Among the most resonant of these hallucinated recollections was Tim Lucas’s account of a dream in which he was “in a foreign land visiting a dusty but exotic bazaar. There were all sorts of fabrics, trinkets and baubles, none of which interested me very much, but then my eye was caught by a stack of old scrapbooks under one of the tables.
“I sat down on the dusty ground and opened one. It was full of colour stills of stars and scenes from Hollywood’s black-and-white era. The other volumes seemed to contain more of the same, but different. As I picked up one of the scrapbooks, I happened to glimpse just enough of the interior to realise that it was the volume documenting classic horror in colour. I had an almost subliminal glimpse of Lon Chaney in London after Midnight (1927) in full colour.
“None of the images had ever appeared anywhere before, and they promised to be of full-page portrait quality. I hugged the book to me because I knew it was a rarity I could not afford to buy and take with me and would never find again. So I resolved to sit there and drink in each image as an indelible, precious memory.
“I opened the book and there was the image I wanted to see most: Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster… But, before I could give it the good look I intended, my eye was drawn to the caption at the bottom of the page. It said “Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1933).” I knew, even in my dream, that Frankenstein was a 1931 picture, and the wrong note woke me up. I didn’t get to see anything.”
Text : An excerpt from the article Cinephile dreams by Brad Stevens published in Sight and Sound, February 2015.
Image : Pablo Picasso and Endless Caverns, a vintage photo collage featuring the photo used for Picasso’s obituary on May 6th 1983.
Sound : TV sample – Piorot : Sighs – Goblin : Film sample – The Passionate Friends : Light – Scott Walker : Paper trails – Darkside : Falling – Delia Derbyshire : Espaces Inhabitables I. – Francois Bayle : orban eq trx4 – Aphex Twin : TV sample – Dr.Gayle Delaney on Richard Simmons : Film sample – Tetro : Parce mini domine – Jan Garberek & The Hilliard Ensemble : Where the Rock Fish Feed – Roger Eno : Film sample – Mortal Transfer : Film sample – Croupier : Oh Fat White Woman – Delia Derbyshire : Rhizomes – Michael Jarrell : Film sample – The Conversation : The Last Dream of the Beast – Morton Subotnick : La Partition du Ciel et de l’Enfer – Philippe Manoury : Final Movement (feat. “Not at Home”) – Clint Mansell : Clouded – Recondite : Fix It Girl – Chris Morris
A MOMENT OF ETERNAL NOISE 