Duplicity I

A friend of many years’ acquaintance showed me the duplicity of myself. And amid the guilt and anxiety, I came to see that duplicity often shows itself forth in semblance of sincerity. Then a dream informed me that Sincerity IV, which I had just completed, was such a semblance. The dream which ended with the word Duplicity scratched white across the closed eyelid (as the title The Weir-Falcon Saga had been given to me). I saw that the film in question demonstrated a duplicity of relationship between the Brakhages and the animals (Totemism) and environs (especially trees), visiting friends (Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Donald Sutherland, Angelo Di Benedetto and Jerome Hill among them) and people at large. I saw that the film shifted its compositions equally along a line of dark shapes as well as light, and that it did not progress (as did earlier Sincerities) but was rather a correlative of Sincerity III. Accordingly I changed the title to Duplicity. – S.B.