Everything is more artsy in black and white. This band on stage has it figured out. Each member is dressed in black and white. Their instruments are black and white. Black and white film stock is projected onto a screen behind them – someone’s old home movies from the looks of things.
Clip one is of a family trip through some mountains, but this quickly cuts away. The shoddy camerawork is so quaint it almost seems intentional. Next there’s a long segment shot from the passenger window of a moving car. The smooth, round shapes of the other cars on the street let me know that we’re in the early 1960s. The people on the street have that look about them like people did back then. They’re looking up and not down. They’re present. Everything is black and white.
The band seems angry. Their instruments are loud. The singer grips his guitar like he wants to break it in half, and shouts into the microphone. His lyrics are black and white. Something about this being wrong and this other thing being right. His face is mostly beard. His eyes don’t spend much time open, and I’m pretty sure he’s wearing mascara. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he hates his job. And perhaps he does.
The projector does its job, and projects an image of a bunch of people on a fishing boat. There’s a guy in the frame who is obviously the captain, and I’m wondering why he’s not piloting his ship instead of laughing it up with the tourists. If not him at the wheel, then who? The camera catches his eye, and for a spit second I see something like disdain. I wonder who’s behind the camera.
The captain in the home movie is smoking a pipe and squinting in the sun. This seems almost too good to be true. A tourist is struggling comically with a large fishing rod mounted to the back of the boat. This also seems to good to be true. I just know he’s going to haul in a giant tuna or something. His fellow tourists will clap him on the back. His wife will be so proud of him. He’ll have his photo taken with it. I don’t even have to watch the rest to know how this scene turns out.
From my vantage point, I can’t see much of the drummer, but I sure can hear him. Each crisp crack of the snare demands attention. Each thud of the kick drum is felt in the chest. I catch the occasional arm and stick here and there. Sometimes the hint of a head. On the front of the kick drum is a black and white image of cityscape along with the band’s name. It’s artsy. I can see the drummer’s right foot tapping away on the hi-hat pedal. He’s wearing black and white Converse high tops. They’ve thought of everything, this band.
There’s a new scene projected onto the backdrop behind the drummer: a smiling little girl in pigtails stumbling around on a beach. She’s got a rusted metal pail in one hand and what appears to be a small trowel in the other. She looks at the camera a lot with something like adoration in her eyes. It’s her dad holding the camera, I guess. There are other adults around, maintaining a familiar distance, sometimes hamming it up for the camera, other times fussing over the little girl. Aunts and uncles. Cousins. There’s a lady who looks like she could be the mother.
Where are these people now? I suppose a lot of the adults are dead or really close to it. The kids are now into late middle age and making home movies of their own kids and grandkids. And what will become of these home movies they’re making? They’ll be watched for a time and then forgotten, only to be found again by future strangers in a dusty attic. They’ll be batch bought by hungry deal seekers at a future estate sale.
Though they’re not black and white, technology will have progressed by then to such a point that these movies will seem antiquated and cute. They’ll be artsy. Some future rock band or modern dance troupe or ironic nightclub or frou-frou art studio of performance art company will recognize their value and use them. Someone in the audience will run through this same line of thought.
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