Image of Obsession: Older People in Exile

 Fahrenheit 451 Monorail Scene

An Image of Future

I have been obsessed by Images and complexes of Images all my life. Their vividness has interfered with my ability to function at some times. For most of my life, they were just nonsense Images, similar to OCD behavior maybe, not quite as strong, not quite as compelling... maybe. Since the turn of the century, however, these Images have taken on more reality and seem to have been forerunners of the images we see in the daily news.
One of the Images that have beset me throughout the last 40 years has been that of old people gathered into their own communities of exile, living out their days apart from a society which does not want them. Over time it became a mimicry of the final scene in Fahrenheit 451 : Oskar Werner reciting and memorizing a forbidden book, walking with Julie Christie, surrounded by the other old people who recited the forbidden books they had memorized; as the camera pulled back, snow began to fall.

It also took the form of an elderly Lord of the Flies, and at times a Swiss Family Robinson combined with Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome... and every day we recite "the Tell", the story of who we once were and where we came from.

There is a sense of having escaped into a refuge; it is a hard life, but better than the one we (yes, "we"!) escaped from, and there is a good life somewhere in the Future!

From Beyond Thunderdome:

Time counts and keeps countin', and we knows now finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride. But that's our trek, we gotta' travel it.
And there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna' lead. Still in all, every night we does the Tell, so that we 'member who we was and where we came from...
And we lights the city... for all of them that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there come a night, when they sees the distant light, and they'll be comin' home.

I am beginning to see the Image become Reality in the News.

 

Monorail Trash being used to Shelter the Homeless

--
pix
http://oliverlunn.blogspot.com/2010/12/british-landscape-in-frenchmans-film.html
http://zapatopi.net/blog/?post=200412114840.french_monorail_trash