Whilst writing up some notes on making lists as a strategy, I thought again of the Bill Viola quote I mentioned in the last entry. The following is taken from what I wrote concerning lists, starting with an extract from one of the first lists I made during my residency at OVADA:
engine purrs
yellow clothes
hiss
reverse warning sounds
food
pie ‘n’ pint
Leffe
thumbs up
zebra crossing
fat stomach
boarded windows
This I then turned into a ‘prose’ version:
An engine purrs. A woman with yellow clothes walks towards me. The hiss of a bus’s brakes, and then its reverse warning sounds, telling of its departure. Outside the pub on a blackboard food is advertised; a pie ‘n’ pint. Leffe is also served here. A man gives a thumbs up as I cross the zebra crossing. A man with a fat stomach walks towards and then past me. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a shop and a restaurant stand empty with boarded windows.
The idea of single words, or ‘hightlights’ reminds me of Bill Viola’s quote regarding our lives as a single moment.
“We have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods or sections, of certain times or ‘highlights’.”
The individual words are highlights, extrapolated from (or in this instance built into) a piece of prose (the ‘same moment’).