Erik Lensherr | ( Magneto ) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wecanavenge) wrote2012-11-12 12:47 pm
wecanavenge) wrote2012-11-12 12:47 pm
✘ | 014 | VIDEO
[When the video clicks on, Erik stares into the camera for a silent second, his posture relaxed, his expression thoughtful. The helmet still sits on the edge of his desk, just out of site; he hasn't been wearing it. His fingers tap idly on the pages of an open book, da da da da, over and over until they go still, and he sits a little straighter.]
The Admiral enjoys putting us through hell. That much is obvious to anyone who has been here more than a month. Keep your arguments - if he doesn't enjoy it, it at least happens often. We have no control of it, only the certainty that when it ends, we will be back here to pick up the pieces. Sometimes we don't even have that, when our identities are robbed.
[His fingers drum against the pages again, and he glances down, eyes moving left to right, reading silently. After a moment, he lifts the book, showing the title: The Thirtieth Year, by Ingeborg Bachmann.]
This was published only a few years ago, in 1961. Ms. Bachmann grew up in Austria, during the war.
[His mouth pinches at the corners, painfully aware just how much everyone can discern of his childhood, thanks to the regression flood. But he goes on anyway.]
Despite that, there is a distinctly joyful tone in her writing. She philosophizes about language in many of these stories, about the invention of a pure language unfettered by desire, or imagination, or will. A language of truth. [Da da da da go his fingers, and he cups his jaw in his free hand, brows creased in thought.]
I traveled a great deal after escaping Germany. [After escaping Auschwitz; he doesn't say that his travel was, in fact, hunting.] I saw the rubble of cities, bombed out homes and destroyed blocks, as she no doubt did. And there is a choice, when you see those things. [He stops tapping, drops his hand from his jaw.] There can be anger, for those that cause such destruction, rage on behalf of the lives that were ruined, buried beneath stone. Or, there can be hope. Frail, but brave, for though there are ruined towns and millions of bodies to account for, you are still drawing breath.
[He falls silent again; Bachmann experienced the latter, he felt the former. And it's strange to say that their are choices when really he felt like he had none. There is still only one path - but sometimes, maybe, paths can brush before they part again.]
The title story is predictable: a man loses his lust for life, and only discovers it after a brush with death, while trapped in traction in a hospital, amongst the invalided and infirm. It isn't so different here, I think. We are trapped, at the mercy of our invasive and neglectful doctor, left to piece ourselves together after each great accident.
[He lifts the book again, flipping a page and searching for a passage.] And we do it, because to fall apart is to give in. "I say unto thee: Rise up and walk! None of your bones is broken." [He closes the book, and stares into the camera.]
I intend to walk out of here one day.
[But the way he says it doesn't leave it particularly clear - maybe he will graduate. Or maybe he will rip the Barge apart on his way out the proverbial door. Erik leaves the feed for a moment, before reaching forward and ending it.]
The Admiral enjoys putting us through hell. That much is obvious to anyone who has been here more than a month. Keep your arguments - if he doesn't enjoy it, it at least happens often. We have no control of it, only the certainty that when it ends, we will be back here to pick up the pieces. Sometimes we don't even have that, when our identities are robbed.
[His fingers drum against the pages again, and he glances down, eyes moving left to right, reading silently. After a moment, he lifts the book, showing the title: The Thirtieth Year, by Ingeborg Bachmann.]
This was published only a few years ago, in 1961. Ms. Bachmann grew up in Austria, during the war.
[His mouth pinches at the corners, painfully aware just how much everyone can discern of his childhood, thanks to the regression flood. But he goes on anyway.]
Despite that, there is a distinctly joyful tone in her writing. She philosophizes about language in many of these stories, about the invention of a pure language unfettered by desire, or imagination, or will. A language of truth. [Da da da da go his fingers, and he cups his jaw in his free hand, brows creased in thought.]
I traveled a great deal after escaping Germany. [After escaping Auschwitz; he doesn't say that his travel was, in fact, hunting.] I saw the rubble of cities, bombed out homes and destroyed blocks, as she no doubt did. And there is a choice, when you see those things. [He stops tapping, drops his hand from his jaw.] There can be anger, for those that cause such destruction, rage on behalf of the lives that were ruined, buried beneath stone. Or, there can be hope. Frail, but brave, for though there are ruined towns and millions of bodies to account for, you are still drawing breath.
[He falls silent again; Bachmann experienced the latter, he felt the former. And it's strange to say that their are choices when really he felt like he had none. There is still only one path - but sometimes, maybe, paths can brush before they part again.]
The title story is predictable: a man loses his lust for life, and only discovers it after a brush with death, while trapped in traction in a hospital, amongst the invalided and infirm. It isn't so different here, I think. We are trapped, at the mercy of our invasive and neglectful doctor, left to piece ourselves together after each great accident.
[He lifts the book again, flipping a page and searching for a passage.] And we do it, because to fall apart is to give in. "I say unto thee: Rise up and walk! None of your bones is broken." [He closes the book, and stares into the camera.]
I intend to walk out of here one day.
[But the way he says it doesn't leave it particularly clear - maybe he will graduate. Or maybe he will rip the Barge apart on his way out the proverbial door. Erik leaves the feed for a moment, before reaching forward and ending it.]
Private
Good.
Have you read any of Bachmann's work?
Private
Private