One. After. Another.
They are the minute breathes of personified or objectified real creative thought ... the pulses and impulses littering the soundscape. They are pollution, clarity, obscurity and mystery – as much as they are confounding, confronting, instructionist and obligatory. They are history, present and future. They are gifts and they are returns. They are the wrong size and the wrong colour. They are inappropriate, hateful, racist, sexist and politically opportunistic.
They are doors or windows slamming shut and shattering glass. And silence. Or both.
They are wind, rain, fire and dancing. They are laughter and tears, resolve and dispute, common and uncommon ... they are the sun, the moon, the planets and they are the way we know how to get there – and what it looks like and feels like when we do.
They are coming home. And leaving again.
They are a look. A sound. A scent.
They are fear, apprehension, joy and derision.
They are life and they are death.
They are what it looks like and feels like.
They are what it tastes like. What it's made of. What colour it is ... how long it takes ... where it happens, why it happens, how it happens, who knows it's happening, happened, about to happen.
They are where they are and with whom. They are why. When. How.
They are what if, what was, what might be, what could be, should be and they are what can never be.
Maybe. Maybe not.
They are characterful and characterless. They are charming and abusive, seductive and repulsive. They find themselves aligned in long-winded paragraphs of exposition and they also find themselves ejaculated into being within short sharp rounds of gun fire or argument. They argue and forgive. They expect and they resist creating expectations. They are barren and furtile. They hate and they love, cloud and clear, close and near, rain, sleet, snow and desert.
They eat and regurgitate, skate, ski and turn keys – opening locked doors, chests, firing engines of cars, motorbikes and triggering deadlocks. And guns.
They are safe and unsafe. They arouse and ignore, they save and they fail. They shoot to kill and they run for their lives. They explore and explode. They walk, ride and ramble.
They fly ... and they hurtle toward the ground. Crashing and burning. They start fires and cheat death by seconds. Or not.
They burn buildings, capsize ocean liners and pluck rotten fruit from the desiccated earth. They exercise and exorcise. They have faith, a little or none. They believe in everything, something or nothing.
They are more than the sounds that come out of Actors' mouths. They are everything we see, hear, feel, experience, understand, misunderstand, loathe, love, admire and detest about the world of sound and vision on screen. Any screen. Any poster. Any trailer. Anywhere.
I, for one, won't miss The Golden Globe Awards this year. The worth of one is the value of many.
