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| Flowing in the Porsche with cinema journalism |
It is a point of contact between the car and person, Woman and the machine in concert, the physical and transcendent.
Formula One racers could write poetry about it. Ayrton Senna did, but through his unworldy performances. Kevin Haggarthty, a name you're unlikely to be familiar with and his protege, does too, though he'll be the first to feel deeply embarrassed by any comparison.
10.00 am Bank Holiday and we're hurtling about through country lanes testing the Porsche 911 Carrera. She is a beautiful beast and my lack of respect for her and her driver have twice made me feel like throwing up. The G-force in the car is measurable, made visible by a dial on he dash board.
Kevin, a high performance driver is making his monthly assessment, road testing the latest super car. What a job eh? Lucky so, so and so.
We've known each other for a fair while, but today the conversation goes into an area between him and Patrick, which is almost uncar like, but I get it.
"What's he looking for in a car ?", I ask
Response. How it communicates back to me, he says, adding, it's how she feels, not as a series of technical measurements, but....
Here you almost imagine Haggarthy as Claude Lelouch shrugging his shoulders with that 'Je ne cest quoi' look explaining that epic scene in Rendezvous 1976..
Epic. Irresponsible! Epic. [below]
Kevin does his with a series of spurts and tight bends on a secret location and whose speed I won't even humour you with.
He continues. When a driver becomes one with the car, it's called the flow. I recognise this. At some point labels that distinguish between forms become meaningless. When you're making a film and understand the audience, the rules that once guided you become irrelevant.
I reply, you rely on instinct, learned instances that become reflexes, so you're judging the future, limited time ahead and making decisions. Sometimes you're wrong, but you're more often right. And what evolves from the process is meta language, a flow.
A place where commitment seems casual, but involves a heightened sensorious state.
In a couple of weeks we're meeting up again. Kevin, with a new car. Me, with a new insight into how I might use artistic practice to get more out of this assignment. Now that would be a double flow.
Afterward:
For this shoot we used two go pros, the 5D and a Panasonic. The next shoot will be built around 5 go pros and the 5D. We've found something we want to exploit.
