In “The Sci­ence of Sleep” Gael Gar­cía Bernal cre­ates a fas­ci­nat­ing and — to those of us who live in the Fluxus World — totally under­stand­able vision of of a man’s life wherein the dream becomes the real­ity and the real­ity con­tains frag­ments of truth and lie. Beau­ti­ful dreamer, wake unto me, starlight and dew­drops are wait­ing for thee. In grade school, now here is the ulti­mate Fluxus Flash­back, Julie Gret­tum sang “Beau­ti­ful Dreamer” as a solo, on stage, must have been around 196, Echols School. The rest of us sang “It’s a Grand Old Flag” because it was a high fly­ing flag and for­ever in peace may she wave. She might be the emblem of the land I love, but she is also the home of the free and the brave. One hand cel­e­brates Woody Guthrie while the other? It rides the City of New Orleans. Julie’s mother made pasta, I remem­ber their kitchen and the dry­ing pasta hang­ing from wooden stands. And her father, Rus­sell, owned ware­houses. They smoked Pall Malls. I remem­ber the Art Nou­veau box design, the red box. My par­ents smoked Win­stons. Boxes, per­haps then began my fas­ci­na­tion with same?

What courage it took, being young and we snig­gered as chil­dren do — singing soprano like that — a creepy sound­ing song with mis­mash­able lyrics, so con­fus­ing to a 10 year old, made no sense… as a dream con­trolled by wak­ing. “You won’t be spaghetti.” “Is the water made of tiny pieces of cellophane?”

“Stéphane? Are you asleep?” Today, I too will cre­ate a “dis­as­terol­ogy” cal­en­dar. Copies will be avail­able for pur­chase in Novem­ber. You will want to order one. Tune back to this Blog Chan­nel in 42 days for com­plete infor­ma­tion. We’ll live in our cor­ru­gated card­board world. It’s as if our synapses are directly related to our fin­gers, eh?

Watch The Sci­ence of Sleep.
Watch it and you will see Fluxus Cinema.

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