Ma and Memoria

I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.

"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said. "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."

Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

"I don't think it's like the pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb."

—Hayao Miyazaki, in conversation with Roger Ebert

I often think of this quote. Our previous game, Pebble Witch, was all about becoming still in order to listen. We made the player sit still and do nothing.

Queer Man Peering is different. What started with the simple idea of wandering along the beach and looking into rock pools has grown. And grown. There are chunks to collect and clean, a house to fix, an island to explore, and letters to write. We have a story to tell!

But what’s a story? And what’s just stuff happening? When is something calm (when does it have ma)? And when is it just boring?

Two weeks ago we managed to catch the last screening of Memoria. Set in the misty heights of Bogotá, Colombia, the film follows a woman, played by Tilda Swinton, who is being disturbed by a sound: a percussive, metallic, booming that seemingly only she can hear.  With the help of a sound designer she tracks down a similar sound (a muffled punch to the gut) but the quest stalls there.

Perhaps mirroring the characters total lack of sleep, the film instead becomes a waking dream. The camera lingers on people as they listen to music, or look at paintings, or sleep. The space between each booming sound feels heightened. The ‘emptiness’ is filled with the sounds, sights and meanings that had been invisible before.

Queer Man Peering has its mysteries. Its hook. It has plenty of ‘clapping’. We just need to make some space for a bit more emptiness.