How Long Is “Toccata”?

“Il tocco” means not only “touch”; it can also mean a small quantity, a single brushstroke in painting, the striking of a bell or of piano keys. The surroundings meet the eye. Direct touch releases an interior impulse. Surfaces open to states of being. Out of this encounter arises the image. From the images, an inner place. In the film as in consciousness, the distances of spaces and bodies, the layerings of time conjoin. A house, a city in Italy, traffic, and the movements of people are visibly filmed in the present. But the images embrace a living continuity. The light of one day links my eyes to the eyes of someone who lived here, in the same city, two, three, or five hundred years ago. On a church wall, a sculptor has left an arched curtain in stone. Through the rhythm of its inward and outward foldings, the film becomes “still.”.