Uncanny timing. A. and I were hanging out, trying to put together blurbs for the outsider marketing series on which we're working. I've already got my artist's statement done, and she was lamenting the fact that she was afraid to contextualize the work too much, as it would then prevent her from MAKING the photos. I was trying to argue that the context could change as the photo series developed, and while it was important to write an intentional framework, more important was creating the photos themselves. Then I saw this come in:

I'm just sitting here, minding my own biz, re-reading parts of the book "On Being a Photographer," one of my favorites texts and come across this dandy of a quote. Ahem, "Like every other skill, photography is learned by continuous and dedicated practice. ....the practice must be directed. In other words, it is not a learning process to wander around banging of frames of film for the sheer fun of shooting pictures. You learn by concentrating on a subject, planning the actual shooting and critically evaluating the results."

ahh..
t


  ¶ 11:12

 
Donnie Darko isn’t home on the night that a jet engine mysteriously comes crashing through his bedroom ceiling. He’s asleep on a lonely mountain road, next to his ten-speed. Donnie (played admirably by Jake Gyllenhall in the movie of the same name) is a troubled high-schooler with a penchant for sleepwalking and visitations from Frank, a pretty creepy looking giant rabbit, who warns him about the impending end of the world. It’s during one of Donnie’s midnight escapades that the engine comes screaming down from the heavens. He returns home in the morning, surprising his family who had assumed he’d been crushed. Federal agents abound; it turns out that no one knows where the engine came from. Donnie contemplates why he survived, and we begin to suspect we’re in for an interesting ride that goes well beyond Donnie’s internal struggles.

As the predicted end of the world draws closer, Donnie’s therapist (Katharine Ross) subjects him to hypnosis and regression. She diagnoses him with schizophrenia, but Donnie knows he’s having visions. Donnie starts exploring time travel as an explanation for the engine’s presence, and a teacher (Noah Wylie) surreptitiously gives him a forgotten book called “The Philosophy of Time Travel”. Donnie realizes that the author is a local woman nicknamed ‘Grandma Death’, regarded by many as the local kook. Donnie explores the concepts and ideas presented in the book as Frank’s visitations grow more frequent and more intense. He continues to sleepwalk and get into trouble at school. He becomes friends with and begins dating Gretchen Ross, the new girl (Jena Malone), who has problems of her own.

The image on the Moon card is that of two identical towers, the differences evident only in the dark night of the soul when things from the deep emerge. Up until this point, Donnie’s been, to some extent, buffeted by the forces at work without having a clear understanding of them. He’s been trying to figure out why he survived the jet engine, trying to understand if time travel was involved, and trying to comprehend his interactions with Frank and the things he doesn’t remember that he’s done while he’s been sleepwalking. He’s been pulled along by events, desperately trying to understand what’s happening.

It’s only after a Halowe’en party, when Gretchen is killed in an accident, that he realizes what he must do. In this dark night of his soul, Frank’s dark prophecies and Donnie’s experiences of the past month finally start to add up. He understands the tides that have been working on him, and understands what Frank had been trying to tell him. Donnie must make the very difficult choice whether or not to go back in time and change the course of events that led to Gretchen’s death, and decide if he’s willing to face the ramifications of that choice. He can sleepwalk to the mountaintop or he can go back to bed.

He’s seen the light and the dark, and the differences in the towers. He now knows which one has been pulling at him strongest, and which call he must follow. Ultimately, Donnie makes the only choice he can with the information he’s learned. He makes the ultimate sacrifice for love.

This article is the seventh in a series of film reviews based on the major arcana of the tarot. It was published in the Diana's Grove Mystery School Newsletter in July of 2004.
  ¶ 08:08