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At
first the board with an
explanation, which will, as usually, explain a lot
but not
everything. Everything should not be explained,
especially in the
very beginning of the film which can not find if it
wants to be a
metaphor or not, if it wants to raise above realism
or fell below it,
or be just by it, before or after, in front of or
behind, or be
exactly inside it.
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We, The Emperor, want to
declare We have nothing in common with our
ancestors, besides the
fact We are their descendant. Somebody’s
offspring We must be. Of
course, as an emperor We could easily issue an
edict establishing
with no doubt that We are nobody’s descendant,
because We have been
born in the most extraordinary way – We have
jumped out from the
book – but We will not do this. We respect our
subjects who are not
that stupid, or at least they shouldn’t. To
deprive Our firstness
of any doubts, We emphasize that We are the only
one, hence the
first, in the world who possess the triple S in
the
nick-mock-family-name-alias. The double O has
not appeared by
accident, either – remember it.
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The throne. Maybe. It doesn’t
look like a throne. More like an ordinary armchair.
Ordinary? Rather
not. Extraordinary? It depends on what you imagine and
think. Of
ordinariness and extraordinariness. We, who are
watching, don’t
know what Emperor Bookasssa thinks about ordinariness
and
extraordinariness, what his demands and expectations
for a throne
are. For us, who are watching, it looks more like an
armchair. We
look at it carefully and wonder what it is made of. By the way we try to answer the following question: is everything an emperor or a king sit on a throne? Or maybe there is a kind of permanent, regular throne which is a throne even when an emperor doesn’t sit on it, and there are temporary thrones: an emperor, or a king, stands up, and a chair, or an armchair, stops to be the throne. We suppose this is what Emperor Bookasssa thinks of it. We can’t see if the emperor is sitting in the armchair, so if he is not sitting the armchair is just an armchair, even if it were a favourite one and nobody, except for the emperor, has a privilege to sit in it. We see the back of this piece of furniture. It is upholstered with a yellow cloth which if liked it could imitate gold, but it doesn’t like and doesn’t imitate it. It’s hard to say whether it is silk or linen, or a fabric we know nothing about while the empire is famous of it. The cloth is covered with letters and it’s hard to say, too, if they are printed or embossed. For sure they are almost illegible, because damaged and smudged, rubbed off, which looks so strange in case of the armchair’s back. Most probably for quite long time the armchair was standing at the wall, touching it. Did it fell into disgrace, and only now has once again won the emperor’s recognition? . . . . . There is another explanation: this is not the upholstery, this is just a coverlet. In many places the material ripples, sticks out, is torn – a stack of papers and cardboards can be seen under it; the prying eye of camera is penetrating just these holes… A cardboard armchair – a paper throne? The face. Speckled. Like a panther’s muzzle. Sometimes checkered. Sometimes striped. Horizontally, vertically, diagonally. It shimmers and sparkles. It vibrates. This is caused by the strong beam of light coming into the chamber through the window shrouded by something: a net curtain with a strange pattern that will soon turn out to be a part of a mysterious text crucial for revealing many a mystery of the empire? a roller-blind? a metal net with large mesh protecting against hornets? a wooden mashrabiya? a Gothic-like stone tracery owing its delicacy and finesse both to emperor’s masters and unique features of local rocks? That’s why it’s impossible to define the colour of Emperor’s skin – it shines, gleams, then turns to ash, is matt for a while, and again is glossy as though covered with sweat. The most skilled painter will not catch all these fluctuations, the most sensitive camera will give up. Like a draftsman virtuoso won’t be able to follow the quavering line of the nose simultaneously similar to an eagle’s beak and mashed potato, nor the wriggling line of his thinthick, pufflat, half-openly-tight lips. How about the eyes? Like those of a deer, of a dragonfly, of a crab… The head. Undefined. Amorfous. Globe-like? Spherical? Egg-shaped? Cubic? Bald? Hairy? Curly hairs or straight hairs? Curly in the front, straight in the back. Or vice versa. Alternately… Astonishing shots, amazing footage. The camera shows everything showing nothing. It shows nothing, while we can see everything… The head leaned a little. The head lost in reverie. Falling to the chest under the burden of thoughts. Or maybe just being lifted, less and less heavy, liberated from the thoughts, more and more empty and clean. Swaying like a balloon. It looks beautifully over the loose-fitting gown covering the emperor’s body. The Emperor’s old clothes. Some would expect the new ones. But the Emperor isn’t naked. Here, the king is naked, not the emperor. It’s the matter of tradition… The gown rustles gently. It is made of paper. Well, it looks like it is made of paper. Sown or glued or both. It’s quite rigid, can be creased and folded and torn easily. It is not one huge sheet, no, absolutely not. These are pages of various size covered with either printed or hand written texts. Recycled paper, no doubt about it. Something should be done with the huge amounts of documents produced by the Emperor’s clerks. The Emperor doesn’t like prodigality and wastes. That’s why he likes so much the rustling of his paper clothes. The printed paper reused rustles in a much more subtle way. Not many noises can be heard. The Emperor doesn’t toss and turn, doesn’t change his position all the time. He is sitting almost motionlessly. He keeps a book on his lap. The book. It’s printed on beautiful apple paper. Lightly greenish. Or lightly yellowish. Or yellogreenish. This is not the colour of the peel, this is the colour of the pulp – apples, although of many colours are all whitish inside. Sometimes a delicate afterimage of brown appears. And of warm gold. The pulp of every apple, regardless the colour of its peel will get brown after some time. Sometimes the dried apple slices are golden… The Emperor has a huge orchard, where only apple trees grow; they all bear paper apples. They are called so because when they are ripe or overripe their pulp is similar to a paper pulp, not because people used to make paper of them which they did not. All books in the Emperor’s library are printed on apple paper… This is what we suppose, what we expect, what we guess – the evocative power of pictures can be really enormous, and the power of the detail as well: the rough and porous surface of pages absorbs us completely. We don’t know what the book is about. We only know the Emperor is reading slowly. He turns pages seldom. The pages are quite big, so there must be a lot of text on them, but this is not the point. The Emperor reads slowly, because he savours what he reads. The Emperor tastes the words. He chews the phrases carefully to get from them all semantic nuances. Unexpectedly, with slow, solemn, but straight move he tears one sheet out; also slowly and solemnly he puts it between his teeth and bites o piece of it off. Then he grinds it with his strong jaws and swallows it, and bites the next piece off. And when the whole sheet disappears in the abyss of the Emperor’s mouth, he tears the next sheet off and devours it, too. Reading is fighting. When the enemy has been defeated, the enemy must be devoured to capture their power. The Emperor’s face is shining with delight. The Emperor’s body emanates potency. This is Bookasssa. The Bookeater. |
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All this happened on
Thursday.
Now is Friday. The armchair is empty. The Emperor is gone. He is out. The Emperor does something else. He is somewhere else. Nobody knows where. On Saturday the same. This is how the anyday life of The Emperor Bookasssa I looks like. |