Thursday 10 October 2013

Base Plate



The Panasonic P2 also has a base plate.
You can have the small one,
to use with the bad, small tripod,
or the big oblong one
for the good, big tripod.

We, will use the small one.
Our needs are small,
these are bad pictures to be taken,
dirty.

We film at night,
get pick pocketed,
lose our phones,
creep back in at dawn,
watch the rushes,
it's shit.
It's always shit.

Sometimes
we lose a boom rod,
break a tripod leg,
misplace the base plate.

Our images dumped,
our I Macs, redundant,
files ever unrendered.

Dear partner in principal photography,
I was using your base plate all along.
My images are not mine,
They are half baked
lies, theories
in self deception.

Dear partner in all things
Tarkovsky, Bresson,
movies we are yet to watch,
yesterday, before going home,
I came to your room.
You were drunk and sleeping.
The room reeked of rum,
cheap Bangla,
of wet clothes, sweat.

Your head down on the bed untidy,
hair unkempt, ever so brown,
hand lying limp,
pointing to a pointless brown spot on the wall.
Along that tangent is where I left the base plate I stole.
I also felt like leaving
a kiss on your puffed cheek.
Didn't.

Instead I stood at the door.
Three seconds,
the image is mine.

Don't you know?
That's how long it takes an image
before a cut,
to stay in your mind
forever or never.