Karen's project is one mechanism against the uncanny or that which is "un-home-like." She remains watchful and willing to let the bizarre dimensions of her house gestate within her. She challenges its irregularity by introducing normalcy: her friend's presence, bookshelves, peaceful conversation. In this respect, Karen acts as the quintessential gatherer. She keeps close to the homestead and while she may not forage for berries and mushrooms she does accumulate tiny bits of sense.
Navidson and Tom, on the other hand, are classic hunters. They select weapons (tools; reason) and they track their prey (a solution). Billy Reston is the one they hope will help them achieve their goal. He is a gruff man, frequently caustic and more like a drill sergeant than a tenured professor. He is also a paraplegic who has spent almost half his life in an aluminum wheelchair. Navidson was barely twenty-seven when he first met Reston. Actually it was a photograph that brought them together. Navidson had been on assignment in India, taking pictures of trains, rail workers, engineers, whatever caught his attention. The piece was supposed to capture the clamor of industry outside of Hyderabad. What ended up plastered on the pages of more than a few newspapers, however, was a photograph of a black American engineer desperately trying to out run a falling high voltage wire. The cable had been cut when an inexperienced crane operator had swung wide of a freight car and accidentally collided with an electrical pole. The wood had instantly splintered, tearing in half one of the power cables which descended toward the helpless Billy Reston, spitting sparks, and lashing the air like Nag or Nagaina.[26]
That very photograph hangs on Reston's office wall. It captures the mixture of fear and disbelief on Reston's face as he suddenly finds himself running for his life. One moment he was casually scanning the yard, thinking about lunch, and in the next he was about to die. His stride is stretched, back toes trying to push him out of the way, hands reaching for something, anything, to pull him out of the way. But he is too late. That serpentine shape surrounds him, moving much too fast for any last ditch effort at escape. As Fred de Stabenrath remarked in April 1954, "Les jeux sontfait. Nous sommes fuckedZ'[27]
Tom takes a hard look at this remarkable 11X14 black and white print. "That was the last time I had legs," Reston tells him. "Right before that ugly snake bit 'em off. I used to hate the picture and then I sort of became grateful for it. Now when anyone walks into my office they don't have to think about asking me how I ended up in this here chariot. They can see for themselves. Thank you Navy. You bastard. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi with a Nikon."
Eventually the chat subsides and the three men get down to business. Reston's response is simple, rational, and exactly what both brothers came to hear: "There's no question the problem's with your equipment. I'd have to check out Tom's stuff myself but I'm willing to bet university money there's something a little outta whack with it. I've got a few things you can borrow: a Stanley Beacon level and a laser distance meter." He grins at Navidson. "The meter's even a Leica. That should put this ghost in the grave fast. But if it doesn't, I'll come out and measure your place myself and I'll charge you for my time too."
Both Will and Tom chuckle, perhaps feeling a little foolish. Reston shakes his head.
"If you ask me Navy, you've got a little too much time on your hands. You'd probably be better off if you just took your family for a nice long drive."
On their way back, Navidson points the Hi 8 toward the darkening horizon.
For a while neither brother says a word.
Will breaks the silence first: "Funny how all it took was a fraction of an inch to get us in a car together."
"Pretty strange."
"Thanks for coming Tom."
"Like there was really a chance I'd say no."
A pause. Again Navidson speaks up.
"I almost wonder if I got tangled up in all this measuring stuff just so I'd have some pretext to call you."
Despite his best efforts, Tom cannot hold back a laugh: "You know I hate to tell you this but there are simpler reasons you could of come up with."
"You're telling me," Navidson says, shaking his head.
Rain starts splashing down on the windshield and lightning cracks across the sky. Another pause follows.
This time, Tom breaks the silence: "Did you hear the one about the guy on the tightrope?"
Navidson grins: "I'm glad to see some things never change."
"Hey this one's true. There was this twenty-five year old guy walking a tightrope across a deep river gorge while half way around the world another twenty-five year old guy was getting a blow job from a seventy year old woman, but get this, at the exact same moment both men were thinking the exact same thought. You know what it was?"
"No clue."
Tom gives his brother a wink.
"Don't look down."
And thus as one storm begins to ravage the Virginias, another one just as easily dissipates and vanishes in a flood of bad jokes and old stories.
When confronting the spatial disparity in the house, Karen set her mind on familiar things while Navidson went in search of a solution. The children, however, just accepted it. They raced through the closet. They played in it. They inhabited it. They denied the paradox by swallowing it whole. Paradox, after all, is two irreconcilable truths. But children do not know the laws of the world well enough yet to fear the ramifications of the irreconcilable. There are certainly no primal associations with spatial anomalies.
Similar to the ingenuous opening sequence of The Navidson Record, seeing these two giddy children romp around is an equally unsettling experience, perhaps because their state of naivete is so appealing to us, even seductive, offering such a simple resolution to an enigma. Unfortunately, denial also means ignoring the possibility of peril.
That possibility, however, seems at least momentarily irrelevant when we cut to Will and Tom hauling Billy Reston's equipment upstairs, the authority of their tools quickly subduing any sense of threat.
Just watching the two brothers use the Stanley Beacon level to establish the distance they will need to measure communicates comfort. When they then turn their attention to the Leica meter it is nearly impossible not to at last expect some kind of resolution to this confounding problem. In fact Tom's crossed fingers as the Class 2 laser finally fires a tiny red dot across the width of the house manages to succinctly represent our own sympathies.
As the results are not immediate, we wait along with the whole family as the internal computer calibrates the dimension. Navidson captures these seconds in 16mm. His Arriflex, already pre-focused and left running, spools in 24 frames per second as Daisy and Chad sit on their beds in the background, Hillary and Mallory linger in the foreground near Tom, while Karen and Audrie stand off to the right near the newly created bookshelves.
Suddenly Navidson lets out a hoot. It appears the discrepancy has finally been eliminated.
Tom peers over his shoulder, "Good-bye Mr. Fraction."
"One more time" Navidson says. "One more time. Just to make
sure."
Oddly enough, a slight draft keeps easing one of the closet doors shut. It has an eerie effect because each time the door closes we lose sight of the children.
" Hey would you mind propping that open with something?' Navidson asks his brother.
Tom turns to Karen's shelves and reaches for the largest volume he can find. A novel. Just as with Karen, its removal causes an immediate domino effect. Only this time, as the books topple into each other, the last few do not stop at the wall as they had previously done but fall instead to the floor, revealing at least a foot between the end of the shelf and the plaster.
Tom thinks nothing of it.
"Sorry," he mumbles and leans over to pick up the scattered books.
Which is exactly when Karen screams.
Raju welcomed the intrusion—something to relieve the loneliness of the place.
— R. K. Narayan
It is impossible to appreciate the importance of space in The Navidson Record without first t
aking into account the significance of echoes. However, before even beginning a cursory examination of their literal and thematic presence in the film, echoes reverberating within the word itself need to be distinguished.
Generally speaking, echo has two coextensive histories: the mythological one and the scientific one.[28] Each provides a slightly different perspective on the inherent meaning of recurrence, especially when that repetition is imperfect.
To illustrate the multiple resonances found in an echo, the Greeks conjured up the story of a beautiful mountain nymph. Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser known version of this myth has Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pisces, burying all of her except her voice. Adonta ta mele.® In both cases, unfulfilled love results in the total negation of Echo's body and the near negation of her voice.[29]
But Echo is an insurgent. Despite the divine constraints imposed upon her, she still manages to subvert the gods' ruling. After all, her repetitions are far from digital, much closer to analog. Echo colours the words with faint traces of sorrow (The Narcissus myth) or accusation (The Pan myth) never present in the original. As Ovid recognized in his Metamorphoses:
^Eloquently translated by Horace Gregory as: "So she was turned away/ To hide her face, her lips, her guilt among the trees,/ Even their leaves, to haunt caves of the forest/ To feed her love on melancholy sorrow/ Which, sleepless, turned her body to a shade/ First pale and wrinkled, then a sheet of air/ Then bones, which some say turned to thin-worn rocks; / And last her voice remained. Vanished in forest/ Far from her usual walks on hills and valleys,/ She's heard by all who call; her voice has life." The Metamorphoses by Ovid. (New York: A Mentor Book, 1958), p. 97.
[1]Literary marvel Miguel de Cervantes set down this compelling passage in his Don Quixote (Part One, Chapter Nine):
. . . ia verdad, cuya madre es la historia, emula del tiempo, dep6sito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir.51
Much later, a yet untried disciple of arms had the rare pleasure of meeting the extraordinary Pierre Menard in a Paris cafe following the second world war. Reportedly Menard expounded on his distinct distaste for Madelines but never mentioned the passage (and echo of Don Quixote) he had penned before the war which had subsequently earned him a fair amount of literary fame:
... la verdad, cuya madre es la historia, emula del tiempo, deposito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir.
This exquisite variation on the passage by the "ingenious layman" is far too dense to unpack here. Suffice it to say Menard's nuances are so fine they are nearly undetectable, though talk with the Framer and you will immediately see how haunted they are by sorrow, accusation, and sarcasm.50
[1]Exactly! How the fuck do you write about "exquisite variation" when both passages are exactly the same?
I'm sure the late hour has helped, add to that the dim light in my room, or how poorly I've been sleeping, going to sleep but not really resting, if that's possible, though let me tell you, sitting alone, awake to nothing else but this odd murmuring, like listening to the penitent pray—you know it' s a prayer but you miss the words—or better yet listening to a bitter curse, realizing a whole lot wrong's being ushered into the world but still missing the words, me like that, listening in my way by comparing in his way both Spanish fragments, both written out on brown leaves of paper, or no, that's not right, not brown, more like, oh I don't know, yes brown but in the failing light appearing almost colored or the memory of a color, somehow violent, or close to that, or not at all, as I just kept reading both pieces over and over again, trying to detect at least one differing accent or
In his own befuddled way, John Hollander has given the world a beautiful and strange reflection on love and longing. To read his marvelous dialogue on echo52 is to find its author standing perfectly still in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes wild with a cascade of internal reckonings, lips acting out some unintelligible discourse, inaudible to the numerous students who race by him, noting his mad appearance and quite rightly offering him a wide berth as they escape into someone else's class.53
Hollander begins with a virtual catalogue of literal echoes. For example, the Latin "decern iam annos aetatem trivi in Cicerone" echoed by the Greek "oneV'ti Or "Musarum studia" (Latin) described by the echo as "did" (Greek).9 Or Narcissus' rejection "Emoriar, quam sit tibi copia
letter, wanting to detect at least one differing accent or letter, getting almost desperate in that pursuit, only to repeatedly discover perfect similitude, though how can that be, right? if it were perfect it wouldn't be similar it would be identical, and you know what? I've lost this sentence, I can't even finish it, don't know how—
Here's the point: the more I focused in on the words the farther I seemed from my room. No sense where either, until all of a sudden along the edges of my tongue, towards the back of my mouth, I started to taste something extremely bitter, almost metallic. I began to gag. I didn't gag, but I was certain I would. Then I got a whiff of that same something awful I'd detected outside of the Shop in the hall. Faint as hell at first until I knew I'd smelled it and then it wasn't faint at all. A whole lot of rot was suddenly packed up my nose, slowly creeping down my throat, closing it off. I started to throw up, watery chunks of vomit flying everywhere, sluicing out of me onto the floor, splashing onto the wall, even onto this. Except I only coughed. I didn't cough. I lightly cleared my throat and then the smell was gone and so was the taste. I was back in my room again, looking around in the dim light, jittery, disoriented but hardly fooled.
I put the fragments back in the trunk. Walked the perimeter of my room. Glass of bourbon. A toke on a blunt. There we go. Bring on the haze. But who am I kidding? I can still see what's happening. My line of defense has not only failed, it failed long ago. Don't ask me to define the line either or why exactly it's needed or even what it stands in defense against. I haven't the foggiest idea.
This much though I'm sure of: I'm alone in hostile territories with no clue why they're hostile or how to get back to safe havens, an Old Haven, a lost haven, the temperature dropping, the hour heaving pitching towards a profound darkness, while before me my idiotic amaurotic Guide laughs, actually cackles is more like it, lost in his own litany of inside jokes, completely out of his head, out of focus too, zonules of Zinn, among other things, having snapped long ago like piano wires, leaving me with absolutely no sound way to determine where the hell I'm going, though right now going to hell seems like a pretty sound bet.
5'Which Anthony Bonner translates as . . truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future." — Ed.
52See John Hollander's The Figure of Echo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). 53Kelly Chamotto makes mention of Hollander in her essay "Mid-Sentence, Mid-Stream" in Glorious Garrulous Graphomania ed. T. N Joseph Truslow (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), p. 345. O "I've spent ten years on Cicero" "Ass!" 5 "The Muses' studies" "divine ones."
nostri" to which Echo responds "sit tibi copia nostri."€ On page 4, he even provides a woodcut from Athanasius Kircher's Neue Hall -und Thonkunst (Nordlingen, 1684) illustrating an artificial echo machine designed to exchange"clamore" for four echoes:"amore" "more" "ore," and finally " re" H Nor does Hollander stop there. His slim volume abounds with examples of textual transfiguration, though in an effort to keep from repeating the entire book, let this heart-wrenching interchange serve as a final example:
Chi dara fine al gran dolore?
L
'ore.°°
Mark Z Danielewski Page 8
