it happened for me, and it will happen for you

I had to find a way to attend the Laite-Schlossenberger Hotel after party for the important film premiere. My sister told me she could get us in. We showed up, dressed best, and the bouncers gave us a pass (what did she whisper to them in that beautiful white?).

Maybe it was that we were early to the show. In the penthouse, sipping stiff drinks from fragile glasses, we talked with the staffers, waiting for the big names to show up. And arrive they did, Mickey and Brad, and the fake blondes and the painted-eyed.

We danced. And drank. Mingled. Fought off boredom and alcohol induced weariness. I met director Steven Soderbergh and he asked me to come be a part of his movie making experiment. My sister and I accompanied him home on the subway, curious.

His house was sparsely decorated, dark, and unnaturally expansive, hard to tell exactly how big something is when you can see every corner or wall. I told him I didn't act, he said that's fine, none of his subjects had been actors before the process I was about to go through, my sister was to remain a bystander. "I will pull a performance out of you, and it will happen despite you."

Steven described the initial scene:
"You will see a young Ethiopian boy named 'Gen' walking up a battle scarred hill. He will try to strike up conversation with you, the newcomer and passerby. Feel free to talk to him, he is friendly and will want to play with you."

And there was Gen, and Steven stood atop a hill that had piled itself into his great hall while my back was turned. Gen smiled to me and asked my name as he matched his stride to mine, hiking up the hill. But a bullet struck him down, and I crouched, crooned as he died in my arms.

And his head was delicate paper, fake, and out crawled a circus of beautiful little automaton puppets that Stan Brakhage and I had made together before I forgot. We planned this together, the three of us, as a reminder to me.

Crying, I laughed, surprised I had surprised myself, tears running down my face and I rose from the film dream, turning back to stoke the embers in the fireplace in Steven's endless, dark, great hall.

"Now you're getting there," he smiled, and we laughed, pleased at the performance we had immortalized.