This film is about depression. And Mekas delineates a path forward, the way through it (Should I retreat into some silent place and work it all out by myself, No, the voice said. You should stay here and continue doing what you are doing and work it all out the difficult way.), the way with others (The easy way will save your soul only; the difficult way will save your soul and a few others. So this is your choice: Salvation by yourself, or salvation together with others).
Mekas composes the truth of the depressive experience formally through superimposition. At first, we are treated to a pitch-black visualscape with intervals of lightning. As that thunderous roar washes the environment in white light, harrowingly beautiful glimpses are revealed. He continues to talk more about the darkness in him, and then the superimposition sequence begins. An interview, someone posing with a book (that Mekas wrote?), from the airplane, moving landscape through a car, railway tracks left behind, balls of light, his child, a family or a friend, a flower pot, an empty apartment lit by the morning sun: all superimposed in groups, arranged in a sequence.
There are two important observations here. First, the truth of the depressive experience lies in that it can affect anyone, especially the person where one does not assume depression. Mekas, with his achievements, the travel, friends and family, a life (appearing) well-satiated, still experiences depression. Next, he is clearly stagnant and desire movement (There must be something, somehow, I feel, very soon, something that should give me some sign to move one or another direction // I am walking like a somnambulist waiting for a secret signal, ready to go one or another way, listening into this huge white silence for the weakest sign or call). A superimposed frame is a compressed frame. Even more so when heterogeneous events are crammed together, trapped in one frame, frozen in time. A sequence of these compressed frames serves as the appropriate (brilliant) backdrop for the stagnant experience.