film history as train wreck, and: Lumiere in Japan, and: This is not a silent movie - there is music

Film history as train wreck

1.

1895
the Lumière Brother's moving picture
of a train arriving at La Ciotat station –
its engine hurtling toward the audience –

made women faint, men scream,
the crowd stampede for the exits.

2.

this may
or may not be true.

critics differ. historians have disagreed.

3.

the word cacophony comes to mind,
the words "burst in uninvited."

but I speak only
for myself

&, honestly, even my mother's mother wasn't there.

4.

unless she was so frightened after fleeing
from the basement of the Grand Café
she had amnesia

& wandered down the Boulevard des Capucines
along the Canal St-Martin
until my grandfather, keeper
of the Lock of the Barn of the Beautiful,
took pity on this strange girl.

then maybe married her
or maybe not

on that the records disagree.

5.

so, here is my hypothesis

a) the men & women were scared
& wished, precipitously, to leave.

b) without Auguste & Louis Lumière,
my mother,
& hence me, might not have been invented.

c) this event has already taken place,
in the distant past,

& we can only speculate. we can never know.

we can never, like my poor grandmère,
be thunderstruck with wonder.

Lumière in Japan

"The first Japanese camerman Tsunekichi Shibata shot his first films, Lumière travel scenes of Tokyo, in April, 1898."

– Le Giornate del Cinema Muto catalogue, 20th edition

Une Rue à Tokyo I

I was walking with my mother
near the Imperial Palace –

when I saw a man, bent nearly double,
grinding away at a machine.

I am the young girl
between the rickshaw and the omnibus.

If I'd known it was a camera,
I would not have shown my face.

Une Rue à Tokyo II

Everyone stopped
to see the camera.
I had to shout at them –
Move, move.

Une Place Publique à Tokyo

The pond-blue sky
appears as white;
the workmen's
reddened faces
nearly black.
It was the film we had then –
too sensitive to blue,
insensitive to red –
but still it breaks
my heart to see
spring leaves
grey on hopeless grey.

Station du Chemin de Fer de Tokyo

An old woman smokes a cigarette.
Men wear bowler hats with their kimonos.
The train arrives in a fog of man-made steam.
A French camera pokes its nose in.

This is not a silent movie – there is music

& you are the pianist, your breathing,
your slight cough, the sighing of your hair
the only notes I hear. Together, we are naked
in the darkness. Before I prowled the streets
but all that noise meant absolutely nothing.
Lovers said they loved me, shouting sometimes
I was so deaf to their cacophonous emotions
but that only made me lonely no matter
what the language. Without knowing,
I hunted for the liquid music that is you.
Now, I hunger for the movement of your fingers,
the pale almonds of your nails barely seen
in dimness. In between each feature
I pace the lobby famished
until the lights go down.