This is a short film I made back in 2002/3. I never got around to showing it anywhere much, no festivals or anything. It's good trashy fun, and I'm also quite proud of the editing and the music rocks. One day maybe I'll get around to making more of these things, but for the time being, this is the only double-fisted nerf gun action film I've made.
An Airport Lounge may be the nearest approximation to Purgatory voluntarily created by man. Long, dead hallways are populated by lone couples stealing that last kiss goodbye before a prolonged separation. Fighting families squabble over who gets to pick the small bottle of booze that will take their duty free selection to its limit. And yet there is also joy and camaraderie. A stranger takes a picture for a group of students. People smile in anticipation of reuniting with loved ones. It truly is an in-between state.
Purgation is always spoken of as some kind of negative thing, we want everything now, we don't know how to wait. But waiting, the discipline of delay, is to learn to hope.
Purgatory is not Hell and it is not Heaven. It is the point in which we exist and choose the path we want to take. If we lose hope and cannot wait, our choices will lead us to a Hell of our own making. But if we can trust to hope, have faith, then from out of purgation will emerge Heaven.
Just because we are stuck in the middle there is no cause to forget that there is more than just this moment. We have all departed from some place, and we are headed somewhere too. When we remember this we regain our hope, even if at present we are bored and stuck waiting for the gates to open.
It began with a dream. The dream was a needle, syringe and push. The dream was a liquid, a slow seeping warmth in his veins. The dream was euphoria, a joy he had never felt. The dream was a drug, a mimesis of ecstasy.
And then he woke up.
The craving began. The feeling so intense, the desire for more lingering as the dream faded into memory and the warmth inside altered to become trapped body heat inside the doona. Withdrawal began, and he pulled his head under to try and deny himself oxygen, to send himself into a carbon monoxide induced sleep, a return to the dream.
And then the alarm screeched.
The snooze button was hit, but the action engaged his mind, and he knew he was awake. Still he could not let go of the dream. His mind now raced, seeking answers, trying to discover the way back. Sleeping tablets would not work, they induced a dreamless sleep. The drugs of his dreams had no analog in reality. Heroin might be what his dream told him he was injecting, but the reality would not match up. Even if it exceeded his hopes, it would not be what he was searching for.
And then the snooze expired.
The ripping of the alarm into his consciousness told him he had to leave the drug behind. But as he slid his legs out from the bed, he realised his hope.
He would sleep again tonight, and he would dream...
