An Early Encounter With Nothingness

I recalled during my first year at the monastery Bro. Sedwick held a hands-on course titled “Existentialism in Existential Cinematography.” I do remember that we constructed a 16mm Bolex camera from balsa wood, also a boom and microphone from a broom stick and tin can. After typing our movie scripts, Bro. Sedwick collected them all and then tore each page into four pieces, then shuffled and reassembled the quartered pages randomly, ala William S. Burroughs, and scotch-taped the quarters back into full pages. After picking straws, a director was chosen, who then cast the ‘actors’ from the remaining students. It was in the dry riverbed behind the monastery that the neophyte actors attempted to rehearse from the cut and reassembled script, and I believe it was Bro. Carl who ‘filmed’ the final production with the balsa wood 16mm Bolex. After, I believe, four days and nights in that dry riverbed, the production was completed and we all returned to the monastery for a critique by Bro. Sedwick, but not before we viewed our production. I recall that we all stared silently at a blank wall for two hours before our ‘teacher’ suddenly stood and faced the class and applauded while shouting, “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”