horizon

A poem or brief poetic collage of 16mm home movie footage from Egypt in the 1950s along with elements of Capra's Lost Horizon soundtrack interwoven with recordings of a small and frustrated boy. 

The original footage was given to me by my mother, who worked some 30 years as a maid for the millionaire couple who shot this while on an around-the-world honeymoon trip. The woman’s voice pondering utopia, peace and joy; the small boy frustrated by the tonal and linguistic romanticism of this expression. 

It is hard to consider utopia without considering class. Hard for me. It is hard to consider Hegel’s notion of the sky and land meeting at the horizon. The earth, the heavens, the woeful metaphors all tumbling around this tiny video. There is so much to say about Shangri-La. It is, like the horizon, always present, always out of reach.