There is a certain kind of movie that is not seen often any more. I mean slow, silent moves. Silent not in the sense that there would be no sound, no, I mean movies that take their time. Movies where between scenes the screen fades to black, movies that don’t scream “ACTION!!!” in your face, movies like Jim Jarmusch’s “Down by Law” or David Lynch’s “The Straight Story”. These movies teach us to see, and sometimes even to live.
This afternoon I was in the restaurant Ufertaverne, sitting on the covered middle terrace, half in the shadow, took my time to see, and to listen to the silence.
Nikon 18-200, 105mm at f5.3 and 1/160s. Straight from the camera.
“Silence” is a song by bassist Charlie Haden. I have it on his Liberation Music Orchestra masterpiece “The Ballad of the Fallen”, but today we need the much more contemplative version on “Magico”, recorded in 1979 with Egberto Gismonti and Jan Garbarek.