How Does The Movie End? (art print) / The journey of life (and art)

How The Movie Ends, RTomens, 2018

Your life's a movie...a combination of different movies from different eras at varying frames per second in Technicolor, sepia and black & white - right? It's a tragedy, comedy, kitchen sink...a Western (sometimes) if you live in Wyoming? But who's filming it? As close as possible, you are if selfies are your thing. 

Life not as a movie, perhaps, but that old analogy, A Journey...so I imagined lying in bed this morning. No ordinary journey, but a trip to the mountain top. I thought about setting off and how it can be the most exciting part of any journey. Yes, getting there's good, but once you're there you can only leave, come back to where you started. Someone had reached the summit; you meet them on their way back. They had to come down, return. You, meanwhile are on your way. Enthusiastically, of course. Later, exhaustion undermines any enthusiasm. In fact, it feels hellish. You felt better miles back when you still had plenty of energy and the thrill of anticipation.

I start a picture, filled with anticipation, not knowing how the 'journey' will end but optimistic, of course. You need a big bucket of optimism to start a picture. You need belief in yourself, your abilities. Artists can lose both. They got some way up the 'summit' not long after leaving college, when all was ahead and seemed reachable. But they never made it and the years since have been a slow tumble down, sometimes not even back to the point they started at but lower, because they know they didn't complete the journey they planned.

Beginnings, middles, ends. We know what The End is, ultimately, but what about picture-making? The 'end' is another completed work. Best way, to my mind. I leave the big goals to others, more ambitious folk. I don't want to reach a mighty summit. From there the only way is down. 

Amarcord is considered to be Federico Fellini's last great film. He made seven more from then (1973) until 1990. He reached the summit several times but in the eyes of most critics spent the last three decades coming down. We watched Amarcord for the first time the other night. It made me think about seeing films 'late', by which I mean later than the period one is supposed to absorb all the greats, roughly-speaking, in one's 20s? Or 30s, even. It's generational, obviously, thanks to video first, then DVD and now streaming. The more available platforms the more one feels that, really, the greats should all have been seen by the time middle-age creeps up. I'm old enough to remember only being able to watch 'art house' films on one channel, BBC2, late at night. Moving to London things improved thanks to The Scala cinema.

The thing is, I don't feel bad about not having seen all the classics. I relish the thought of more, even whilst knowing that in the eyes of a few film buff friends that fact might be surprising. It's good to have films, music, books or art waiting, somewhere; the classics yet unseen, read or heard. Regarding music, it's one reason I'm glad I only spent a short while selling it. Music shops employees have heard it all, which is why, as I witnessed the other week in Flashback, they end up playing Country music.

The picture-making journey is no more linear than life, really. Ups, downs and turnarounds. Only the construct of Earth time creates linearity. The reality is warped spacetime through which we spin, minds embedded with memories...visions of the future (near and far), experience, learning, chance, accident etc. I can't say my art journey has been linear in the slightest. I had no goal since adulthood and still don't. I'm stepping one foot in front of the other is all. 

I sometimes even doubt the idea of 'improvement' which, when you consider it, implies that there's a point, somewhere in the future, where you must surely cease to improve. It's not possible, is it, to improve until The End? Perhaps it is. I slip and slide, back and forth, better and worse on this 'road', which is muddy and, yes, rock-strewn. My life and art in this 'film', is sometimes the equivalent of Get Him To The Greek but on good days, Amarcord. Here's a sublime scene from the film...