Misunderstanding Ears is Copyright © 2017 by Ralph Robert Moore.

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Published in Black Static #57, Mar-Apr 2017

When I was a child I had a bedtime when I was expected to fall asleep.

Except, I wouldn't.

Once my parents left the blue and white striped walls of my bedroom, I'd lift my flashlight out from my night table's drawer. Small thumb sliding up the black button, clicking the flashlight on. Grab the book I was reading from its resting place. Squirrel with it under the white sheets pulled over my head, creating a white cloth cave, shining the yellow circle of the flashlight against the book's opened pages, black print, as if the pages were a drive-in screen.

Never again did I swim in so intimate a reading space.

Early in Blue Velvet, Jeffrey, taking a short cut across a field, discovers a severed ear lying on the ground, dark ants exploring its curves within curves. He puts the ear in a paper bag, takes it to the police station. Meets with Detective John Williams, who opens the top of the bag, glances inside, looks up at Jeffrey and says, Yes, that is a human ear.

The last time I saw a movie in a theater was in the early Eighties.

Mary and I had just driven across country from California, relocating to Maine. We wanted to live in a state where we could photograph snow and kill lobsters. The movie was Scarface. Because the film had gotten a lot of publicity, blood from a lowering chainsaw splashing red against the white-tiled walls of a shower stall, face lifting from a green desk blotter, nose sugared with cocaine, the theater was noisy as we made our way down a side aisle, found two seats together. I ended up sitting next to a guy who was unusually tall. Like a basketball player. I'm six feet one, and he 'towered over me'.

Soon after the movie started, Pacino stabbing a former Cuban government official at the refugee camp in Miami, I realized this guy sitting next to me wasn't just really tall; he was really drunk. Every ten minutes or so he'd snort, asleep in his seat, and tilt over sideways against me, tree falling, his upper arm banging against my shoulder. I'd give him a strong shove to upright him, his eyes would pop open, once again he'd apologize profusely, and then slowly, gradually over the next ten minutes again start falling asleep. Which kind of detracted from my enjoyment of Scarface. It was hard to keep track of what was going on in the movie, who was killing whom, while repeatedly shoving this guy upright, eating popcorn, and holding Mary, all at the same time.

Fortunately for us, this was when home video became popular. We were living in a motel room back then, rented on a monthly basis, but because it was a motel room, we weren't allowed to hook up a VCR to the room's TV.

Once we did get an apartment the following Spring, we immediately bought a TV, went to a nearby supermarket, rented a VCR.

So the first time we saw what turned out to be one of my favorite movies, Blue Velvet, it was on VHS.

In the late Seventies, I was living in Santa Barbara, and Mary and I had just started dating. One night we went to a midnight show at one of the local theaters, featuring four or five different movies. I don't remember all the films we saw that night. I do remember one of the first movies that evening was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And of course, the theater's late-night lobby was filled with people dressed up under the harsh overhead lights in drag versions of Frank N Furter.

At one point we went out into the lobby to use the restrooms, and as the next movie started, music and dialogue booming through the dark double doors leading to the theater's slanted floor, decided to sit on a purple-cushioned bench against the wall of the lobby to smoke a joint.

And instead of going back into the darkened theater, we stayed on that comfortable bench, talking to each other. About our lives up to that point. What we wanted going forward. And just joking around, eyes bloodshot and merry. And to me, that conversation is when we really, truly fell in love. We entered the lobby, headed for the bathrooms, as you and me; exited the lobby, looking for new seats in the theater, as us.

As we re-entered, Eraserhead was about to start. I read about it in Castle of Frankenstein, one of the better horror movie magazines back then, while I was still living on the east coast, in Connecticut. Sounded like something I wanted to see. And now, in Santa Barbara, years later, I finally got the chance. My first exposure to Lynch.

So seven years after that, here we are in Maine, and I'm pushing the VHS cassette of Blue Velvet into our rental VCR, where with clicks and whirrs the hard rectangular cassette was mechanically swallowed.

In the version of Blue Velvet we saw that night, on videotape, as Williams says, Yes, that is an ear, his profile moves closer to Jeffrey, and William's own right ear comes into view in the frame. Which I thought was a nice directorial touch. Ear in the bag no longer attached, Detective William's pink ear still attached, emphasizing in a subtle visual way the violence of having one's own ear cut off the side of your head. An ear is one of your many sensory pals. It would be horrible to lose it.

But then years later, in Texas, when Mary and I bought the DVD version of Blue Velvet, for the first time ever we saw the letterboxed version of the movie, as it played in theaters.

And what I thought was an inspired visual moment by Lynch, having Detective Williams' ear move into the frame as he looks in Jeffrey's bag and declares, That is an ear, turned out to be a decision made not by Lynch, but by whomever was in charge of the pan and scan VHS version. Because in the original, letterboxed version, which we finally saw in Texas, it turns out Detective William's ear is visible throughout the scene. There was no magical moment when William's ear suddenly comes into the frame from the left. His ear is in the scene all along.

In the Rolling Stones song 'She's So Cold', there's a line that goes, "I tried re-wiring her, tried re-firing her." For decades, I thought what Mick was singing was, "I tried Beef Wellington, tried being fair." My misunderstanding ears. But I think my mishear is better. Offering her something material; offering her something emotional. Trying to woo her with an expensive meal in a restaurant; trying to woo her by treating her as an equal.

A reader sent me an email once, praising me for how my story "The Rape" had so many subtle allusions to a song by Hole, the alternative rock band. Except, I had never heard a song by Hole, and had no idea what he was talking about.

As enjoyable as reading under my bedsheets as a cowlick child was, the truth was I didn't know the meaning of many of those words, and so therefore often misinterpreted what the writer was saying. I was reading a different story than the one written. But still inspired by what I read.

When I first realized Detective Williams' ear had been present in the frame the whole time, finally looked up the lyrics to "She's So Cold", opened that email from a fan, I felt disappointment. Art had been misunderstood. But then I realized that each misunderstanding is actually something wonderful. Each interpretative mistake puts us not in touch with the artist, but in touch with a part of ourselves we didn't know before.

Art isn't finding out about someone else. It's finding out about yourself.

Henri Matisse's "La Bateau" hung upside-down for 47 days at MOMA. Critics praised it.