Dusting off some of the early first draft videos from OMegg. The footage here was shot around October of 2001 during some of my scouting for Arc Along The Watchtower. This Was Dylan’s latest single, which really echoed in the months after the Trade Center Fell.

Drawings here are my finishes of Brian Raszka starts from The Library
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They sit in a triangle around the table, sipping the wine. They are skirting the inevitable European conversation when there are Americans around: The War. Somehow, M. Tristan gets on tangential rant:

“The Jew, you see, is the equal sign in the equasion of Empire, you see? He is enslaved by physics… snatched by the great empire of physics: Egypt. There he helps to build the pyramids. He is the mason for the Egyptions and so learns the mathematics and the physics and when the jew escapes back to Zion, he builds his temple with this knowledge, but then the next empire of engineers, Rome, snatches Zion from him. The first great victory arch in Rome commemorates the taking of Israel from the jews. The arch, the very symbol of Roman technology and physics, you see and the the Jew? He is sent wandering the empire… not a slave, but a free agent… with his own mathematics and morality… able to lend money and invent the merchant class in Europe… untill in a final chess move here in Switzerland, the jew snatches the fire from the gods… Einstein.. the superior physics and he gives it like a gift to the Americans and so the Americans in turn give him back Israel and thus the Americans become the next great Empire. That is the equation and it balances on the fate of the jew…. or the fate of physics, but this seems the same thing almost… knowledge built from laying stones of pyramids and reaching towards the stars.”

She says, “It’s vaguely disturbing to hear anyone with a German accent refer to The Jew, but I can’t quite tell if what you’re saying is actually Zionist, or anit-semetic, or both…”

“None, really,” M. Tristan said. “Just an observation on the fate of man as it connects to physics… I am interested in history and books, you see and the first and greatest book is nothing, but a history of the Jews. So it always seems a good place to start a discussion of history… though in reality, like all humanity, the story starts in Africa, but the people who wrote books forgot how to read hieroglyphics for so long… untill the Rosetta stone.”

“The wine is delicious,” Pat says. “Such good wine. I guess I CAN taste the difference now with the new bottle.”

“Now if we want to talk about wine we have to talk about Persia and….”

“The Jew,” she said finishing the sentence.

“Certainly they were involved in the trade and after all it is Jesus’ first miracle…”

“LeChaim,” Pat said raising his glass.

press play for one of M. Tristan’s theories:

She gets up to use the restroom and says, “I’ll be right back. Order the wine.”
He is silent and closes his eyes and has a strange vision of the end of the world. It involves Asian angels, the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, fire, water, and Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten. He sees the wold dissolve at a subatomic level and opens his eyes to find himself in eye contact with the mysterious old stranger: M. Tristan.
“Is she your first Oriental?” the old man asks.
“Excuse Me?” Pat says.
“Is she your first Oriental?”

The top is digollage I made from something by Bellah at the Library. The rest are my starts for same.

When the dead look down at us we are as harpoon heads at the end of time’s arrow. They can see the line of our live’s, tethered to the umbellical chord of our conception – ending in a thud at the target. The target is the dirt under ground. This image reminds me of the characters… their harpoons have tangled tight while on the rivers of New York and togther they have traveled the Atlantic Ocean into the mountains of Switzerland. The Target they seek is indeed in the dirt, underground. It is not the grave. Nor is it Dante’s inferno. It is the tiny inferno of the Cern Large Hadron Collider. That is the end of their tragectory. This is the concentric circle target they are aimed at. This the White Whale they will pierce. We can see that, because we, like the dead, can see the characters as harpoon heads at the end of time’s arrow. We are above them, like the dead.

I started thinking about timelines and characters in time and space over the holliday, when I went with my brothers and nephews to the Bridgeport (there’s bridges and ports in that name, funny) Science center and we all got facinated with a Einsteinian gravity model, similar to the penny spinner video below. I didn’t bother to shoot it, as I knew there are tons of similar videos on vimeo. I regret it a little now as Ithink I could have made something rather pretty in the editing and music, but it is sort of fun to just pull stuff of the web like a readymade (I did make the rubbing and the pendulum orbits drawing, however, and they seem very related and part of my thinking). Anyway, seeing the dangerous orbits of the ballbearings (instead of pennies as shown here) reminded me of individual characters traveling with and colliding into eachother as they arc down into the deep dark hole of time.



Spinning Pennies on Vimeo

Willoughby wakes up and Willoughby says, “Call me Willoughby.”
I’ve decided that Ishmael is Phil Willoughby, the star of Arc Along The Watchtower and OMegg is about his brother Patrick.
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Here am I standing in a tin can, far below the ground…planet earth is red – everyone is dead.

Now originally, the Cafe Potemkin would have been in Brooklyn and they would meet M. Tristan there while sharing a bottle of Grand Cru Bordeaux… offering the old man in the corner a glass because he is old and alone and they are young and feeling the buzz of earlier beer and new love and lust and M. Tristan accepts their offer and asks them, “How long have you been married.”
“We just met,” says she.
“No,” says M. Tristan.
“Yes,” Says Pat.
“No,” Tristan repeats.
“Not but a few hours ago.”
“Well you must marry,” says M. Tristan. “I can see it is your fate.”
And with that, Tristan takes charge of their life, they being drunk and impressed by the Rolls Royce and the King Leer jet and Switzerland, let him. He lives in Chateau called Egg.
But wherever the cafe is in time and space, I like to think that a John Lennnon song is heard drifting by from a car radio, or boom box, or whatever and they drift into a conversation about the Tragedy of John.
“Does it strike anyone as odd,” asks M. Tristan, in a pedagogical mode. “That Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7th A Day That Shall Live In Infamy and Lennnon was Shot on December 8th? Now didn’t Mark David Chapman live in Hawaii? Didn’t Lennon live with the most famous Japanese in the history of the world? Are these things accidents do you suppose?”
“I don’t know,” Patty said. “I’m Korean.”
“Of course you are,” M. Tristan said. “Of course you are, but that’s not the question.”
“What is the question?” Pat says.
“It’s just something no one ever mentions and it seems significant.”
“Sean thinks his father was assasinated,” Patty says.
“He’s nuts,”Pat scoffs.
“Is he?” M. Tristan asked.
“Isn’t he?” Pat says.
“I don’t know.” M. Tristan answers. “You are the Americans. You have the Mr. Burning Bush. What is possible do you suppose?”
“It’s possible to raise a toast to John Lennon,” says Patty.
“To the crew of U.S.S. Arizona,” says Pat.
“To Yoko,” says M. Tristan.
They drink … let’s say a 1944 Chateau Margaux (I know it’s pushing it, but Imagine….)


The Elephant’s Memory image above is a collab finished by Bellah from a Brian Raszka start. The rest are my starts – all for The Library Project.