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The Blue Velvet Project
Blue Velvet, 47 seconds at a time by Nicholas Rombes
The Blue Velvet Project, #71
Second #3337, 55:37
1. Jeffrey, struggling. Working through over and over again the evil equation that is Frank.
2. The sound of sound has come apart. Everything that matters is between his ears.
3. His ear; the fact of his non-severed ear.
4. The haircut to reveal the ear.
5. An actor, preparing to say his next line, or has he forgotten the presence of the camera?
6. The fullness of night, and its comfort.
7. To be drowned in the blackness of introspection.
8. A terrible thought: is Frank supernatural, beyond human agency, beyond human Law?
9. “Look out / The symbols are collapsing.” [Ben Lerner, from Mean Free Path.]
10. As if Jeffrey could weave in and out of darkness without each time losing bits of his soul.
11. The historical weight of the church outside Sandy’s driver’s side window, forcing Jeffrey’s head down, down, into prayer mode.
12. “If she could just catch the Creature by its ugly invisible tail. But then what? She’d just die of fright and disgust. You couldn’t kill It, after all. You couldn’t crush It with your heel. So there wasn’t any point to catching It, really.” [Ludmilla Petrrushevskaya, from There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby.]
13. Trapped between the opening and closing credits, Jeffrey suffers.
Over the period of one full year — three days per week — The Blue Velvet Project will seize a frame every 47 seconds of David Lynch’s classic to explore. These posts will run until second 7,200 in August 2012. For a complete archive of the project, click here. And here is the introduction to the project.
