I have a dear friend (we'll call him
Smokey) who enjoys an occasional
trip through the shroom patch. These trips, if I understand it, are most enjoyable for Smokey if he can "get lost," you know? So they tend to planned around vacations in the woods, the desert, or other such middle-of-nowhere locales.
One such vacation, a group camping expidition at Oswald State Park in Oregon (quite lovely), Smokey awoke before the group, had "breakfast", and by the time the rest of us were up, he had already planned a day trip of his own.
Armed with only a videocamera, Smokey set off through the trees. I wondered, as a good friend is prone to do, if this was such a wise idea, letting Smokey go through the woods on his own, drenched in psychedelic mindset. What could I do? He was gone.
We went about our day, hiking, beach-combing, snacking, with no sign of Smokey. Finally, just before sunset, Smokey returned
with footage.
Now, my days of tripping are well behind me, and I general don't find much interest in the "psychedelic lifestlye." But Smokey gave me a copy of his videocassete, and it is something that, to this day, both insipres and mesmerizes me.
Minutes of out-of-focus dead jellyfish in the sand footage, cut mindnumblingly fast, straight to a FULLY ZOOMED shot of the center of the sun, then a leaf blowing delicately on the end of a branch, then running through the woods, then more beach, then seagull shit, piles and piles of seagull shit, then the lenscover closed--black screen--and just the sound of feet tromping for minutes on end.
I don't pretend to understand how this thing was made, nor do I wish to try to relive it, but it is definitely among my TOP 5 movies of all time.
For Smokey's Oswald footage, Not Crap.
