(The Strange Dreams A Traveller Has continued) I’m lying on a narrow bed, about the width of an airplane seat, and in fact, I am flying through the air on this bed. Somehow, my bed is all that connects the front end and the back end of the air craft. I’m leaning over the side of the bed, filming the ground below, or aiming the camera up and shooting it into the sky, or trying to get interesting shots of the plane’s wings. I’m sweating profusely, overcome with fear – not exactly afraid of falling out of the bed, but rather of dropping the video camera. Partly, I’m concerned about the cost of replacing the camera, and also losing the footage I’ve shot. Partly concerned that the camera will hurt someone, when it finally impacts after falling 30,000 feet. And partly concerned that I’ll fall out myself, in an effort to save the camera.
How to explain the dream? In the early days of using my video camera, in the Spring of 1999, I became obsessed with flight. Up until the purchase, I cannot recollect flying in a dream (though I occasionally I did levitate or float in dreams) – but in the first weeks of filming, I regularly hovered over city scenes in my dreams. With the video camera itself, objects that were far became closer. I obsessed myself with the zoom function, looking for a moving object, and then latching onto it, and trying to stay on the heels of the object until it disappeared into the vanishing point. Like one who spends time watching planes take off, or gazing at train schedules, I dreamt of departures.
Recently, zoom became unsatisfactory. This desire for movement rose up in me. I believe that in the case of motion photography that the camera itself should be in motion. I fantasized about hiring a helicopter, and flying over Tokyo. I took the train on idle journeys, filming out the window. I thought about getting a skateboard in order to be able to get a moving shot. And then settled on rollerblades. With rollerblades, I’ve been able to get all these shots of Tokyo that traditionally would require dollies and film permits. I can swerve through crowds, filming as I go. I can circle objects. I can go where cars can’t go. I can cover the distance between interesting places to shoot, and as a result I get a lot more film recorded. The rollerblades have done wonders for my amateur filmmaking.
But I know they’re not enough. I know I haven’t seen enough. I know I haven’t recorded enough.
At night, I’m the child that doesn’t want to go to bed for fear of missing out on something. In the morning, I don’t want to wake up for fear of missing a dream.
The trouble with watching a replay in a moving game is that you’re missing the present.
The most beautiful bit of literature I’ve read in my whole life is the final third of the Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Margarita has become a witch, and is flying naked over Moscow, and then beyond the city limits, over the forests, under the moon. For page after page, I lost all awareness.