Pip jumps the Pequod after hallucinating about the human and subsequently giving up on land: Movie Pitch
it begins with a fever dream. Pip haunted by the ground he stands on.
something terrifying about its sureness, its carcerality. no it begins
somewhere in his torn-open throat—slit wide by a harpoon—camera
panning each angle of Pip’s neck as he wails: LOOK, A NEGRO! it begins
with nothing: screen black—dark as the ocean floor. no, it begins with
something: a body, itself both more and less than one, laying on the deck of
the Pequod attempting to float—misjudging the surface for
water—mistaking his lack of sinking for buoyancy. no it begins with a
disavowal, of land, with Pip tasting that saltwater and it doing something like
the opposite of stripping him of wings. Pip jumps the Pequod, no, it begins.
Wherein Pip concludes his body is not single and self-identical. Wherein Pip determines he is also the whale, and swallows the Pequod: Movie Pitch
it is unclear where on the journey Pip decided a single body was unsuitable,
but each day he would work depths of 40 feet, then 80 feet, then twice that
again. it begins by learning not so much to hold one’s breath but how to
better distribute the oxygen. a shrinking of the spleen, a releasing of oxygen
rich blood cells—one learns to slow the heart rate. one remembers
something of theirself that began in the water. what if the distance between
the whale and the belly of the whale were imagined were nothing more than
a myth? what if Pip could insist on other folk tales? on an assemblage of
materials and temporalities continually passing through them? then it is not
so much a stretch to say one relegated to silence, the speculative position of
the non-human animal, is also the whale. that Pip could make new things of
their body and swallow whole the things carrying the so-called old. it is
unclear where on the journey Pip mades these new things of his body, but
who rides the Pequod when they can ride the ocean?
***
Author photo courtesy of author
