Self Portrait

In my earliest memory, there is an old television flickering in black and white, the brown faces of Indian men struggling with the static to stand in the middle of the screen. It’s a story about a black dog, a mute, a corrupt government official and a do gooder who gets himself killed. I think I am 3.
But this might be faulty, given how well I remember; the scene that is stuck with me happens in a grave yard. There’s the dog, the mute and the corrupt official and for some reason, a snake. The official is about to be defeated. He has been beaten and is surrounded but the final blow does don’t come. The camera pans out and zooms in, taking his face and those of his attackers in various angles of panic and rage and righteous fury.
Again, this could be dubious but I think this is where I learn that they are different ways to see, this is where I learn to see and this is where he comes from.
There is a man living inside my head. Even though he isn’t a mute, he never says anything except with his hands. And eyes. And head. He pushes a camera around everything, pans out, zooms in, pause, rewind, and recently, bookmark. I have learnt to pose for him, to sit with my legs and arms inside the frame and hold my head in a way that annouces that I am the muse of his work. Sometimes, I am eager to please. I move my hands too frantically. I talk with a voice that falls out of television and grinds in my throat like gravel. Even this doesn’t make him talk. He just shakes his head and turns the camera somewhere else, his look is my queue to clear my throat and readjust. It is how I imagine directors look at their amateur porn artists when they take their eyes of their partners to find clues from the camera, betraying the fantasy.
Sometimes, I forget that he is there. That he is everywhere. There is only one place I can ask him not to come. And it’s when I use the toilet. I guess turds have never made great cinema. But sometimes he still asks to come. Or he let’s me watch the film he is making. The film comes out a little different, brighter sometimes, darker most, cropped, narrowed, mirrored. The sounds are cleaner than life, rarely ever more than one voice and the details are sharper, yet scantier, as if his intention was to make just one thing exist.
He likes it best when I forget he is there, a shadow beyond my shadow, cutting and cropping my life to moments he thinks are cinematic. The videos are better this way. Sometimes, he gives me pictures too. A moment frozen solid for me, forever. Why can’t I be like this more? I see the question in his impatient hands when my gestures become too much like acting. I want to jump out on him sometimes, grab the camera by its stands and throw it through his formlessness. I want to yell, how do you forget something that lives in your head?! But I can not break the fantasy.

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