rashomon

[note #28]

Friends,

You know, I’m sure, the 1950 Kurasowa film Rashomon, or at least you’ve heard of it. It’s the source of what’s called the Rashomon effect, in which several and conflicting stories of the same event are presented. It’s left to the audience or the reader or the judge or the survivors to decide what is real.

It begins with three men in the ruins of a temple: a woodcutter, a priest, and a commoner.

It’s raining hard.

The first words, spoken by the woodcutter, are: I don’t understand, I just don’t understand.

The priest listens. The commoner tears pieces of wood from the walls to make a fire.

The woodcutter repeats: I don’t understand it at all. I just don’t understand.

Over the course of the film four vastly different accounts are given of the murder of a samuri. In the film begins with the woodcutter telling the story of the murder and the subsequent trial. We then shift between the trial and the actual version of each story as it is being told. The main suspect is a bandit, played by the great actor Toshiro Mifune. He’s been captured riding the dead man’s horse, carrying his sword. He tells his story of killing the samuri, and that it was justified, as they were fighting. The dead man’s wife tells of being rejected by the samuri after she’d been raped by the bandit, and the fight that followed. The woodcutter saw what happened, as he came upon them in the forest and hid behind a tree. The dead samuri even gives his version, channeled through a mystic.

I watched it a couple nights ago.

I’ve been working on a book for the past two years that circles around my years of living on boats and a friend I had those years (Richard). I’ve come to the end of what I can remember, so I’ve begun to move outward, to track down and speak to Richard’s friends, those who knew him before I did.

Speaking with them has begun to feel like I’m inside Rashomon.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS

10-15 aug / Fine Arts Work Center / Provincetown MA (SOLD OUT)

7-12 sept / Orchard Lane / Red Hook, NY (TWO SPACES LEFT)

5-10 oct / Omega Institute / Rhinebeck NY (FIVE SPACES LEFT)

UPCOMING EVENTS

13 aug / Fine Arts Work Center / reading & artist talk / Provincetown, MA.

11 sept / Kaatsbaan / On Literary Kinship: Nick Flynn + Marie Howe / Tivoli NY

12 sept / Writer-ish / reading + discussion / worldwide (via substack)

24 sept / Stoneybrook University / reading + discussion / Manhattan NY

8 oct / Omega Institute / performance / Rhinebeck NY

9 oct / Morton Library / a discussion w/ Susan Orlean / Rhinebeck NY

3 nov / Writeability / online workshop / worldwide (via zoom)

19 nov Regatta Bar / Earful / reading / Cambridge MA