Tele Fresco - Act 3: Infatuation (Directed by 2 Nice)

Tele Fresco - Act 3 from 2 Nice on Vimeo.

The lips are a boundary. They are portals where the inside is exposed to the outside, where the breath of life passes in and out, where food is taken in, and speech breathed forth. The mouth is the most variegated gateway into the interior of the body, taking in all sorts of things from outside the body and throwing out things from inside, and the lips are the guardians.  To kiss is to draw near to that boundary between me and you. - Peter Leithart

If the larger narrative arc of Love Letters traces the evolution of a relationship, interpolating a kaleidoscope of mini narratives in an effort to shirk traditional notions of titular characters, we have moved out of the excitement of the first night and into the engrossing sexual potency of infatuation.   But true to the tenor of the piece at large, this is not merely a descriptive endeavor.  While there is something sensual and perhaps fragile in the confluence of vintage pornography, time-lapse blooming flowers, gushing eros, there is a dark underpinning (the domestically subversive broken house of cards) to it all which is only made more acute at the time of writing for in some bizarre confluence of historical and cultural references, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream", fanfared by every major media outlet, stretches across time, as I plot the course of this essay, to engage with Act 3's preface: the ominous, syblline voice of Langston Hughes as he recites his poem "Dreams":

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

To hold onto your dreams is the task that Act 3 holds up for it's viewers, dreams of love, of anything and everything, while all the while knowing that dreams will pass and the field will be barren, frozen with snow or not.


2 Nice's portrayal of the sexual act creates a whirlwind of eros-tinged images - the flashes of vintage pornography, bedazzled faces that seem to be melting in sensuality - inviting the viewer to partake in a world of sexual fantasy wherein the confines of what is a dream and what is reality break down.  With associative shots of pornography, 2 Nice poses the question of whether this is the cultural lexicon we draw from when having sex, when thinking about sex, when watching sex.  Do we stylize our most intimate moments after mechanized and empty portrayals, these associations seem to ask.  2 Nice similarly warps the image of the flower in bloom.  A sexual image itself, stamen and pistil on full display, the flower takes on a new resonance when its temporal existence is sped forward, just on the fringe of wilting.  Objects, dreams typically replete with romantic resonance are tinged with the faintest elements of despair.

Tele Fresco's syncopated piano riffs scatter throughout the second section, creating the intoxicating, breathy, off-kilter piano melody, finding an odd harmony in imperfect motion.  Staggering two distinct musical voices to create some type of odd harmony is the perfect correlative for the sexual act: two bodies moving in motion with slight variations to undercut one another but somehow still in union.  However, and perhaps this is why I find the later half of Act 3 so sonically engaging, crystallized within the melody created there is always the threat of chaos, of the unity breaking apart into cacophonous discord and delving into a world where the distinct voices disintegrate into undefinable masses.