uncollected June thoughts

Received a grant from RACC to help make Season 2 of MICROAGGRESSIONS. Very thrilled in part b/c it comes at a very good emotional time for me, just about the part when endless waves of filmic rejection + low grade steady pandemic anxiety/depression team up to make a person ponder the value of tossing it all away. Reprieve and deep cleansing breath. So step away from the cinematic ledge bud. I’m partially making fun of myself here b/c I tend to self-aggrandize (see: all previous posts) but there is something to the long game here and how it never gets easier. How you don’t transcend the sensation of rejection, you just learn to continue making things alongside it or decide to stop making things. Deep in the pandemic I was leaning toward the latter w/ conviction but the smoke is thinning now and I see that I was at the mercy of some grand scale global hallucination that somehow cast spells on most artistic people I know one way or another. In any event, this grant (and sad to report the corresponding emotional validation) helps get things back on track. Currently casting and crewing, with aim to shoot in the fall. Like season 1 this is about a single event in municipal government seen through the viewpoint of multiple characters. All different characters, save one, from Season 1 though. Very much about embedded bias and the constrictions of language and the cumbersome bureaucratic apparatus of local government. (note: hopefully slightly more compelling to watch than that sounds)  I am getting very excited to make this. More to come. 

Also, 2 of the most amazing films I’ve seen recently are Residue by Merawi Gerima and August at Akiko’s by Christopher Makoto Yogi, both about artists returning home to a substantially changed landscape, both about memory and temporality and encroachment of the world at large. Also both fucking floored me. Seek these out. 

Also, that show you all told me to watch is not as good as you led me to believe. This keeps happening so either the problem is with you or with me. TBD.

Also, speaking for Portland we’d rather break up with Neil than with Damian if that’s in play.