Exhibition in Tonal Cinema
An Essay on The Great Project in Novel-Writing, circa 1998–2002, Called ‘Exhibition in Tonal Cinema’ by A.G.
Exhibition in Tonal Cinema:
06/29/01 11:02:29 PM
Introduction:
I have written a set of sixteen novellas called ‘Exhibition in Tonal Cinema’ and I thought I would write a short essay on the background for them to show their true context so that they can be appreciated for what they are. One does not necessarily need to have read all sixteen novellas to read this essay; I feel that this essay is explanatory in itself.
The idea came to me in a flash, but a succession of flashes that lasted five years. I first came up with the name Tonal Cinema for my style of poetry and it stuck since then. The whole of the novellas I call the Exhibition in Tonal Cinema and it is what I call a fully integral Vision.
It’s good to be able to sit there and have a Vision clear in your mind. You can move through all the rooms of the vision’s House, if it were a house [this one is of a cinema house] and contemplate the images and concepts of each room. So that’s what we’re going to do basically, just go over the different parts that make up this vision and see what we can learn from it.
I. Projector/Projectionist:
Like I said, this vision has to do with a cinema that I call Tonal Cinema or sometimes Cinéma Tonal. Projector/Projectionist is the name I’ve given to the room where the projectionist operates the projector and the sound equipment for film projections. In his room, the projectionist sits at a table and monitors the sound, spools reels of tape through the projector, changes the reel when it needs changing, and in my vision he smokes cigarettes. I wanted a believable character, not just some nondescript prisoner of the projection booth. I wanted another kind of prisoner: an existentialist philosopher whose passion is film projection. I don’t talk about him much in the novellas, he’s more of a vague figure, which is how I wanted him, but for the purposes of this essay, it would be swell to explain him a little more, to make him the more concrete.
The Projectionist is a riddler. He’s also a poet. He works out problems in his mind all day long. The projectionist wakes up in the morning, takes a shower, shaves, gets dressed and goes to work in Old Montreal at the Cinéma Tonal. It’s within walking distance. I always wanted to write a piece about him walking to work in Old Montreal on cobblestone streets, but never got around to it. The truth is that I haven’t finished all sixteen novellas, there are still three left to write. To put it simply, the projectionist is a mystic and with his projector, his tool, his passion, he gives the grandest production of visual and musical art. He knows all there is to know about projectors and studies film theory at Concordia University. But the figure of Projectionist changes as soon as you try to define him. Right now he’s studying Ontology and preparing a dissertation on the Eye. He’s looking at the portrayal of the eye in text from the years 1700 to 1950. But he’s constantly in a state of flux. The character of the projectionist cannot be pinned down. He must remain ambiguous. He pops up at the oddest times and has lots to say but always seems to say little.
Projector/Projectionist is composed of three novellas.
II. Vapors/Abysms:
This part of the Exhibition in Tonal Cinema is the room where the audience actually views the film. That room is broken into three sections, the audience, the light of the projector, and the ceiling which is a frescoed dome. The frescoed dome is reserved to the section called Vortex. The light from the projector is what I call Vapors, because in this cinema people are allowed to smoke, they sit in chairs and smoke cigarettes and where the light mixes with the smoke, we have Vapors. The audience, however, which sits in complete darkness, is what I call the Abysms section. The Vapors/Abysms section of my Exhibition in Tonal Cinema is composed of three novellas, as well as Vortex. The actual Exhibition in Tonal Cinema has seven novellas, making a total of sixteen.
Vapors/Abysms is the true mystical side of the Exhibition in Tonal Cinema. This Exhibition was made to encompass all the areas of study in which I have undertaken research. The Projector/Projectionist deals with Music where Vapors/Abysms deals with psychology and ontology, phenomenology, biology. This is the body of the audience, the consciousnesses of the viewers in rapt attention viewing the Exhibition in Tonal Cinema on the canvas screen. With Vapors/Abysms, I tried to show the Polarities of light and dark in Renaissance and Baroque painting. The image struck me: a beautiful cinema with burgundy carpets on the walls and floors, wooden chairs nailed to the ground, people sitting in rapt attention viewing the exhibition. To me, this image speaks a great deal. The stories here are meant to be ambiguous, mystical, gothic.
III. Exhibition in Tonal Cinema:
This is the canvas screen on which the films are projected. I call it the database of images. My sixteen novellas were supposed to encompass an integral vision that I had, that I still have, which can be described as being a man climbing to the top of the Mount of Mounts, Mount Etna under which lies Vulcan’s [the god of Fire] blacksmith shop. I would encourage readers to pick up my Exhibition in Tonal Cinema to see how it all fits into this integral vision of the Tonal Cinema.
Tonal Cinema is a poetic style comprised of short lines that blast strange images to the reader’s mind, quick lines coming down erupting down the page in an explosion, much like the volcanic clouds that rise from Mount Etna in my vision. I imagined floating above the volcano as it erupts and filming the pyroclastic clouds in their infinite churnings and bubblings, puff and soot mad-house rumbling of gaseousness. The seven novellas that make the Exhibition in Tonal Cinema, the first seven of the full sixteen, are meant to be a database of images to be used later on in the technical writings of Tonal Cinema, this being the first. Every concept needs an image, and so my Exhibition has thousands of images whose conceptual transcripts I will be writing from this day forward until I have a truly integral vision that I can spread all over the world.
The Exhibition in Tonal Cinema is partly cut-up texts mixed in with some surrealist, automatic, phenomenological/mythical writings that come straight from my unconscious mind.
IV. Vortex:
I wish I could just exclaim to everyone, ‘Exhibition in Tonal Cinema coming to a theater near you’, and have everyone understand that by theater I mean a conceptual construct acting as a theater in the mind; a function in the brain that resembles a theater, namely Imagination, Passion, Wisdom, and Creativity. It’s something I started six years ago, it just came to me. It’s been the subject of many euphoric visions. I have been obsessed with this cinema and I WILL make it a reality. I’ve thought of sculpting the cinema on a meter by meter square, actually erecting it and taking a series of photographs of the actual cinema of my dreams.
About the Vortex section:
The Vortex is the cinema seen from the perspective of the roof. It’s as though someone was standing on the rafters with a movie camera and filming the audience. But then an audience member looks up at the frescoed dome and the camera centers on his eye, and the film flips from eye to frescoed dome, eye to frescoed dome, and both the eye and frescoed dome become one singular notion. I haven’t yet had the time to write the full version of Vortex. It would include the very fresco that I am speaking of. The fresco is a mosaic of episodes. There’s a Polarities section, one that deals with pure ontology, the existence of beings, the becoming of beings, of things, of existences. It shows the full progression of objects from their incipience into reality to their death and melting away.
Vortex is also about Victor Vortex taking a walk to the bridge between the towns of Beloeil and St-Hilaire.
Conclusion:
I’m not sure if I expressed myself correctly in this short essay. My ambition was to describe a vision that I have of a Tonal Cinema. It goes much deeper than what I’ve accomplished in telling here. For instance, Projector/Projectionist is also Speaker in the language arts in which way the voice projects. I wanted a sort of ideogram in which I could put every single thought I’ve ever had. I figured that if I ever lost my memory, I could read my Exhibition in Tonal Cinema and know exactly who I am, know every discrepancy of every thought I’ve ever had. It was a long and arduous project. I’m still not finished. In the end, I realize that it’s quite impossible to do, but I did a good job coming close to my dream.
Is the ideogram complete? We have four sections: the Exhibition in Tonal Cinema, Projector/Projectionist, Vapors/Abysms, and Vortex. An important thing to remember about my Exhibition in Tonal Cinema is that I’ve also created paintings, sculptures, and songs that help complete the vision. It’s been a long road, but a fulfilling one. All I would need to do is turn the vision into a pill you can ingest that would give you the exact vision. Otherwise, I have to keep creating and showing my art to people hoping that they slowly perceive what the vision is about.
When it comes down to it, my Exhibition is a mystical vision. It’s the sun marrying the moon, the river of blood and the river of milk; it’s the king and queen uniting in the crimson court. It’s Kafka’s Metamorphosis, or his Castle or his Trial. There is one type of mystical vision and all mystical visions resemble each other. The difference is that I chose a cinema as my subject. I think it’s very apropos. It’s an authentically modern experience, the cinema. The Exhibition, however, doesn’t stop there. In the seventh novella, we have the Exhibition taking place inside a mountain. The Exhibition became a labyrinth with hundreds of rooms full of paintings and sculptures, and at the center of the Exhibition is the theatre where the Minotaur gives a speech. I have time and time again come back to the figure of the speaker performing a monologue or lecture. I like my speakers to be geniuses who have studied abroad and come back to their native land to give a discourse on newfangled knowledge and intimations of absurd and ambiguous truths. The speaker is always speaking to an audience of readers, listeners. What can I say, it’s a vision that never ends. I could write about it for years, much as I have done since 1995.
ERRATUM: November 27th, 2023. I realized, upon reading this short essay on the “Exhibition in Tonal Cinema”, that I am missing the final novella to make up a total of 16, of which I speak. It is called The Minotaur. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it, it escapes me to this day. I could write an entire essay of its own on just The Minotaur novella. It is really the culmination-point or apotheosis of the Exhibition in Tonal Cinema. I will be writing more over time about this project from the period 1998–2002, when I actually wrote the almost 1000-page Exhibition.
A.G. © 2001–2023. All Rights Reserved.
