Page 23 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 4 #3

Falcon: Because I can't speak the words. If they even exist. Yes. I connect to women. Do I love
every woman I photograph? I can't answer that. I don't even know what that means.
I open myself to them. I ask them to share the moment with me - I ask them to let their
death be mine - for a brief moment so that they will know that they are not alone - at least for
that moment they are safe - safe because I open my death to them - because I open to them the
same sadness they carry in their hearts. I understand. I ask them to give their sadness to me,
to let go of the pain, to let it be mine..... So that for one brief moment, we are not alone..... even
though in the end, death will have her way....... Because the promise of love cannot be fulfilled,
even in art, even in a photograph.
Francois: 'And so you see I have come to doubt all that I once held as true. I stand alone without
belief, the only truth I know is you.'
Falcon: Yes. Think about - what would it be like to know every moment of every day not only that
you are dying but that your beauty is fleeting. Passing. Diminishing...... How would you feel?
Francois: I understand but how does this relate to the book and why do so many people feel that
it is as much about romance as it is about art, philosophy, or photography?
Falcon: What do you want me to say? You want me to quote Nietzsche or would you prefer Koes-
tler or Paul Simon?
Francois: Easy - I didn't mean to --
Falcon: What you intended doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything - we seek intimacy - we
need intimacy - we need to feel that we are not alone - if only for a moment as we go to our death
- and yet for many that is never a real possibility - "And you read your Emily Dickinson and I
my Robert Frost and we note our place with book markers that measure what we have lost - and
how the room is softly faded - I only kiss your shadow I cannot feel your hand - you're a stranger
to me now. Lost......."
Francois: So is it about the sadness? Is that what this is about?
Falcon: Sadness is the fabric of time.
Francois: I can't pretend I understand what that means.
Falcon: In the Heideggerean view of the world, opening oneself to the world's disclosure of itself
is inseparable from opening oneself to the deafening emptiness of the Angst which is born in the
realization that with every passing moment we are a moment closer to death. In that moment
when I open myself - when I love - that which is in front of my camera I again open myself to
the possibility that this moment, like every moment, could be my last. I open myself not only to
the possibility of my own death, but to the death and dying - before my eyes as I watch through
the lens - of that which has disclosed itself to me - be that a woman, a flower..... It matters not.
Woven into that moment is sadness - in fact it is sadness that is the twine, the thread,
that binds my experience together. To be in the world authentically evokes sadness. Sadness is
always there. It places its cold and sterile lips upon my forehead at nyght and it wakens me with
the chill of its kiss each morning. 'Is this the last dawn I shall see?'
Francois: I'm sorry.
Falcon: About what?
Francois: I couldn't live that way.
Falcon: What makes you think anyone can?
Francois: I'm afraid I can't answer that. Perhaps it is best we end here. I am, well, sad and I do
not know what to do or think or feel.
Falcon: Then we are done.

return to contents Summer 2014 | 23