countessian

the factory worker’s daughter

So, I had a dream once, or something like a dream, in which Electra asked me “Rachel, what makes numbers change?” I had an entirely sensible answer for her that, of course, I don’t remember anymore, but the queen was horrified. “We’ve messed her up,” she cried, distraught. We encouraged her to be too creative. It’s one thing to have a good imagination, but you can’t just go around applying it to physics!” “Yes you can. In fact, you should,” I said, picturing Electra going through life subtly fucking with everything’s molecules.

It was at this point in my remembering or just dreaming up the dream that I was struck by my utter stupidity. I used to have a brain to be proud of once, really, but at some point–18 or so– I got scared and thought I’d better get employable. I wanted to study literature and Russian, separately, until I got good enough to study literature in Russian and probably half a dozen or so other tongues, too, and sit up all night every night uncovering the formulae and ratios that poets don’t realise they’re using. [At this point I'll add in, as an aside, a reminder of the time I realised my lifelong mathematical distaste was foolish, which occurred at 17, three months after my very last maths lesson, when someone casually pointed out that--duh--geometry is maths and art all at once. I hadn't realised. I s'pose my brain can't've been that good, after all.]

Anyway, I studied media and print journalism so I could get jobs without having to justify my schooling too much. Every time I switched on Photoshop and thought “What exactly does the algorithm do?” I shushed myself real quick. That sort of thinking’s no good for a factory worker’s daughter.

[I screwed up my last job interview because when she asked me what attracted me to working in public relations I sort of lost it and confessed that really, I just want to be a poet.]

Cut to another not-quite dream, this one came to me yesterday (Independence Day for you Americans) while I paced like always up and down between the bed and the wall. I was taking portraits at some kid birthday party, all coming out like the Marc Jacobs ads of late. This one girl, six or so, said to me “I don’t want my picture taken” and I said “why girlie?” She thought about lying for a minute then decided to trust me and whispered “cuz I’m not the cute one.” So I told her the whole poor-me sob story of how I’m not the cute one either and that’s how I ended up hiding behind cameras all the time, but she called me on it and said “But what about geometry?” so then i had to confess that OK, first it was the lines and angles that sucked me in, and the social crutch stuff came later. But she caught me out again and said “But what about light refraction and the way the lens is alike a better eye that almost infinitely controllable because it’s entirely detached from instinctive impulse?” so I admitted yes, that too, it’s a little bit super human and while we’re at it (she was opening her mouth to add the stopping time stuff) who doesn’t want to stop time, catch it in a little box, edit it, colour it, toy with its secret geometry to please your own twisted theories and then sit back and agonise over how flimsy reality seems to be?

“I don’t,” she said. “You’re just weird.”

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 4:42 pm. It is filed under documentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.