House of Leaves (6 page)

Later I spotted some workers in back tackling the water heater.

One of them, snorting on a dirty handkerchief, covered in tatts, Manson crucified on his back, told me it would be fixed by evening. It’s not.

Now I’m sure you’re wondering something. Is it just coincidence that this cold water predicament of mine also appears in this chapter?

Not at all.
Zampanô
only wrote “heater.” The word “water” back there—I added that.

Now there’s an admission, eh?

Hey, not fair, you cry.

Hey, hey, fuck you, I say.

Wow, am I mad right now. Clearly a nerve’s been hit somewhere but I don’t how, why or by what. I sure don’t believe it’s because of some crummy made—up story or a lousy (water) heater.

Can’t follow the feeling.

If only any of it were true. I mean we’d all be so lucky to wind up a punching bag and still find our crates full of Birds of Paradise.

No such luck with this crate.

Let the cold water run.

It’s gotta warm up eventually.

Right?]

What both these moments reveal is how much Will and Karen need each other and yet how difficult they find handling and communicating those feelings.

Unfortunately, critics have been less than sympathetic. Following the release of
The Navidson Record
,
neither Karen nor Navidson’s reputation escaped unscathed. Karen, in particular, was decimated by a vituperative stream of accusations from the tabloids, reputable reviewers, and even an estranged sister. Leslie Buckman blows high the roof beams when she calls “Karen Green a cold bitch, plain and simple. A high-fashion model, not much smarter than a radiator, who grew up thinking life revolved around club owners, cocaine and credit card limits. Watching her burble on about her weight, her children, or how much she needs Navidson made me want to retch. How can she say she loves a man when she’s incapable of anything even remotely resembling commitment? Did I say she was a
cold bitch? She’s also a slut.” [19”Lie Lexicon and Feminine Wiles” by Leslie Buckman published in
All In The Name Of Feminism: A Collection Of Essays
ed. Nadine Muestopher (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Shtrön Press, 1995), p. 344.]

Buckman is not alone in her opinion. Dale Corrdigan has also pointed out that Karen was anything but a lovely housewife: “Karen hardly gave up the promiscuous behavior that marked her 20s. S
he only became more discreet.” [20
—
Dale Corrdigan, “Blurbs,”
Glamour,
v. 94, April 1996, p.
256.
]

In retrospect, the rabid speculation over Karen’s infidelities seems driven by a principally sexist culture, especially since so little attention was paid to Navidson’s role in their relationship. As David Liddel once
exclaimed: “If he has horns, who’s t
o say he doesn’t have hooves?”
[21— “A Horny Duo” by David Liddel,
Utne
Reader,
July/August 1993, p. 78.]
Fortunately unlike the biased treatment offered by the media, Navidson does not hesitate to constantly include in his film evidence of his own failings. In fact as of late, many have called into question the accuracy of this self- portrait, observing that Navidson may have gone too far out of his way to cast himself in a less than favorable light.
[22—Ascencion Gerson’s “The Vanity of Self-Loathing” in
Collected Essays on Self-Portraiture
ed. Haldor Nervene (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), p.
58.]

Not only does Navidson reveal through Karen, Chad, and Daisy how he spent the last decade perfecting a career in distance, where taking off on a moment’s notice to shoot Alaskan fishing boats was something his family had to just accept, even if that three day trip slowly evolved into weeks and even months, he also, by way of the film, admits to carrying around his own alienating and intensely private obsessions.

As it turns out though, the first hint concerning these dark broodings does not come from him but from Karen. Navidson’s early Hi 8 journal entries are so easy and mild they rarely, if ever, allude to deeper troubles. Only Karen, staring straight into that little lens, brings up the problem.

“He mentioned Delial again,” she says in an extremely clipped tone. “I’ve warned him if he’s not going to tell me who she is he better damn not bring her up. Part of this move south was supposed to be about putting the past and all that behind us. He’s been pretty good but I guess he can’t control his dreams. Last night, I wasn’t sleeping very well. I was cold. It’s the middle of May but I felt like I was lying in a freezer. I got up to get a blanket and when I came back he was talking in his sleep: ‘Delial.’ Just like that. Out of the blue. And I’m certain because he said her name twice. Almost shouted it.”

As it turns out, Karen was not the only one who was kept in the dark about Delial. Even friends and fellow photojournalists who had heard Navidson use the name before never received any sort of explanation. No one had any idea who she was or why it was she haunted his thoughts and conversation like some albatross.
[23—Since the revelation, there has been a proliferation of material on the subject. Chapter XIX deals exclusively with the subject. See also Chris Ho’s “What’s in a name?”
Afterimage,
v. 31, December, 1993; Dennis Stake’s
Delia!
(Indianapolis: Bedeutungswandel Press,
1995);
Jennifer Caps’
Delia!, Beatrice,
and
Dulcinea
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Thumos Inc., 1996); Lester Breman’s “Tis but a Name” in
Ebony,
no. 6, May 1994, p. 76; and Tab Fulrest’s
Ancient Devotions
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).]

That said, while the first sequence certainly hints at a number of underlying tensions in the Navidson/Green family, all brought into relief by this chapter, it is crucial not to lose sight of the prevailing sense of bliss still evoked in those opening minutes. After a couple of nights, Chad no longer has trouble sleeping. After a couple of days, Daisy’s nipped finger heals. The heater is easily repaired. Even both parents enjoy a private moment where their hands can playfully unlock and interlock, Will finally putting his arm around Karen as she, letting out a heart-stirring sigh, rests her head on his shoulder.

In fact it is rare to behold such radiant optimism in anything these days, let alone in films, each frame so replete with promise and hope. Navidson clearly cherishes these bucolic, near
idyllic
impressions of a new world. Of course, no
stalgia’s role in shaping the fin
al cut must not be forgotten, especially since within a year these pieces were all Navidson had
left—Karen and the children a mere blur racing down the staircase, the pointillism of their pets’ paw prints caught on the dew covered lawn, or the house itself, an indefinite shimmer, sitting quietly on the corner of Succoth and Ash Tree Lane, bathed in afternoon light.

III

It is no accident that the photographer

becomes a photographer any more than

the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.

—
Dorothea Lange

— Exodus 3. 11

[24—“But Moses said to God, am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from E
gy
pt?’ “ — Ed.]

W
hy Navidson? Why not someone else?

When the great Florentine howls,
“Ma io perchè venirvi? o chi ‘1 concede?! Jo
non Enea, io non Paulo sono,”
[
25
—
Dante again. Again translated by Sinclair. Canto II lines 31—32
: “
I, why should I go there, and who grants it? I am not Aeneas; I am not Paul.”

A question I’m often asking myself these days. Though not the Aeneas/Paul part.

The simple answer I know: Lude woke me up at three in the morning to check out some dead guy’s stuff.

Of course, it’s not really all that simple. Typically when Lude calls me late at night it’s because there’s some party he wants to hit. He’s the kind of guy who thinks sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. Maybe he’s right.

Not that this matters, someone once told me Lude’s real name is Harry, maybe he did, though no one I know has ever called him that.

Lude knows every bar, club and gatekeeper at every bar and club. Hollywood has always been mother’s milk to Lude. Mother’s tongue. Whatever. Unlike me, he never needs to translate, interpret or learn in LA. He knows. He knows the drinks, the addresses and most important of all he can usually tell the difference between the women who are out to talk and those out to do something a little more interesting which always interests Lude.

Despite a nose that others have described as a bee—battered, Lude’s always surrounded by very attractive women which is pretty much the norm for hair stylists—and photographers—especially if they’re good and Lude is that. Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful.

During the past two years, he and I have spent a good deal of time wandering all over this odd city. We both thrive in the late hours,
appreciate its sad taste and never get in the way of each other’s dreams, even though Lude just wants more money, better parties and prettier girls and I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it’s drenched in sunlight and it’s weightless and I know it’s not cheap.

Probably not even real.

Who can guess why Lude and I have ended up friends. I think it’s mainly because he recognizes that I’m game for any mis—step he has in mind and he enjoys the company. Of course publicly, Lude likes to throw me plenty of props, invariably focusing on the disjointed life I’ve led. He’s still impressed—and in turn likes to impress others—with the fact that at the age of thirteen I went to work in Alaska and by the time I was eighteen had already slept in a whorehouse in Rome. Most of all though he loves the stories. Especially the way I tell them to the girls we meet. (I already got into that a little with the whole riff on boxing and Birds of Paradise and some guy named Punching Bag.) But they’re only stories, the way I tell them I mean. I actually have a whole bunch.

Take the scars for instance.

There are a number of variations on that one. The most popular is my two year stint in a Japanese Martial Arts Cult, made up entirely of Koreans living in Idaho, who on the last day of my initiation into their now-defunct brotherhood made me pick up a scalding metal wok using only my bare forearms. In the past the wok has been heated in a kiln; recently it’s been full of red hot coals. The story’s an absolute crock of shit, or should I say a wok of shit—sorry; I know, I know I should learn to crawl before I walk; sorry again; I mean for not being sorry the first time or for that matter the second time—but, you see, it’s so hard to argue with all those whirls of melted flesh.

“Show them your arms, Johnny” Lude will say, in his most offhand over—the—top manner.

“Aw come on. Well, al
right just this once.” I roll up my left sleeve and then, taking my time, I roll up the right one.

“He got that in a cult in Indiana.”

“Idaho,” I correct him.
And it
goes on from there.

I’m sure most women know it’s bull but hey, they’re entertained.

I also think it’s somewhat of a relief not to hear the true story.

I mean you look at the horror sweeping all the way up from my wrists
to my elbows, and you have to take a deep breath and ask yourself, do
I really want to know what happened there? In my experience, most
people don’t. They usually look away. My stories actually help them
look away.

Maybe they even help me look away.

But I guess that’s nothing new. We all create stories to protect ourselves.

It’s March now. Late March. Three months have gone by since Lude called me up that night. Three months since I dragged away a black, unremarkable, paint spattered trunk, which as I quickly found out was one of those old cedar lined jobbers, built in Utica, NY, special thanks to the C. M. Clapp Company, complete with rusted latches, rotting leather handles and a lifetime of digressions and disappointments.

To date, I’ve counted over two hundred rejection letters from various literary journals, publishing houses, even a few words of discouragement from prominent professors
in
east
coast universities.
No one wanted the old man’s words—except me.

What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unmourned, well, you get the drift.

As a counselor once told me—a Counselor For Disaffected Youth, I might add: “You like that crap because it reminds you of you.” Couldn’t of said it better or put it more bluntly. Don’t even disagree with it either. Seems pretty dead on and probably has everything to do with the fact that when I was ten my father died and almost nine years later my crazy Shakespearean mother followed him, a story I’ve already lived and really don’t need to retell here.

Still for whatever reason, and this my Counselor For Disaffected Youth could never explain, accepting his analysis hardly altered the way I felt.

I just glanced over at the trunk. The first time I saw it, I mean when I discovered what was inside, it appalled me. Like I was staring at the old guy’s corpse. Now it’s just a trunk. Of course, I also remember thinking I was going to toss it by the end of the week. That was before I started reading. Long before I began putting it all together.

You know this is still the simple answer.

I guess the complicated one I don’t feel like getting into.]

Homer’s rival calls him a
coward and orders him to get moving because the powers above have taken a personal interest in his salvation.

For hell’s cartographer, the answer is mildly satisfying. For Navidson, however, there is no answer at all. During “
Exploration #4
” he even asks aloud, “How the fuck did I end up here?” The house responds with resounding silence. No divine attention. Not even an amaurotic guide.

Some have suggested that the horrors Navidson encountered in that house were merely manifestations of his own troubled psyche. Dr. Iben Van Pollit in his book
The incident
claims the entire house is a physical incarnation of Navidson’s psychological pain: “I often wonder how things might have turned out if Will Navidson had, how shall we say, done a little bit of house cleaning.”
[26—Regrettably, Pollit’s proclivity to pun and write jokes frequently detracts from his otherwise lucid analysis.
The Incident
(Chicago: Adlai Publishing, 1995), p. 108, is a remarkable example of brilliant scholarship and exemplary synthesis of research and thought. There are also some pretty good illustrations. Unfortunately almost everything he concludes is wrong.]

While Pollit is not alone in asserting that Navidson’s psychology profoundly influenced the nature of those rooms and hallways, few believe it conjured up that place. The reason is simple: Navidson was not the first to live in the house and encounter its peril. As the Navidsons’ real estate agent Alicia Rosenbaum eventually revealed, the house on Ash Tree Lane has had more than a few occupants, approximately
.
37 owners every year, most of whom were traumatized in some way. Considering the house was supposedly built back in 1720, quite a few people have slept and suffered within those walls. If the house were indeed the product of psychological agonies, it would have to be the collective product of every inhabitant’s agonies.

It is no great coincidence then that eventually someone with a camera and a zest for the dangerous would show up at this Mead Hall and confront
the terror at the door. Fortunately for audiences everywhere, that someone possessed extraordinary visual talents.

Navidson’s troubles may not have created the house but they did ultimately shape the way he faced it,
Navidson’s childhood was fairly bleak. His father was a St. Louis salesman who worked for a string of large electronics corporations, shuttling his family around the mid-west every two or three
years.
He was also an alcoholic and prone toward violent outbursts or disappearing for long periods of time.
[27—Michelle Nadine Goetz recalls how on one occasion Navidson’s
father
climbed onto the hood of the family’s recently purchased car, used a thermos to crack up the windshield, then marched back into the kitchen, picked up a pan full of sizzling pork chops and threw it against the wall. (See the Goetz interview published in
The Denver Post,
May 14. 1986, B-4). Terry Borowska, who used to babysit both brothers, remembers how every so often Navidson’s father would vanish, sometimes for up to five weeks at a time, without telling his family where he was going or when he might return. Inevitably when he did come back—typically after midnight, or early in the morning, sitting in his truck, waiting for them to wake up since he had either left his key or lost it—there would be a few days of warmth and reconciliation. Eventually though, Tony Navidson would return to his own moods and his own needs, forcing Will and Tom to realize they were better off just trying to keep clear of their father. (See Borowska’s interview published in
The
St.
Louis
Post-Dispatch,
September 27, 1992, D-3, column one.)]

Navidson’s mother was no better. She soon left them all to pursue a career as an actress and ended up living with a string of not so productive producers. Purportedly in her own words, all she ever wanted to do was “bring down the house.” Navidson’s father died of congestive heart failure but his mother just vanished. She was last seen in a Los Angeles bar smoking cigarettes and talking about moonlight and why you could find so much of it in Hollywood. Neither Will nor his twin brother Tom ever heard from her again.
[24—
A
selection of personal interviews with Adam Zobol, Anthony Freed and Anastasia Culiman. September 8-11, 1994.]

Because the enormous narcissism of their parents deprived Will and Tom of suitable role models, both brothers learned to identify with absence. Consequently, even if something beneficial fortuitously entered their lives they immediately treated it as temporary. By the time they were teenagers they were already accustomed to a discontinuous lifestyle marked by constant threats of abandonment and the lack of any emotional stability. Unfortunately, “accustomed to” here is really synonymous with “damaged by.”
[29—Rita Mistopolis M.D., in her book
Black
Heart, Blue Heart
(Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1984), p. 245, describes the seriousness of emotional deprivation: It is not difficult to understand how children who have suffered fn>m malnutrition or starvation need food and plenty of care if their bodies are to recover so they can go on to lead normal lives. If, however, the starvation is severe enough, the damage will be permanent and they will suffer physical impairments for the rest of their lives. Likewise, children who are deprived of emotional nurturing require care and love if their sense
of security
and
self-confidence is to
be restored.
However,
if
love is minimal and abuse high, the damage will be permanent and the children will suffer
emotional
impairments for the rest of their lives.]

Perhaps one reason Navidson became so enamored with photography was the way it gave permanence to moments that were often so fleeting.

Nevertheless, not even ten thousand photographs can secure a world, and so while Navidson may have worked harder, taken greater risks and become increasingly more successful, he was ultimately misled in feeling that his labor could make up for the love he was deprived of as a child and the ultimate sense of security such love bestows.

For this reason, we should again revisit Navidson on his porch, his gaze fixed, his delicate fingers wrapped around a glass of lemonade. “I just thought it would be nice to see how people move into a place and start to inhabit it,” he calmly announces. “Settle in, maybe put down roots, interact, hopefully understand each other a little better. Personally, I just want to create a cozy little outpost for me and my family.” A pretty innocuous and laconic rumination and yet it contains one particularly nettlesome word.