- The titles in Margaret Tait's films are always important, they are written into the image itself, drawn on bits of wood, made directly into the landscapes.
- Here Tait writes directly on her house as it is vacated. TAILPIECE is a follow up to her earlier film PLACE OF WORK (1976) which documents the same building while inhabited as a house and studio. Marguerite Duras did something similar with the two linked films INDIA SONG (1975) and SON NOM DE VENISE DANS CALCUTTA DESERT (1976), which both have exactly the same narrated soundtrack, but in the second film the grand house and costumed actors are replaced by images of empty decaying buildings (camera moving through empty corridors in Chantal Akerman's HOTEL MONTEREY (1972)?). Tait's film also takes place as much on the soundtrack as the image. You can hear poems, children's voice and snatches of popular music. The radio station of your life, like in LONE STAR (1975) by Jeff Keen.
- What about the images in this film? They are somehow difficult to deal with. What is this image of newspaper, teacup, chair, glasses, fireplace or cat? A folded newspaper. The image produces an imaginary sensation of touch, the newsprint paper, or the sound of it. Dry surface of the paper, rustle of folding. People used to steam iron them. Headline: '"Phoenix" closes on October 1'. Local headline preserved by the film. Incorporating the word 'Phoenix' into the poem of the film. These images confront the viewer. You can neither hear nor touch them, but you still have this response (cf. the boiled sweets being unwrapped in PORTRAIT OF GA, or the long shots of domestic objects in SELF PORTRAIT IN DECEMBER (1995)).
- from notebook: Cixous has an idea of "thinking through the littlest object". Where did this note fragment come from? Searching in vain for the original quote.
- Is the strength of Tait's films is the disconnection of sound and image? When making films doing this for the first time feels like a revolution. Suddenly the picture is doing something else entirely, is washing around at the bottom of a bowl full of water, while the sound has become a field. Thinking of films where the image is a placeholder, just an image of production there to allow sound to play (music of Silver Jews where the musical backing sometimes seems like a simple device to extend a duration into existence in order that the text can be said/sung aloud within it). Sound moves outward like the air, cannot be framed as easily as the image - is this true? Cutoff points off a clip of sound. Sound can echo, but so can a picture. In TAILPIECE a child's voice becomes an adult's voice. The adult voice says "A fish swam in the moon". When you move out of a place you live it becomes a between place, an interruption of the conventional (conventional? enforced? everyday?) arrangement of space and time. Moving out of this one soon, it's freezing, you can see your breath in the air and the drains are exploding.
- The song "Funny How Time Slips Away". Always thought Arthur Alexander wrote it, but it was Willie Nelson. Al Green also recorded a version of it. Walking through train stations at rush hour listening to it, looking at commuters faces. A scary idea from watching TAILPIECE of a cut of the same face in an instant from very young to very old.
- Sketches for longer notes on PORTRAIT OF GA (1952) a perfect film and quiet revolution. The gesture / language coup of placing a cigarette into the heather landscape. "Landscape of Ga" rather than portrait. Ga's movement and play is a way and lesson of living. Her dance is... ? Writing to think of an answer.
