Ondaatje is someone I admire deeply for his passionless pursuit of words across forms. His curiosity of creation - from his involvement in Brick, the literary journal to this new book I have discovered by him where he records his conversations with the film editor Walter Murch.
With my thesis exploring writers who push the formal boundaries of the novel and my creative work having a strong attachment to the idea of the visual and what audiences can process in a given time frame this book is of great interest.
Ondaatje outlines how he had been obsessed "in that seemingly uncrossable gulf between an early draft of a book or film and a finished product. How does one make that journey from here to there?" (ph xii) Ondaajte would spend two years of any book her wrote, he outlines, in the edtiting stage. After spending 4-5 years writing in the dark he will then have to give it shape.....having a supervisor who is a passionate structuralist and being a formless, organic writer means that we are often at very different places when trying to look at what I am writing. Thankfully he has allowed me to just write for a while after seeing a couple of my attempts at trying to write to an imposed structure. Ondaajte talks about never having a strict, controlling governor present in the first draft of a book.
"I write as if it were a rehearsal, I attempt or try out everything, though of course a subliminal editing is taking place." (pg 37) He talks about, reassuringly for me anyway, that he never knows where a book will end or a concept or a plot
"I'm much more uncertain, insecure....I am continually being fed and diverted by the possibilities from the world around me - chance anecdotes overheard, the texture within a rumour - as much as by what my research reveals.....When writing I reject nothing." (pg 38)
He feels it is dangerous to show his work to anyone at this stage, until he has taken it as far as it can go. He doesn't want the outside influence of story or form to come to early - I get that!!! As Murch concurs it is all about balancing the generative impulse with the critical impulse. In editing film, he records his primary, emotional response to the rushes as he says "There is only one "first time."" (pg 45) - the rest are more surgical responses. The difference is that film is more bound by time than a book - a book is not finite so it can be more meditative. It feels more private - however they discuss the difference between watching a film on video and going to the cinema. They talk about a "cinematic state of mind." - the urge to be part of something larger than yourself but to be spoken to directly. Murch believes we are able to keep up with the incredible non-linear jumps in film because the same visual dislocations happen all the time when we dream. We spend eight hours every night in a "cinematic dream state" and so he concludes we are familiar with this type of reality. ( pg 50)
Walter Murch talks about the use of silence in film editing -- how strong and dangerous it can be. This reminded me of when I created a television advert for a play I had produced - Salt Creek Murders, where I chose to have no sound, just the subliminal wind from the salt plans on the Coorong. It worked, people turned immediately to their TV sets wandering what was wrong as they were so used to the nagging, incessant noise of the television. Murch as edited films such as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and of course The English Patient where he met Ondaajte. He points out that it wasn't until the introduction of synchronous sound in film in 1927 that silence was ever used as there was continuous orchestral or music accompaniment underneath the images.
Murch, as an interesting aside came to film editing after an early love of playing with sounds tapes when he was 11. he believes that your chances of happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that reflects what you loved most when you are between 9 and 11 years old.
He talks about how many films were and still are edited by women, particuarly before sound, as sound was somehow a "man" thing, because it was seen as electric. Before then "it was a woman's craft...you knitted the pieces of film together. And editing has aspects of being a librarian, which used to be perceived as a woman's job." (pg 26)
Another interesting point, given my interest in women's crafting or playing with the novel form, certainly Dorothy Porter saw her sewing or crafting of stories together. In my novel for the thesis I am working with multiple points of view - Murch outlines how the more POV's the more time you can buy for your film with an audience. The more linear the film the shorter it should be. in his opinion. "Films with a single point of view are on borrowed time, if they are more than two hours long." (g 33) Or as he says a symphony can be longer than a sonata - it is just a richer tapestry.
Ondaajte then talks about what we have borrowed from Spanish Poetry - the idea of "leaping poetry" - "those sometimes surreal, sometimes subliminal connections that reveal a suprising or revealing path or link between strangers.." (pg 34)
The discussion leads into the idea of form -
"What we call form is love." (Ernst Toller) - How beautiful is that!
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