David Eckard: Anxious Murmur

The term ended and the students have all returned home.

They left last Saturday and after a little party that evening to celebrate the term, I woke up the next day to a brilliant blue sky and mild weather. I loaded my iPod with some new tunes from Cedric (fine fellow who I work with at PASCA) grabbed my camera and headed out. 

It was fantastic. Unknown music set a constantly shifting soundtrack to my excursion and my eyes were tuned and open to catch the nuances in my local arena.

The majority of the following images are from that day. 

After my meeting in Cleveland, I headed south to Columbus.

I drove over subtle hills colored in the tones of drying corn and turned earth. Miles passed under a crystal blue sky, double-struck with power lines.

It was known, felt and suddenly collapsing in time.

I was 21, 19, 18, driving back from Iowa State University on a frozen November weekend.

Suddenly 16, behind the wheel of a powder blue Mercury Monterey listening to Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” in the heat of a Spirit Lake summer.

Now younger, smaller, running along the fence line blind to a world beyond the field’s border.

David Netsch, Greg Magg, Jeff Hanson…..names of childhood friends long buried under the strata of a lived life came flooding back.

I pulled over to the shoulder of the road while my own quaked, shuttering as my eyes filled with tears, sitting in an unrecognized body in the middle of Ohio.

A couple of weeks ago found me cruising through Ohio and Indiana and then on to Florida recruiting students for our programs here in Pont-Aven. I flew from London to Cleveland and the cultural, personal and language shock had me absolutely pinned to the seat of my little rental Accent.

Yes, I realize they speak English in England but I was only there for three days and pub and museum talk didn’t tear through the layers of my carefully spun Pont-Aven language cocoon like a loud “can you believe how the Browns abso-fukin-lutely pissed that game away” did. Also an English accent’s charm makes the most mundane utterance a bit of poetry.

It happens every time I come back from Pont-Aven.

Each murmur at Stuckeys, insignificant snippet of billboard text, or FM radio voice (I heard “Hotel California” three times on three different stations between Cleveland and Columbus) comes at me hard and quick without the convenient selectivity that my French illiteracy allows in Pont-Aven.

An Ohio triggered “Awakenings” Robert DeNiro style stumble back into heightened sentience.

The first thing I noticed (strangely) was the preponderance of yellows, oranges and reds. Not lovely autumnal shifts in the October foliage but glossy, hard proclamations for quick food, cheap rental units and “font challenged” pleas for things….things that over the last year I hadn’t realized how much I obviously needed.

Do we really need a world of mattresses or an empire of carpet?

OK.

Before I sound even more like a prissy ex-pat trying to distance himself from his real consuming self…….let me say this: It has indeed been very refreshing to have my needs reduced (maybe it’s more the choices than the needs) and my options limited here in Pont-Aven. Although painfully monastic at times, the experience continues to shuffle my priorities around and challenge my idea of what’s truly important in navigating a creative life.

Anyway, back to my road trip….

So, I dropped into my rather divey, Cleveland hotel room that smelled like Lysol infused Mandarin Chicken and tried to avoid a complete physical collapse by watching a little television…..

I haven’t really missed TV but found myself spending hours in my hotel rooms suckling at the 100+ cable teats available to me.

So, so blissfully narcotic.

Burrowed into an instant access, thumb-able temporal space, a world was offered up to my supine self that was awash in vibrant colors, built from hyper-condensed bits of conflict and resolution, and portioned out in easy to digest morsels.

I…..couldn’t……look away……..

I should go check out the museums, galleries and peruse the funky neighborhoods of this unknown city…..

Maybe there’s a fun bar where I could catch a happy-hour special and check out the local lads…..

All of these potential moments of discovery and exploration took a back seat to “Pimp My Ride”, “South Park”, delicious “Jamie Oliver”, “Wildboyz” and my self-deluding attempt to “catch up on the news” by watching “The Daily Show”.

Is it really 3:00 AM? Just one more episode…… 

I was out and about on my bike testing my new Canon G9 and captured a few images from the “neighborhood”.

I love the fact that on my iTunes, my audio recordings are sandwiched between, David Bowie’s “Jump They Say” and David McCallum’s “The Edge”.

What a serendipitous strategic prompt.

In the center of a large room there sits an oversized zinc tub. He walks towards it and goes to his knees at the rim. Looking through his reflection in the motor oil he finds there, he thinks:

            “I’ve never shot a gun…….I only travel West……… I own no cashmere…”

Why oil?

Slipping, pinned and stuttering along the bar stopping only long enough to whisper through my shoulder:

            “I’m good suicide”

At 17 miles per hour, the rock in the hub hit its stride and provided a steady percussive temper for our trip.

             “If we squint, it’s almost Paris”

At 32 it fell silent, trapped in its centrifugal fugue, spun out and desperate, waiting (like so, so many of us on that day) for a reason to yield. 

Here in Pont-Aven, I’m always rehearsing in my head and muttering what I’ll be attempting to say when I encounter someone in the street.

Imagine a Parisian “Rain Man”.

Perfectly formed, rather complex French phrases roll of my “langue”* while I’m lying in bed at night-

“Why yes, I do appreciate the fact that you’re trying to offer me, in my opinion, a rather shabbily constructed wallet at an agreeable price but I must question the origin and treatment of the labor force that manufactured this offered item and further express my disapproval for the rather sub-par facility deployed in the tanning of the bovine’s exterior dermal layer.”

In the light of day- “Cow envelope for money no makes today. Large thanks”

(yes, thank you David Sedaris for the piggy-back ride)

Anyway, this constantly rehearsed internal French lesson is crowding my mental ward of current resident dialogs and is aggressively fighting for dominance. The usual combative volley of “competent/incompetent”, ”motivated/lazy”, ”relevant/invisible”, ”fat/just husky” mental calisthenics I engage in is taking on a rather Francophonic flair.

I now have an insistent translator circling the arena adding an international echo to my insecurities.

Merde.

I joke with friends that when I mention “my collaborator” or “my mentor” or “my lover” I’m actually referring to a musty sock puppet I keep at the ready for sage advice and intimate confidences. It completes the “we” of “Well, we though it would be best to include a DVD of our latest…” or “We LOVED that film, we couldn’t believe how good Keanu…”

Yeah, it’s uncomfortable to imagine and extra creepy with its inferred intimacy but it’s wholly pragmatic in application.

A sock puppet confidant.

…stretched over my bedpost with its cold, dead button eyes watching, limply waiting, patiently plotting its next offensive. Moppish yarn hair and arched Sharpie eyebrows poised in a macabre stasis, yearning to reanimate on my limber hand…

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

Seriously.

If I could give these interior rants an exterior, elastic body to possess, I could completely extract them from my head, play out the drama on my hand and then retire my tube-bodied compadre to his little shoe-box green room. If one player wasn’t sufficient, I could raid public laundromats and build a whole team of self-help hosiery, each one a crafty and crafted surrogate member of my internal chorus.

And for daily, portable mental maintenance …finger puppets.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

*also the name of a delicious custard topped, long flakey pastry here in town.

*also reminds me of when I worked at Samuel’s, a kosher deli in Chicago in the mid-eighties. We offered tongue but no one except Arlene could make the first slice through the very visible taste buds without getting nauseous. We would shout out, “new tongue” if somebody’s order involved that first cut and she would temporarily bump us off the slicer to do the deed.

Shot some test footage in my newly expanded (to fit HD format and the chance to use my top hat drawing) stage last night and I have to say, I’m loving the new camera. Even this still pulled from a compressed file has some pretty sweet clarity. It’s easier to figure out then the French iron I used to press my shirt. 

I’m unable to post actual footage yet because of the enormous file size and my miniscule capacity to figure out compression solutions without making it a muddy mess. That’s OK because I’m also hesitant to post any video until it’s done.

Still teases are fine. 

It’s potential success is so dependent upon it being a complete series of unfolding vignettes/illusions that link and reference each other to build a subtle, problematic narrative that hopefully elevates it beyond a singular, digital parlor trick. I’m fine with waiting until it’s a complete package. 

Now I just need to work on finding a better foundation that can cut that glossy sheen…

from “The Critic”, one of the funniest shows that ever got cancelled