(I Have) Night Terrors

I remember when a friend of mine named Chris was working on a senior project for his multimedia class in High School.  He decided to make a conceptual video synced up to a song from an old Jonesboro friend’s band’s new EP.  A couple of us volunteered to help him out.

We set up a camera to watch Chris walk slowly and deliberately up and down sidewalks, trying to look as pensive as possible, you know, like he was thinking about a breakup, about death, mortality, about living in a small town, about fulfillment, about all of that.  This is what we were trying to create.  Deep stuff, right?

It was decided that there should be a scene where the protagonist (quote-unquote) would walk past a forlorn, ratty-looking person on the street holding a sign up that said in dark red spraypaint, “No Hope.”  I said I’d hold up the sign, free of charge even.

We’re filming in downtown Jonesboro, so cars are driving past and all that.  Through windows I see faces pass me by, young men and women, older men and women.  A car turns a corner, and from around that corner I hear a door open, shut, and then see an older man move from around the corner and in my direction.  His expression is one of concern.

I saw you holding up that sign that said “No Hope” on it, and I just wanted to come talk to you about it.

Irritated, I spit out that my friends and I are working on a film project, and that I’m just holding a prop.  I’m not looking for attention or sympathy, I’m not depressed, I’m just trying to help a friend get the grade he needs for his class.  This guy seems like evidence for Jonesboro’s lack of culture or capacity for abstract thought, and I’m hardly prepared to give him the time of day.  

But then he responds that his concern stems primarily from the young man now sitting in the passenger seat of his vehicle, who had just been released from a juvenile detention center.  Apparently this young man served an extensive amount of time, though I don’t know the exact length or what the charges were.  He had been roped into a bad situation, made to feel desperate and forced into behaviors that resulted, well, in his detention.  As the two passed me in the car, they were talking about turning his life around, about getting re-acclimated with society, and about how it’s never too late to try to make the most of your life.

They drive past me, wearing a hood over my head, holding a sign up that says “No Hope.”  Coming back out of claustrophobia, confinement, out of this brutal, classed, totalitarian society and into the real world, he is greeted by a message of dejection.  Hardly the encouragement I’m sure he needs.

But am I just overreacting?  Should none of this be a big deal?  It's just a sign, after all.  Maybe the old man was just being oversensitive.  Was it my intent to try to discourage this guy from trying to make something of his life?  Of course not. 

Even still, what if seeing those words on that sign as he’s coming back into the world, ambitious, yet fragile, what if he took them as some sort of proclamation of his destiny?  What if he prays to God for a sign, and then I’m the first thing he sees?  What if the older man hadn’t been there to address the situation?  What if he was alone, and saw in those two words an inescapable truth, and with no one to talk to, fell back into despondency?

Who am I to do that to someone?  That would be terrible.  That’s not the role I’d choose to play at all.

We took some pictures that day, alongside the footage of Chris walking.  There was one of me and a couple of other people standing in front of the “Welcome to Jonesboro” sign, the “No Hope” sign just below it.  Though the pictures only exist in one or two mobile phones, probably lifeless and forgotten in desk drawers anyway, thinking about them still serves to alienate me. 

Strangely enough, the lyrics of the song are very appropriate in this situation.  For what it’s worth, anyway, this is the final project.  The (beautiful) song we used is called “(I Have) Night Terrors,” by the band Lake Inferior.