Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The Never-Finished Poem: Would Require Recreating an Uncomfortable Fugue


Brown Orpheuses: The E-Motion Picture
-“Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33”Jose Ojeda

While watching the news coverage leading up to the start of the Chilean Miner Rescue attempt,
The story shows several women (wifes, mothers, and even older children) primping themselves for the night,
They put on makeup, style their hair, pick out the most appropriate outfits.
My father found this strange, and laughed cynically and derisively.
Before he said that I had tears swelling in my eyes,
“That’s beautiful,” I told him, on the borderline of sobbing,
“That’s poetry,” and I meant it.
If you wanted to be a real intellectual scum, you might argue that the women’s presentations were
For the 1000s of cameras poised around the sight, and that this is all theatre.
Even so, theatre is reflected from and reflects back at life, it provides the ever-needed catharsis.
While there may always be a sense of commodity and frivolousness to gender displays;
There is no question that the root of the women’s adornment is love.
A love so deep that they want to look as well put together and perfect as they can be.
Not for themselves alone, but for the lovers and family that they so agonizingly missed.
The first sight of themselves that they want the miners to see is not of a disheveled, dirty, tear-stained mess,
Even if that’s what they were for those two-plus months; that’s not what is needed.
Rather, they want to razzle dazzle them with the seduction of familiarity and home.

And while I knew that my experience with these men is tainted by media sensationalism,
While I know that the media executives are in love with the story, and all the advertisement revenue,
Exclusive interviews, days and days of replaying the more heart-wrenching moments, and the
Positive associations that are reprieve from the superficial and depraved aspects of media-saturation;
Are all things that will deepen their pockets and raise their towers…
I know that I could get real cynical and Baudrillardian, but I’ll slap myself if I do so.
You can throw a lot of critiques about the sincerity of reporters and the media-apparatus they feed.
The reporters there outnumbered the family members and rescuers.
The paparazzi-reporting style our country is used to makes us skeptical of their motivations and methods,
But when I watched the television footage of the first few rescues, and saw the tears that covered every face,
Some reporters putting the cameras down in order to really experience the wonderful thing that was Happening at the moment. Maybe even they realized that video-documentation would do no justice
To the electrifying humanity that was occurring. A genuinely tear inducing and life-affirming event.
  
Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33


Florencio Avalos, 31, Driver, was the first rebirth. He hugged his seven-year old son, his wife,
And then the Chilean President.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Mario Sepulveda, 40, Electrical Specialist, the second unearthed, his yells audible before
The capsule reaches the surface; his wife laughs with élan, he smiles immensely. The Jester of the group then Reaches into his bag and pulls out rocks from the mine, that he then gives to his Rescuers as presents,
Souvenirs from a trip to a part of the world that usually isn’t seen as a relaxing get-a-way.
He then bounds with exuberance to a group of spectators several feet away.
He literally leaps into their arms. Pulling back from the tear-soaked embrace,
He starts to lead everyone in a chant, his fists pumps into the air, and he becomes a man truly alive,
The real heroes of our modern and multi-media age.
With utter sincerity he told his Rescuers, “I was with God and with the devil – and good took me.”

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

When Juan Illanes was released, 52, Miner, he was asked about his trip in the rescue capsule, he responded, “Like a cruise!”
He doesn’t make a show.
He is no bronze-medalist. Everyone interconnect to the scene are Golden.
The first thing you see on his face through the mesh cage as it emerges is a sly smirk,
A look of incredulity, of subtle awe, and complete contentment about being reconnected.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

At 24, Carlos Mamani has expressed that his days as a Heavy Machinery Operator within mines are over.
An outcast of the outcasts, being a Bolivian National in the torrent of Chilean pride,
He knells and says “thank you to everyone,” and it is clear that he and the others are no longer
So easily demarcated by National lines, they are citizens on the world, they are comrades in open arms.
He is the fourth.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

 Young Jimmy Sanchez, 19, had only been a miner for five amounts. He is the fifth to be uprooted.
Limper and weaker than the others, but his shell-shock is more than warranted.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

“I will fight to the end to be with you,” was a message Osman Araya, 30, Miner, sent up while he was down,
He greets his wife with a blanket of tears sloshing across his face.
Their hug lasts just a minute, but it feels like eternity to them.
Six up.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Lucky number seven. Jose Ojeda, 56, Master Driller, the writer of the note that has now become motif.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Eight: Claudio Yanex
Christina Nunya, the “wife” he hugs,. Kisses his two daughters, first time seeing the mining team that have supported him through audio communication.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Nine:

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f


Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Ariel Ticona, 29, a miner. He missed the first two births of his children with Elizabeth Segovia,
The first time he wanted to watch a football game,
The second time because he felt “squeamish,”
This time he was hit by the cruel ironies of situation, as he wanted to see the birth of his third.
The baby was born on the 40th day that Ariel was still trapped.
Much like my own experiences of these symbolic births, he was only able to see it through video.
The child was named Esperanza, Hope, a sentiment that is bullet-proof to cynical shots.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Ricardo;  (28). Laughs and ribs.  He hugs his wife and daughter by wrapping them in the Chilean flag.

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

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Phoenix 2

They didn’t descend down there looking for their love, the sweet Eurydice, but rather,
Stalked the depths for copper, the life-metal of technological devices and architecture.
They didn’t claim the copper for themselves, for that goes to the corporate interest,
They received nadir levels of compensation, just enough to keep their families taken care of.
Workers that were economically and structural alienated before the catastrophe,
Became visitors to a subterranean homesick blues.

But that posh Marxist reading cannot adequately account for what happened when the City of
Hope, a community of support, constant fear, but with ever-increasing anticipation and excitement.

69 days in the fire is long enough.


For some reason the pulley contraption they’ve erected looks like an Oil Drill out of “There Will be Blood.”



17 days of loss and confusion, the bug

Setting the footage switch to the underground cam, a setting consisting of moot colors and sparse lighting,
The remaining men are constiently …
Sounds of whistling is overheard, as the few remaining men in the cavern must feel like,
Children on Christmas day, except they’re taking a reverse Santa Claus role. 

The photograph of Yanez applauding while being carried away my medics is sublime,
Surrounded by digiligance, the

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

-Claudio (26), his daughter started crying minutes before his capsule resurfaced. As he hugs his family, the daughter starts to cry more. She keeps screaming “mama,” His rescuers pull him away. They cheer and shake his hand. His daughter’s cries reverberate through the scene, and is still heard by her father as he is wheeled away. You can tease out a lot of meaning behind that, but best leave it be

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

(27) Franklin Lobos, a former national team soccer player. Greeted by chants of “Ole Ole Ole Ole,”
Someone passed him a soccer ball, which he starts to kick around to the glee of the crowd,

Estamos Bien En El Refugio los 33

(28)

During the live-feed, there was an unexpected cut to a shot of three horse-men on a mountain slope,
Silhouetted by the sinking sun. The composition invokes John Ford and his westerns.
Those Western archetypal heroes are no compare,



-The phoenix…
Something very sexual, a red and blue dick, like Gottfried riding in the bomb 0001, a skin-tight suit, and blasting back into the present.

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