Moving along faster than I’d imagined, this week was busy with working things out with Almuinha and Mauro, shooting some things, getting used to my camera – I have had it now 4 years I think, maybe more – but haven’t used it that much, especially in the last 2 years. All thumbs at the moment. And meeting new people.
As seems my habit these days – more like decades – my thoughts form around hard realities: what place can I get into, who are the people who’ll work/play with me, what can I get my hands on or what falls in my lap. And then, little by little, things begin to form, and whatever vague thought I had begins to materialize before my eyes. So I had imagined none of these people, least of all “characters” nor had I any clear conception of a structure for this film, but now it begins to jiggle into place.
Here, shot a few days ago, is a regionally well-known singer, Ugía Pedreira, who has been instrumental, so I am told, in bringing back traditional Galician songs and music. This is a love-song, shot in the cloister of the Convent of San Domingos de Bonaval, in Santiago.
Ugía Pedreira reading poem
Take a walk to center most days, to do some chore or another, to see and feel the city, and just to take a walk. The cathedral it is about 2.4 kilometers away, though I tend to wander a bit and make it a longer jaunt.
Santiago de Compostela is famed, for now many centuries, as a pilgrimage vortex, once for devout Christians to genuflect at the grave of Saint James, who was deemed in a manner second in line to Christ. And like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it is surely false, encrusted with now several millennia of myth. His body was said to have been sent on a stone boat to the shores of Galicia and…. Oh, dem bones. Which curiously is a bit what Casa do Silencio is “about” – the veils of memory, the tendency for stories, especially those which have been subject to a kind of suppression, to take on their own life, and however false in origins and to become “real.” Myths.
I doubt that in these days many of the peregrini who make the trek from France, or Porto, are animated by the thought of placing themselves near the bones of a saint, rather I suspect most are people who like to hike, walk, and be outdoors, and perhaps wish a time of solitude as a kind of New Age-y self-therapy. Though they may find the solitude supplanted by a communal “we’re on the camino” comradery, as the numbers now allow little room for being alone.
Sedia-m’eu na ermida de San Simion, part of medieval troubador song by Mendinho, his one surviving song.
/
Non ei i barqueiro, nen remador:
e morrerei fremosa no mar maior,
eu atendendo meu amigo.Non ei i barqueiro, nen sei remar:
e morrerei eu fremosa no alto mar,
eu atendendo meu amigo./
I have no boatman, nor anyone to row:
And I’ll die, beautiful me, in the vast sea,
Me waiting for my dear friend.I have no boatman and don’t know how to row,
……………….. ……………….. Mendinho
And I’ll die, beautiful me, in the sea so vast,
Me waiting for my dear friend.
And a version by Amalia Rodriguez here.
So things move along, little clusters of possibilities, ideas, immersing myself in things local, trying to get a sense of place and culture. Meantime I wander the area nearby my B&B here in Conxo. Vague hints of an Antonioni world.
In another 10 days likely move to Piloño, where we’ll be in countryside, and perhaps the bulk of the film will be done? All unclear, which is as it should be for this kind of thing. Meantime on the mundane side of things, this past week finally jumped the hoops needed and my Washington State Drivers license is headed my way, so I can drive again.
While it seems I’ve raised enough to not dip into my savings for making this, any help still appreciated. Check earlier posts on that.
For earlier posts see links below.
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CASA DO SILENCIO 