The Seventy-Third Take (Stanley Kubrick)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You made Shelley Duvall
do the baseball bat scene
one hundred and twenty-seven times
and the terror in take one
was acting
and the terror in take one hundred
was not —
it was the amygdala
performing its own audit,
the fear center
no longer pretending
but reporting directly
from a body
that had been asked
to simulate distress
so many times
the simulation
became the source material
You did not direct actors —
you eroded them
until what was left
was the thing
underneath the craft
that the craft
had been hired to conceal

[Verse 2]
Every film
was a different genre —
horror, war, comedy,
period, science fiction,
crime, satire —
and every genre
was the same question
asked in a different room:
what does a system
look like
from the inside
when the system
has begun to malfunction
You filmed the future
and it smelled like
recycled air
and the warm plastic
of a space station
designed by someone
who believed
that cleanliness
was the last thing
a species masters
before it masters
nothing
You filmed the past
and it smelled like
candle wax
and the cold plaster
of a house
that has been beautiful
long enough
to become cruel

[Chorus]
You shot every scene
with natural light
or practical light
or the light
that was already in the room
because the room
had already decided
how it wanted to be seen
and the director's job
was not to argue
The occipital cortex
processes light
before it processes meaning
and you trusted the cortex —
you gave it the candle,
the window,
the fluorescent corridor,
and let the brain
assemble the meaning
from what the light
had already confessed
without being asked

[Verse 3]
You never left England
after 1961 —
you lived outside London
with the cats
and the research files
and the fear of flying
that grounded
the most visual director alive
in a country
he chose
not because he loved it
but because
it was close enough
to everywhere
without requiring
the one vehicle
his prefrontal cortex
could not convince
his amygdala
to board
You directed the world
from a farmhouse
which is either
reclusiveness
or the most efficient
production office
ever disguised
as a life

[Outro]
The last film
was about a dream —
Eyes Wide Shut —
and you died
six days
after showing the final cut
to the studio
as if the work
had been the only reason
the body
was still filing reports
and the final report
was delivered
and the body
read the receipt
and closed