November Write Club Challenge : Breathe: One day. One story. One breath. by Geoff Hall

(Why I wrote it and the joy of the humble ‘what if’...)

How did this thing called ‘Breathe’ come about?

Well, I wrote a poem and posted it on Stage 32, called ‘Weaving Words’; a poem about writing.

I’m a poet you see, and writing poems is what a poet does. It’s a dead giveaway when your job title is, ‘Poet’.

But then this November Write Challenge on Stage 32 came along, to write something and as I am a screenwriter and a director I was inspired by this poem (Weaving Words) to write a screenplay and then direct it. You see, when your job title is ‘Writer/Director’ then that’s what you do. You write a screenplay and then you direct it. Yes, the job title is a dead giveaway. How did you guess I was going to say that?

I am reminded of Paul Schrader’s book ‘Transcendent Style in Film – Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer’. I write this in the retrospective gaze of a rear-view mirror, when speaking of a transcendent style in “Breathe”. If it helps people understand the style of it, then so be it. We may all at some point, need to see signposts, way-markers, so that we understand its context a little more.

I would like to highlight three points from Schrader’s book and his view of the transcendent in film:

1. “Transcendental Style seeks to maximise the mystery of existence, it eschews all conventional interpretations of reality: realism, naturalism, psychologism, romanticism, expressionism, impressionism, and, final, rationalism.” (p10)

2. “[it]...is concerned with what is universal rather than particular...which seeks to express the Wholly Other through divergent cultures and personalities.” (p8)

3. “Transcendental Style stylises reality by eliminating (or nearly eliminating) those elements which are primarily expressive of human experience, thereby robbing the conventional interpretations of reality, of their relevance and power.” (p11)

Leaving those definitions behind, I thought, ‘what if I write a screenplay that is a series of poems, about a young poet who was in the fortunate position of meeting her older (and wiser) self’? And, in meeting her, gains some insight into who she could turn out to be.

What if the whole thing was a film that didn’t have to suffer the tyranny of narrative-time; that old ruse of a story needing to have a beginning, middle and ending; a progression through time where the mess of the fair-to-middling ground is resolved? But what if poems are not subject to this tyranny and can just be about...NOW! What if through them, we can enter a pure state of Being? (Ooh, highfalutin spiritual aspirations there Geoff!)

“The realm of Being, which has been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great joy. And within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core, there is the sacred, the immeasurable, That which cannot be named.” (Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power of Now’ p187).

When your past meets your future, your beginning and ending, then the Alpha and Omega point are the same.

You can perhaps call it the ETERNAL NOW, INFINITY, or the SUBLIME, where everything that is possible can/may come to you and define your future, NOW. What if in the Now, you can see both past and future and then note that there is no difference between them; that they are part of a continuum in Space-Time? In the Now, therefore, I have all I need.

What if this is what we mean by the Sublime? That poetry is the language of the Sublime, the Eternal Now; a threshold language that helps save us from the tyranny of narrative-time and from whence we step over it into...the Now?

In Sublime poetry the beginning and the ending meet. (The young and the old poet, meet). We are set free from the tyrants of time-keepers, chronographers with chains meant to hold you in a different kind of now; an oppressive eternal now made of needing to watch the clock run down and ‘my’ life dissipate, because of someone else’s measurement of my existence.

What if, poetry is Sublime in that it takes us beyond time?

What if, time is a purely local phenomenon, on this Earth and beyond it there is no time? (After all, to say that a galaxy is 2.6 million light years away from Earth, time is kinda redundant, meaningless). How many sunrises and sunsets, full moons and crescent moons is that?

What if poetry is our ultimate escape from our slavery to time?

What if, I can film this? And that this project is sublime/subliminal in its language and its potential for everyone to be awakened to the destitutions of time and the institutions that hold us in a slave mentality and forbid the restitutions of the Now?

Just a thought...

Geoff Hall – “Breathe: One story. One day. One breath.” - November, 2022.

POSTSCRIPT:

In terms of a release strategy, I’m considering the following markets/audiences.

• Oprah – Super Soul Sunday

• The Centre for Action and Contemplation

• The Eckhart Tolle Network

• Art Galleries – as a video installation/exhibition

• Independent Arts, Media and Cinema Networks

* Stage32/Raindance Short film programme.

The film is ripe for an events style release, due to its subject-matter.

The screenplay is available on my loglines page. LINK IN COMMENTS.