before so literally. Did Saul even recall that he’d advised she record her life? My anxieties, however, were soon drowned by her enthusiasm, and I told myself that unfamiliar as I was to happiness, it was not to be feared.
I plugged her new camera into the back of Saul’s TV and she set it on top facing the room and we spent most of the day reading the manual, taking turns pushing buttons, watching ourselves on the screen, moving in and out of shot. After an hour of her filming the pizza-coloured seventies vinyl carpet, Saul’s scattered records and the woodchip wallpaper, walking round eye to Panasonic, bumping into things then playing it back, her energy started flagging.
— Filming life ‘as it is’ is banal old school socialist miserablism,’ Saul declared. — You must remain true to your beliefs [which were his] and record your own radical transformation, he said, invoking Nietzsche, although Nietzsche never had a video camera.
We had a break for some pasta and Dot filmed that too. Saul declared it was like
Eat
by Warhol – a forty-five-minute single shot of one of the Factoryites eating a mushroom, so we put on the Velvet Underground in homage. Saul said we should nick lots of tinfoil to wallpaper the room with – à la the Factory circa ’64, and that Dot could, with a bit of a makeover, be the next Edie Sedgwick. A few books scattered and images of Edie later, Dot stood before Saul’s Victorian wardrobe as he, in the depths of the thing, threw out things for her to try on.
— Could you film for me? she asked, a little nervously, handing me the camera.
His camouflage military trousers; his SLUT T-shirt; his stolen Armani jacket with the holes in the elbows; his spray-on black PVC trousers; his Palestinian headscarf – all the time he ran back and forward to change the records – to create the optimum environment for the birth of a new self, he declared, explaining his philosophy of attire, — ‘Jeans are banned, they stink of James Dean and napalm’ — ‘One’s attire should be offensive’ — ‘We cannot transform the masses but we can at least have a revolution in our own wardrobes’ — ‘Every item should clash with every other as it was for the punks and surrealists’ — ‘A contemptuous semiotic montage’ — ‘One should endeavour to be a new person every day: three incompatible people every hour. To face a face one does not know in the mirror and destroy the bourgeois colonialist myth of the self’. And other such Saulisms. I sat on his bed laughing to myself, recalling the first time I had stripped for him to dress me.
Saul’s enthusiasm soon overwhelmed Dot’s shyness and in no time she was standing in bra and panties, then trying on his shoes, then motorcycle boots, army boots, his filthy ‘Kerouac’ plimsoll trainers. Then his T-shirts – his Elvis one, then the one that read ‘JESUS IS YOUR FRIEND’, his seventies stripy lady’s vinyl blouse, his goth winklepickers, his Black Watch tartan military trousers, his pinstriped Hugo Boss business shirt. — If two things go together then I know I’ve got it wrong. It’s the same with people! I despise monogamous clothing, he proclaimed.
I filmed her laughing at herself in the mirror and Saul’s hands hovering around her, not touching, proffering ever more absurd changes as if he were Picasso conceiving a cubist masterpiece. Then army boots, bare legs and his long T-shirt, the one with the picture of Carlos the Jackal from Saul’s ultra-left terrorist period.
— But it’s too short, she protested. — It’s like I’m wearing a nightie!
— Ah yes, but you are putting the ass back into class! Besides, the pornographic effect is offset by the military boots and the terrorist chic: little Red-Army Faction slapper. You see, not a cliché in sight.
She twirled around, almost falling in the outsized boots as Saul smoked, contemplating her image, dissatisfied with his
Demoiselles d’Avignon
.
— I don’t know.
I plugged her new camera into the back of Saul’s TV and she set it on top facing the room and we spent most of the day reading the manual, taking turns pushing buttons, watching ourselves on the screen, moving in and out of shot. After an hour of her filming the pizza-coloured seventies vinyl carpet, Saul’s scattered records and the woodchip wallpaper, walking round eye to Panasonic, bumping into things then playing it back, her energy started flagging.
— Filming life ‘as it is’ is banal old school socialist miserablism,’ Saul declared. — You must remain true to your beliefs [which were his] and record your own radical transformation, he said, invoking Nietzsche, although Nietzsche never had a video camera.
We had a break for some pasta and Dot filmed that too. Saul declared it was like
Eat
by Warhol – a forty-five-minute single shot of one of the Factoryites eating a mushroom, so we put on the Velvet Underground in homage. Saul said we should nick lots of tinfoil to wallpaper the room with – à la the Factory circa ’64, and that Dot could, with a bit of a makeover, be the next Edie Sedgwick. A few books scattered and images of Edie later, Dot stood before Saul’s Victorian wardrobe as he, in the depths of the thing, threw out things for her to try on.
— Could you film for me? she asked, a little nervously, handing me the camera.
His camouflage military trousers; his SLUT T-shirt; his stolen Armani jacket with the holes in the elbows; his spray-on black PVC trousers; his Palestinian headscarf – all the time he ran back and forward to change the records – to create the optimum environment for the birth of a new self, he declared, explaining his philosophy of attire, — ‘Jeans are banned, they stink of James Dean and napalm’ — ‘One’s attire should be offensive’ — ‘We cannot transform the masses but we can at least have a revolution in our own wardrobes’ — ‘Every item should clash with every other as it was for the punks and surrealists’ — ‘A contemptuous semiotic montage’ — ‘One should endeavour to be a new person every day: three incompatible people every hour. To face a face one does not know in the mirror and destroy the bourgeois colonialist myth of the self’. And other such Saulisms. I sat on his bed laughing to myself, recalling the first time I had stripped for him to dress me.
Saul’s enthusiasm soon overwhelmed Dot’s shyness and in no time she was standing in bra and panties, then trying on his shoes, then motorcycle boots, army boots, his filthy ‘Kerouac’ plimsoll trainers. Then his T-shirts – his Elvis one, then the one that read ‘JESUS IS YOUR FRIEND’, his seventies stripy lady’s vinyl blouse, his goth winklepickers, his Black Watch tartan military trousers, his pinstriped Hugo Boss business shirt. — If two things go together then I know I’ve got it wrong. It’s the same with people! I despise monogamous clothing, he proclaimed.
I filmed her laughing at herself in the mirror and Saul’s hands hovering around her, not touching, proffering ever more absurd changes as if he were Picasso conceiving a cubist masterpiece. Then army boots, bare legs and his long T-shirt, the one with the picture of Carlos the Jackal from Saul’s ultra-left terrorist period.
— But it’s too short, she protested. — It’s like I’m wearing a nightie!
— Ah yes, but you are putting the ass back into class! Besides, the pornographic effect is offset by the military boots and the terrorist chic: little Red-Army Faction slapper. You see, not a cliché in sight.
She twirled around, almost falling in the outsized boots as Saul smoked, contemplating her image, dissatisfied with his
Demoiselles d’Avignon
.
— I don’t know.
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