ON THE SOUP OF SLEEP By Nomi Beesen
There are lots of questions posed by Sandy Moore's film The Soup of Sleep.
Beginning with "Is the stone thinking?" she invites us to stretch outside our minds and takes us on an alchemical voyage. Moore creates an immersive experience — auditory, visual, and sensory — through digitally manipulated and animated paintings and photos and words. Birds chirp, bees buzz, cats purr, and dandelions appear upside down. "Does the dandelion dance mindfully?" "Is blooming ecstatic?" The film itself moves in similar pacing and wandering non sequiturs of a dream state. It pauses to examine a concept, then opens like a flower. In the same way one surrenders to the tidal pull of sleep, we slip straight into the hypnotic rhythms of this film.
Droplets of water in fields of color, expanding and contracting, turning to watercolor drawings and video-game candy and cats and the sky — all coming together to ask questions about perception and consciousness. One-third of life is sleep, we are told, and we're taken down into various zones of the ocean, meeting frightening creatures near the abyss, as dancey music plays. Buddhist sutras lead us home through a series of outer-space swirls and expanding god particles. We approach terror, then move into wonder, as Moore steers us through the fluid mysteries of the universe. Our very experience of the world is in the spotlight here—we're invited to suspend our disbelief and become part of the big soup.
As images of the infinite and the infinitesimal converge, it's a reminder of our tiny place in the vast universe. Soup of Sleep takes us on this cosmic trip, but Moore never takes things too seriously. The journey is often playful and emotional, even as it weaves in the informational. We hear an old-time cartoon character’s utterances as he flies over buildings and fields, and then falls to earth. A soul-stirring soundtrack keeps us emotionally invested, then the score becomes light and celebratory, even as we plumb the deepest depths. We're left with gasps and queries — where am I floating to? Who's that doctor? Is that a cell or a planet? And what's with those nightmare fish?
Moore has spent time as both an artist and physician — she practiced medicine for 25 years — and you can see the influence of the natural sciences in Soup of Sleep. Or more accurately, you can sense the intersection between science and spirituality. Moore's filmmaking process included observing her visual field as she fell asleep and as she awoke. Though the film floats us along streams of consciousness, we are also grounded by the voices of authority — an anesthesiologist, a Buddhist reverend, a stentorian lecturer — like voices in waking life heard through a dream. We're urged to ponder many things. Are we dissolving into formlessness? Is our sense of self evaporating with the morphing colors? We are stardust, this film suggests, we are a part of the big unknowable. Are we closest to knowing this when we are asleep?
I’m thankful for these questions, good ones to sleep on.
Looped segments/excerpts from The Soup of Sleep were shown installation- style, at Time and Space Limited in Hudson October 12th and 13th 2024.
Nomi Beesen is a poet, essayist, and editor. She currently lives in the Catskills and also spends time in Brooklyn and Los Angeles..
