Opus 40 transcript

[Over the title] Dialogue 1:

Ted: My name is Ted McQuarter and this is the molding shop.

Barb: Can you describe what you do?

Ted: I make key plates for the tops of stoves - I'm a molder and I make key plates for stoves.

Barb: How long have you worked here?

Ted: Three years.

Barb: What strikes me when I come in here is like is the repetition...

First Voiceover excerpt Gertrude Stein' "The Making of Americans":

...this is now a description of all of them. There must then be a whole history of each one of them. There must then now be a description of all repeating. Now I will tell all the meaning to me in repeating, the loving there is in me for repeating. ...There is then now and here the loving repetition, this is then, now and here, a description of the loving of repetition and then there will be a description of all the kinds of ways there can be seen to be kinds of men and women. Then there will be realized the complete history of everyone, the fundamental character of everyone, the bottom nature in them, the mixtures in them, the strength and weakness of everything they have inside them, the flavour of them, the meaning in them, the being in them, and then you have a whole history then of each one. Everything then they do in living is clear to the completed understanding, their living, loving, eating, pleasing, smoking, thinking, scolding, drinking, working, dancing, walking, talking, laughing, sleeping, everything in them. There are whole beings then, they are themselves inside them, repeating coming out of them makes a history of each one of them.

Always from the beginning there was to me all living as repeating. This is now a description of my feeling. As I was saying listening to repeating is often irritating, always repeating is all of living, everything in a being is always repeating, more and more listening to repeating gives to me completed understanding. Each one slowly comes to be a whole one to me. Each one slowly comes to be a whole one in me.

Female Voiceover [superimposed over Gertrude Stein]: Ready? OK (laughter). OK, I'll try talking again. See if this works. Will the echo... OK.

Dialogue 2:

Rollie: Rolland Cook-molding shop. What we do-right now what we do is mostly wood-big demand for wood-what I got right here on my board-we come in here and mold - mold the castings-the work's hard-come in here in the morning - different patterns-hard lifting-hard on the back-long day-pour off at the end of the day-get the finished material to go outside-when you start, start from the raw material-as you can see, mud and the pattern-you take your pattern and make what you get out of it-I don't know, it's just plain molding-that's all it is.

Barb: How long have you worked here?

Rollie: 25 years-at Enterprise-not out here-I've been out here most of 25 years-I've worked around the molding shop.

Barb: So is this the shop you prefer?

Rollie: You got to like hard work - you don't mind it.

Barb: Is there a way like that you deal with the repetition?

Second Voiceover excerpt Gertrude Stein:

Everyone always is repeating the whole of them. Always, one having loving repeating to getting completed understanding must have in them an open feeling, a sense for all the slightest variations in repeating, must never lose themselves so in the solid steadiness of all repeating that they do not hear the slightest variation. If they get deadened by the steady pounding of repeating, they will not learn from each one even though each one always is repeating the whole of them. They will not learn the completed history of them, they will not know the being really in them.

As I was saying everyone always is repeating the whole of them. As I was saying sometimes it takes many years of listening, seeing, living, feeling, loving the repeating there is in some before one comes to a completed understanding. This is now a description of such a way of hearing, seeing, feeling, living, loving, repetition.

Mostly everyone loves someone's repeating. Mostly everyone then, comes to know then the being of someone by loving the repeating in them, the repeating coming out of them. There are some who love everybody's repeating, this is now a description of such loving in one ...There are many ways of beginning this description and now once more to make a beginning.

Third voiceover excerpt from Gertrude Stein:

Always then slowly each one comes to be a whole one to me. As I was saying loving repeating in every one, hearing always all repeating, coming to completed understanding of each one is to me a natural way of being.

There are many that I know and always more and more I know it. They are all of them repeating and I hear it. They are all of them living and I know it. More and more I understand it, always more and more it has completed history in it.

Every one has there own being in them. Every one is of a kind of men and women. Always more and more I know the whole history of each one. This is now a little a description of such knowing in me. This is now a little a description of beginning of hearing repeating all around me.

Dialogue 3:

Barb: [picking up from where dialogue 2 broke off]: ...repetition like the fact that you come in each day and you face all these molds you have to make... that always strikes me...

Rollie: What do you mean? They have certain jobs there that they need worse than the others-so I'll make those jobs first-the ones they really need. I have a goal when I come in in the morning. I want to put up 2-225 snaps-I try to do that every day. I try to do the same amount every day ...sometimes ...gotta force yourself though ...you can have bad days...