Computer chip in love: 'Tarnation' (2003)
In Jonathan Caouette's memoir film, I see a sad computer chip struggle to contain his first love.
Tarnation (2003), dir. Jonathan Caouette, United States
A computer chip falls in love for the first time. When he sees the object of his love, a boy with long brown hair and a gentle club nose, a red indicator light starts to blink in steady one-two and he heats up.
A cloud of particles, buzzing sleepily around in their smooth and liquid chamber, quickly organizes itself into a bullet and fires down a copper filament. It tink-tinks along bright walls—one particle grazes the metal with its fingertips and reports: “Slick, captain, hardly any friction,”—and careens through a tiny fissure. Plink! like a marble. They’ve arrived at their destination: the glass hall. The particles scatter and flee down countless tubes to feed themselves to a warm, thumping drum. A few particles get lost in the melee, dodging others zipping by and rushing to tunnel entrances, only to have a competitor block the passage, shouting, “This one’s mine!” No, not like this! Not like dodgeball in gym class! One gets knocked sideways and spins like a top. His body regains its footing, but his head keeps spinning in cartoon stars while the particle who gave him the hit-and-run whizzes away down her tunnel. A mile a minute, then a sudden, lurching stop: the drum. It peers past her, down the tunnel with its smooth, eyeless face. “Go on, then! Eat me!” She throws her arms out and the drum stretches forward to swallow her up. A million drums swallow a million particles—they all let out a huge burp and, with a searing rush, the indicator light blinks once.
What can he do but look and dream? A chip’s passageways and circuits criss-cross plastic fields and send highways of particles home to their drums, but they can’t actually move on their own. They sit like a bench nailed to the sidewalk, humming and warming but locked in solid vibration. This love has opened the chip’s eyes, but no matter how hard he tries to pry himself free, he stays glued down. This embarrasses him. Using a mirror effect he hides himself, segmenting his face so that no one can mock his weak and obscene features. His nose and mouth slip in and out of sight. Sometimes even his eye peeks out. It gasps, fires a blinding sniper round, and retreats back to cover.
The boy plays a guitar and sings, “Dee-e-e-e-eep water…” The fuzzy orb of his voice softens the air around him. It coats the red indicator light, settles in, and seeps through. Warm air kisses the bulb and the drums coo into a gentle beat. It travels down the tunnels and into the glass hall. A chorus of particles rings a high voice up and outward, deep water!, and they begin to dance. Their eyes twinkle and their smiles gleam as they kick and sway a circle around the hall. Air brushes the slick copper wire and breathes down into sleeping liquid chambers and right to the machine’s heart. The chip is bathing now: operations have ceased. Particles report neither sleep nor wakefulness, but a fling in the haze of the processor’s depths.
Maybe someone knocked into a switch, or bumped a filament, or hot air melted the soldering, but the dance floor shifts and a crash resounds through the hall. (At a dinner party several weeks later, one particle told the guests proudly that he heard quite a big boom down in central comms before the quake, and that he was the first to call out, “Run!,” potentially saving millions of lives.) Two or four of the chip’s sniper eyes emerge from under their veil, hold their positions—irises like a radio tuner take focus—and fire a great flash. They freeze the boy in place with his guitar in his hands. Another flash! A thousand chips burst from the eyes and tessellate through the air. A hot and dazzling purple light sets the whole room on fire. Deep water! Deep water! Each face screams and blasts rounds across the room, punching holes through chip faces that fill up just as quickly. Deeeeeep waterrrrr! A terrible roar blows its way out of the boy’s head and fills his lungs. He shudders, suspended now in an orb of blinking chip faces that beam, sing deep water, and caress his hands.
As I watched you through the window or across the room, I always felt—
[1. tender / 2. ugly / 3. envious] ugly and embarrassed, as if your beauty made me ugly. I would see myself later and think, Hey, that’s not so bad. I would sometimes even feel beautiful. But when I saw you I forgot that I ever felt beautiful for one moment in my entire life, and I wanted to grovel at your feet before you had the chance to shoo me away and tell me how hideous I was. [The boy looks stunned. You cannot tell if this is because of your confession or because he is afraid.] I wanted to—
[1. die / 2. confess / 3. flee] run away, but I am locked here. Look at me now! [A flash of purple light and a small bolt sizzles across your face. It hurts and you wince.] I’m finally out here! With you—and everyone else! I thought none of you would ever know me, that you wouldn’t even want to or that I would have nothing to offer. But look! [Another sling of lightning.] I can do so much more than I thought I could. What do you think of me now? Do you—
[1. love me? / 2. like me? / 3. hate me?] like me? You don’t have to love me. I don’t want that much. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. I am happy off that plate—but I do want someone to see how happy I am, the way I’ve watched you with your guitar.
I put my feet in the water and see millions of creatures float and swim before me: sea cucumbers, giant tadpoles, and stone worms. The sea looks flat and smooth—I want to reach my gods’ fingers from the sky, graze its surface, and feel its cold, wet tickle. Kelp and shells surge up and brush the toes of the first fish to climb up onto the sand, as a palm sways in the breeze.
See other films from: 2000s | United States
Cross Dissolve is my blog about film, how it makes me feel, and how I see it reappear in my life—how movies and living dissolve into one another. Please subscribe if you enjoyed today’s entry. Thank you for reading!
Love, Tyler