Ginger Sand

Chamber Trauma

"Once upon a time I taught school in the hills of Tennessee, where the broad dark vale of the Mississippi begins to roll and crumple to greet the Alleghanies. I was a Fisk student then, and all Fisk men think that Tennessee — beyond the Veil — is theirs alone, and in vacation time they sally forth in lusty bands to meet the country school commissioners. Young and Happy, I too went, and I shall not soon forget that summer, ten years ago."
—W. E. B. Du Bois, "A Negro Schoolmaster in the New South" [1899]

The Chickasaw air has been vanquished by Chicago winter's harsh gusts, and the shift is so abrupt as to reinforce the Team Picture milieu as Utopia and its summer as a moment in time to be prized. In the epilogue short Ginger Sand, David has ventured north, either in pursuit of that Sarah girl, or not, or got derailed somewhere long the course of the quest. Sarah vanished like all visions, and her substitute, Brandi (Brandi Perkins), has chanced to visit across the same weekend Eric and his girlfriend (Rose McCallum) are set to show. Their arrival activates a garrulous new mood in the host, before Brandi's passive-aggression tempers it back into catatonia by short's end.

Ginger Sand by Kentucker Audley, 2008:




A lot of us have been in that exact apartment more-or-less, and there's no point to analyzing the subtleties of the situation's dynamic because Audley's already accomplished the task and if the cinema's there to give the straight story without the 'writing' then my doubling-up on the matter would be, I think, not only a redundant effort but would make me look like a bigger idiot with the ill and age-old wish that performing 'criticism' on the matter can enact Mastery........ The question implicitly rises: "Who're your subjects, Master?", to which I guess the would-be critic would have to respond, and only then when forced: "Why, I am now master of this work," although what he really means to say even if he can't recognize it or won't admit it is: "This artwork is now my subject, and I have also mastered its artist, because I have spoke him." Q.E.D. Film criticism is above all an act of tremendous vanity. On one hand. On the other, I've decided, it's anxiety over the act of being a consumer as opposed to a creator.

Ginger Sand by Kentucker Audley, 2008:



"Excuse me, rude awakening, get up!" riffs Morton (in another amazing performance — this guy is something else) about turning the tables on Brandi, chef of what Morton terms "ginger sand" and who's a far temperamental cry from his own tagging-along GF, let alone the vision-girl in that line from the Kentucker recording stashed on the Benten disc: "And we could look up grey-goo on a website every day and take notes." A perfect sentiment and one that for me too's probably just as good as the someday patter of little feet.

Ginger Sand by Kentucker Audley, 2008:



But that's the thing with girls — they charm you with a little Du Bois and next they're inveigling a knife in your spine.

Ginger Sand by Kentucker Audley, 2008:



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