to Sasdy and asked.
Sasdy said nothing at first. Then he made a sigh, resigning from being completely silent on the matter, yet refusing to divulge anything substantial.
--Ah, Elder will explain in time.
CLICK-WHIRRRR
FLICKFLICKFLICK
Interior. No audio. A close-up of Abby Kane in her meditative state. Her face was radiant, massaged by artificial light. Then a close-up of MacKenna, also meditating. Then of Frances Buckley. And Sullivan. And so on.
Devin watched and tried to figure out the appeal of this meditation lark. He had never understood it. The just-sitting-there of it. Doing nothing. Well, nothing apparent. To him it seemed they were just waiting around for somebody to come and whisk them all off. Like they were hitchhiking at the side of the road hoping the enlightenment-mobile would stop and pick them up, their thumbs out, their legs out even, tits out for the transcendental, but was it stopping for them: No. Well, not that he could see anyway.
But it was serenity in their faces. And that appealed to him alright. He could do with a bit of that serenity. Yes, it was the serenity of hippies, and he was no hippy, but serenity it was nonetheless. And he could do with a bit of that.
This was a hideout for sure, thought Devin. An estrangement-den. If there was anything that unified the whole lot of them, it was that they were all probably running from something. Or other. They were all at the side of the road.
Art: by the author
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Comments
I like the audio effects
I like the audio effects running through this. Gives it a third dimension.
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I have some catching up to do
I have some catching up to do with this series, but this reads fine as a one off too - I like the way you've interspersed the different scenes with the click-whirr!
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