Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

With Charlotte at a film screening in the cinematheque of an archive where I work. It’s an Ingmar Bergman movie, and Bergman is there in person to present it. Michael B. is in the audience, along with other friends of ours. After the screening, in the Q & A, Michael asks a question, perhaps makes a statement. There’s something provocative in his manner—not quite transgressive, but as close as one can come without quite being so. The comment is not really directed at Bergman, but more at some general condition of the event itself or its context: the institutional politics surrounding the screening, or the wholesale corruption and hijacking of our common culture. That’s the sense of it anyway. And it’s somehow just beyond appropriate. Without quite being obscene it hints at the unspoken lies that bind our lives, the unnamed laws which we all agree to live by. So there is some question as to how the “authorities” holding the screening will respond. Will they let it pass, or curtail it somehow?

They choose the latter, an aggressive response. They tell Michael to leave. The question now becomes how Michael will react in turn. Will he argue it? Will he comply? Clearly he wants to stay, but it’s forbidden. His burning impulse is to exit in sound and fury, screaming outright the profane secrets he merely hinted at in his earlier comments.

But he knows I work in the archive and doesn’t want to get me in trouble.

Furthermore, he knows that this type of emotion is the one thing that cannot be expressed in an institutional setting, or in one’s public life. Any manner of transgression or obscenity is tolerated, provided it’s mediated or obfuscated by the distance of intellect. But emotion, especially anger, must not be exhibited.

The whole audience is now directed at him. He arises from his seat, appears about to speak. But he doesn’t. He commences a series of movements, perhaps picking up his bags and putting on his coat. Each act seems about to burst in tremendous violence—his coat to be slammed whip-like to the floor, his bags hurled furiously across the room. But in each case what begins with this threat evolves into extreme slow motion, a focused continuation of an “acceptable” gesture: threading his arms into the coat, sliding on the backpack. It culminates in his exit. Taking the heavy door of the theater in his hand, Michael extends his arm in a great arc as if to slam it with a force that would send shakes through the hushed room. But what begins as a slam slows suddenly at the end, as if the door had springed hinges. It doesn’t though—the slowing is pointedly controlled by Michael’s hand. The last few inches thus takes minutes to shut, and each micro-interval of the door’s movement is felt with the full force of the slam, even as it’s not slammed, it’s in fact closed incredibly delicately, with the cold heat of a Butoh performance. And in shutting the door, Michael somehow remains standing inside the room, even ‘though it’s understood he is leaving. His face emanates a still fury, sweat pouring freely from it as the door gently, excruciatingly, closes.

Ever the filmmaker, a part of me steps back and can’t help wondering what the heck Bergman is making of all of this.

Then Michael’s gone. Some people start heading for the doors. Among them are a number of huge thugs who seem to have appeared from nowhere. I stop one of them to ask what they’re doing. He’s got a roll of bills clenched in his fist. I ask if he’s been paid to beat up Michael. No answer. I try to find the theater managers to stop this madness, but they’re nowhere to be found. Then I see that C. and our friends have run out of the theater in an effort to get to Michael and the thugs. I go to join them, and find a crowd dragging Michael into an alley. He’s already been hit once in the face. I meet another thug, again ask if he’s been paid to attack Michael. No answer, but there’s now no doubt that it’s true. A brawl is about to break out. Another friend gets hit. I run in to try to break it up. A huge man aims a fist at my face.

I wake up.