ONT vol 1 contents i. short review: Beyond the Black Rainbow ii. as you die, hold one thought iii. short review: LA JETÉE i. short review: Beyond the Black Rainbow1 1 Panos Cosmatos: Canada 2010 the 70s are wavery, dreamt off the racks of early 80s vhs from videos he's not allowed to rent yet.2 2 Wikipedia: Beyond the Black Rainbow / Development this film is about the horror aesthetic, the 1970s. this film is about the analog sound / the Panavision grain. Elena is an early synth, shut in someone's basement. motif is waves, from the doctor's own brain. score is a spoiler voice-over. motif is synesthetic, diegetic: is the doctor's soul, step-detuned, a low wobble. score intrudes, is sonic overlay. ii. as you die, hold one thought i, too, remember the womb. a deep and wavy synth, it was : a Taurus bass, warping thru the waters. the 70s are bottomless, for me: there's always some deeper sub-genre. a Fusion forgotten by all but friends of the guitarist. i found her address in Washington state, wrote her seeking smaller songs than those she'd posted. in this way, i tune into my birth-decade. by similar research could a gnostic entity think itself here with increasing specificity. could come in light, mindful of our local law. weave in slow, evolving over eons by weighting the mutations. thinking sub specie we'd speak of this being with mythic generality. we'd say e.g. 'as promised in the Gita.' this sonic throb i'm picking up is subtle / far away enough, it may have always been there. low end of some whale-song, upswell from an under-earth industry i'm tracking yet recede from. it draws me from home, has me skulking thru the laneways off Eglington: peering thru the open doors of drinking holes whose men turn to regard me and whose music is oldworld & mellow. this sonic throb i follow home, back into my chair. tipping back, the tubesteel headrest draws from wall a hum that grows in the home's interstices. a simple test confirms it, it's the fridge: harmless & local, not from hell / no bardo ghost, no low occluded vocals from a wider realm of beings i'm wombling of. confusion, i thought, meant a coming apart - that the con meant anti but i looked it up, the con means with, is a mingling. confusion, i thought, was a bodily loss of integrity, & death a test you endure by holding one thought, of where you're heading. as you die, hold one thought: of where you're heading. a small mihraab, ignored by all, would subtly throb w/ a miraculous light. a dent in marble wall i pour my prayer thru. mihraab, a niche in wall that shows our way to kaaba. qibla, the line from self to kaaba. kaaba, the Cube and qibla our line of spine, in low salaat. kaaba the center & qibla the spoke on a disc whose circumference is the line of tawaaf, of a pilgrim's rounds - however far from Allah's law he wanders; however halting & thoughtless. ziggurat, a rising: layer on level, altar on predella step. piling to a point implied, high in sidereal heaven. even if untrue, the following is awesome, come on: Ibn Kathir, commentator on the Quran, mentions two interpretations among the Muslims on the origin of the Kaaba. One is that the shrine was a place of worship for Angels before the creation of man. Later, a temple was built on the location by Adam and Eve which was lost during the flood in Noah's time and was finally rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael as mentioned later in the Quran.3 Islam is, at very least, a strong misreading4 of semitic myth. when typing in the block quote above, was tempted into cutting commentator on the Quran, for sonic reasons - was tempted, yes, and grateful i submitted, that i put the clause back in. even now, i strive for a poet's concision, yet i must be correct, at last; and promise to let in more from my colleagues & critics. i put it back, to pass the data lossless on to you. and now i hear a wonderful thing: my introductive clause come on abdominally rolls its vowels into commentator on the Quran; and i praise this poetry, which came to me unbidden. 3 Wikipedia: Kaaba 4 Wikipedia: Harold Bloom / The Agon, Strong & Weak Misreadings iii. short review: LA JETÉE5 5 Chris Marker: France, 1962 the man who had trailed him since the underground camp is always a surprise. the hero's death collapses Time: we end where we began, with his death. the fatal bullet cues for me a rapid reel: of all the clues i'd missed. weirdly lit, i see him now, haunting every scene: some same face, a second Agent.