Picture this: The disaster of creating a scene, a scene framed by minutiae--letters, objects, flickers of other scenes gone astray, each thing affirming the sovereignty of overlapping accidents.
SCENE 2: DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT (A PHANTASMAGORIA FOR THE DEAD)
(Scene opens with a shot of a closed letter on the Master's Bed. A distant train is heard. A voiceover begins as the train fades away.)
VOICE (voiceover): I found the body yesterday. I found the letter in the cavity between it and the floor. I have not moved the body. I have not opened the letter.
FADE TO BLACK.
WORDS APPEAR ON THE SCREEN: THE BASEMENT.
(Scene opens on the reflection of a candle flickering from a mirror in recline on hard concrete floor. The sound of digging is heard. Suddenly it stops. A long silence. Then a large object is flung into view as reflection, a time capsule perhaps, its contents spill out. The same voice heard early speaks again.)
VOICE (A voiceover. As each element is spoken of, another object is shown): Things grow down here. Secretions. Strange transparent leftovers: A keyhole, an eye without a body, a photograph of something very small, an electric bill, page 2 of a memo about 'vision and vehicularity', some Canadian cheddar wrapping, a vacuum tube, and a tin sphinx.
(The candle light blows out and the rattle of a truck passing by is heard. The VOICE speaks over the black screen).
VOICE (voiceover): I never opened the letter. I left the body beneath the bed. I left the things in the dark basement. (sound of phone ringing.) They still call me sometimes in the early morning, they remind me I am small part of this still inventory, a cavity, a thick abstracted image. (sound of picking up the phone). Yes, I agree, ask the blue lady. Yes, my private letters, I never read them. I keep them beneath things, like phantoms. Yes, It's Ernst who gives you his hand at night, like a drug. Do you know him? Yes it's all shrouded in precise invisibility. Yes, well then, good night. (sound of phone hanging up).
(Scene of opening shot of the letter on the bed. VOICE voiceover).
VOICE (voiceover): Smiling like a salesgirl, stripped bare, I script more scenes that will take each separate fact and the endless story of the dead into the virtual unity of blind memory. Like a lover drifting away.