With Or Without You: Frames

Part 1

So on my first day of school I wake up, begrudg­ingly, on time and reach over to grab my glasses and they’re gone.

What the hell?

But then remem­ber that I watched an episode of Peep Show on my com­puter, lying down on my bed right before I went to sleep.

Well damn-it, they gotta be around here somewhere!

I start search­ing my floor. Unfortunately my floor, which is wood and cov­ered with a dark brown rug, is the same color as my specs and I have to shuf­fle my socks so I don’t step on them. Nothing. I get down on my stom­ach and try to look hor­i­zon­tally at the ground and see them peek­ing up. Nothing. I tear my bed apart.

Are they folded in the sheets? Stuck in a pillowcase?

Nothing. So now I’m kinda feel­ing defeated, still really tired, and the bril­liant idea came into my head…

What if I reen­act the scene, maybe then I’ll get a bet­ter idea of where to look deeper.

So I doze pretty quickly, almost sure that they’ll just show up in my hand when­ever I decide to wake.

(2 hours later)

Nothing. Things start to get very frus­trat­ing for me. I’ve now missed my first class at my new school but I can deal with that, what­ever. It’s more that I’m lit­er­ally quite attached to my glasses, they have been a part of my life — my face — since I was in the 4th grade so nat­u­rally I am put in a weird posi­tion. I feel totally help­less, lazy, and a huge eye-strain headache com­ing on.

WTF?!? Why today?

So I decide to take the bus to work, I can’t drive. I adjust the com­puter mon­i­tor to the low­est res­o­lu­tion it’ll go and still scooch my nose up to the screen. But then I start to real­ize something.…

Without eye­sight, I have total free­dom. Well at least a sort of freedom…from stares, uncom­fort­able direct­ness, details.

I know I have to take advan­tage of the day, this feel­ing, and I start to enjoy being eye­less in Portland. When evening comes I play a show with Davis and Adrian at Valentines. Quietly con­tent with not try­ing to make con­tact with much more than the sounds my height­ened ears are awak­en­ing my con­scious mind to, I lis­ten to Privacy per­form one of the most beau­ti­ful shows I’ve ever heard her play. Our show is a mix­ture of me fum­bling a bit on an old Casio key­board and clos­ing my eyes and feel­ing my way around the elec­tronic drumpads. There’s a unseen energy that comes out when you for­get about look­ing. We were feel­ing it.

Even if I find those damn frames I think I’m gonna ride this day out sans sight

We go back to NoPo and Davis and I look around my room for a few min­utes. I’m check­ing the bath­room again, just in case, and Davis calls out “Hey, I found them.” I hear his voice as I walk down the hall. “These it?”, he says as he picks up my glasses from a milk crate next to my desk.

Yep, that’s them. But I’m just start­ing to let go.…I think I’m gonna fin­ish this day on my own.

Part 2

There was a pretty rad event last night on the 4th floor of the Oak Street Building, 16mm film loops by exper­i­men­tal short film­maker Devon Damonte and music from Michael and Curtis Knapp, Adam Forkner, and Adrian Orange. Co-presented by Marriage Records and our neigh­bor 40 Frames, it turned out to be, well, a lot like Damonte described it:

“Multiple pro­jec­tors manip­u­late hand­made cam­era­less 16mm motion graph­ics. Imagery is tex­tures and text forms rubbed from beach glass frag­ments onto var­ie­gated grids of engi­neer­ing plot­ting papers. Magical con­tact plas­tics, pho­to­copies and lots of adhe­sive tape are also involved.”

Read more about one of the films that was shown, “Radioactive Spider”, in an inter­view from 2002.

Here is a short video mon­tage of the event: