Let the Sunshine In
It's the early 1980s and I'm in 3rd grade, living on Oak Street in Manitowoc, WI. My favorite TV show is Fame. We have a rotary phone. It is here at this house, in this world, where I start to explore my parents record collection, playing things like The Beatles, Wings, Bread, America, CSNY, on the record player in my room, imagining the shape of the world beyond as I listen, and it is here that I am struck by a record cover that contains the face of a person with a substantial head of hair in a mirrored negative image, half green on one side and half orange-red on the other. When I play this album in my room I am instantly pulled somewhere I don't quite understand. It takes a couple listens for me to determine it's not a band or an artist but a cast recording of a broadway show. I read the back cover. the album was released in 1968. There's a quote from a critic, along with song list, a sentence or two about each song's narrative function or subjective qualities, a list of the cast, and a credit: music by Galt MacDermot, book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni & James Rado, and a photo of all 3 of them in the bottom right in a recording studio. the subtitle of the album reads The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, underneath the title: Hair. This album, oddly more than any other will shape my sensibilities, giving way to my appreciation of theatricality, of the individual versus society, of anti-authoritarianism, of big broad canvases in which to express yourself narratively. And since I listen to this album with zero understanding of the musical's narrative, piecing together from the lyrics who Claude is and how he fits in with the anti-war movement in the late 60s US, it gives full agency to the songs to be the sole engines of my understanding. Each exists in service of the whole. They are all intoxicatingly catchy, contain a few bad words, are built of frankness, wordplay, in jokes, cleverness. Songs titles like Hashish, Walking in Space, Sodomy. Lyrics like How can people be so cruel or breathe deep while you sleep and so on. All of it - each lyric and each song, and how each song fit into the album - spoke to me in a way nothing else had up to that point. But there was one song among them that called to me more than any other was the final song on the album, The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine in).
The sentence about it on the back cover of the album reads The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine in) is new, pop poetry, the finale and a marvelous and stirring song.
I am a big fan of songs that start simple and assemble themselves, typically building into something loud, operatic, moving, oppressive, sometimes all-consuming. The Seer by Swans, Cue the Strings by Low, I Want You by the Beatles. But this appreciation started for me with Let the Sunshine, which starts basic and builds to something more complex. The song begins with vocals bass and guitar, A simple riff in Bm with a kick ass bassline that holds the whole thing together. A man's voice begins "We starve, look at one another short of breath, walking proudly in our winter coats, wearing smells from laboratories, facing a dying nation" This character singing is Claude, sung by James Rado. Claude I will only learn decades later is dead as he sings, a victim of the Vietnam war, unseen by anyone on stage.
The first verse takes 33 seconds. Claude's voice continues with just the guitar and bass into the second verse, where he says "Somewhere inside something there is a rush of greatness, who knows what stands in front of our lives.. silence tells me secretly everything". At 1 minute 3 seconds the third verse begins and a new instrument comes in (a trumpet) playing a reprise of Manchester England (an earlier song that announces Claude's heritage). Claude sings the reprise lyrics and melody along with the trumpet. Now at 1 minute 12 seconds the entire song changes. The drums kick in as a trio sings call and response with Claude as he continues the reprise lyrics. The trio begins with lines from Romeo and Juliet - Eyes Look Your last, Arms take your last embrace, and lips oh, you the doors. sealed with a righeous kiss. And then as Claude says That's Me several times, the trio sings the last line Hamlet says in his play. That's me/The rest is silence. That's me/The rest is silence. The rest is silence.
Now at 1 minute 43 seconds the first verse repeats but it's a woman's voice, the character Sheila sung by Melba Moore. at the lyric Facing a Dying Nation at 1 minute 56 seconds she's joined by a second woman's voice singing harmony. Of moving paper fantasy, listening for the new told lies.
At 2 minutes 13 seconds, the song continues to build, the chorus comes in singing as one voice, along with a horn section, until the climactic release of the words Let the Sunshine in 2 minutes 29 seconds, with the full company in reverie, repeating Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, over and over. This is the moment at 2:29 that transports me, no matter many hundreds of times I've heard it, no matter my feelings on the efficacy of the 60s counterculture or how well the hippy love movement has aged or for that matter the efficacy or aging of this musical. This song exists ouside of all that for me. (Especially the bassline. follow it across the whole song.)
The me in 3rd grade couldn't understand the implications of this song either as stand-alone or in the musical's narrative, that it spoke to Claude's death, Vietnam, the power and limitations of the peace and love movment all at once.Even then the me in 3rd grade responded to this track on a base level, to the the build, climax, release, the theatricality. Even then it existed for me - though I couldn't express this exactly - as an urging against authority and the structure of mainstream society but also one of endless hope and optimisim in the face of darkness, one that I carry still. I carried it from 3rd grade in Manitowoc Wisconsin all the way to this moment. A four-decade span that intersected with the recurring multiform unending darknesses of the world at large as well as my own personal darknesses, ranging from depression and anxiety, my brain tumor diagnosis and treatment, the death of family, the death of friends, the death of my dog, my unemployment now - whatever gradation of darkness, misery, hopelessness you are facing, to me this song is a planted flag, an active declaration to default to hope against all verifiable reason and evidence. To me, then and now, the song is a provocation and a celebration at once. You are here in this moment. It's better than being dead. No matter how far down the world has brought you or pushed you, you have full agency to stand and let light in, in whatever form that means for you.
(this was written for Songbook PDX, April 6 2024, at Salon Rouge)
What Are You Chasing?
I have been trying to take running a little more seriously lately (giving say 30% effort instead of my usual 1-2%.) This isn't really because I love running or anything only because it's a venting mechanism and corrective for my mental state and helps keep me grounded and as such is an essential practice. If I stop running for say more than two weeks, I can feel the darkness gathering like heavy clouds in the distance and letting that storm approach is not fun to put it mildly. So I run. To help keep me going I signed up for an upcoming half-marathon, which I seem to do every few years or so, and so am now once again formally training, running short runs several days a week and an increasingly longer run on Sundays. This Sunday's run was only 6 miles but as part of my renewed efforts I decided to actually wear a belt with a plastic water bottle this time to stay hydrated and to bring an energy gel to consume midway. Woke up before dawn and left the house, headed down to the Springwater Corridor, a trail that has no vehicles to contend with, only bikers and other runners, and began.
As I ran I contemplated a variety of things going on in my life, many of which lately concern routes and patterns and filmmaking and everything peripheral. I turned 50 this summer and it's put me in a predictably exploratory frame of late, reviewing the trajectories of choices made decades prior, sometimes in an unkind corrosive way, but mostly with a detached objectivity. It's also made me question some current practices, eg, why do I continue to throw money at film festivals and screenwriting contests? What am I chasing really? Why does an acceptance or denial have such power over me? and so on. I try to not really do any active thinking on runs really, just letting these thoughts wash ashore until the next wave brings something else to ponder. I ran to the turnaround at 3 miles, ate the energy gel and hydrated, and headed back.
Around mile 4, I was past the bridge that goes over the highway when just ahead of me another runner fed onto the trail from a smaller path that joined it, running in the same direction as me, but 30 yards ahead. Their pace appeared to be just slower than mine (which is slow) so I did a quick estimation: since I was energized by the gel and warmed up, I could step on the gas to overtake them. So I did. Having someone run right behind me drives me bananas so I kept the pace at a higher level for a bit, exerting myself more than I probably should have, to put distance between us and eventually settled back into my standard pace. Then I was reminded of a moment earlier in the month when I got passed by some annoying runner guy (one of those dudes decked out in all the hardcore running accoutrements) and how after he passed me I instantly went oh yeah? internally and attempted to match his pace for a bit just to show him that I could keep up with him (note: He was long past me and clueless to my feeble efforts). I wondered if the runner I had just overtaken had a similar distaste for being passed and was possibly now gunning for me. No, there’s no way they could have caught me, I thought. But moments later as I slowed briefly to take a photo of the rising sun on my phone (below), I could hear the runner running just behind me, on my heels, no doubt ready to oh yeah? me. I instantly upped my pace again to put space between them and me. I ran on for another quarter mile, certain they were long gone. But the song on my headphones ended and before the next one started I could hear that, no, the runner was still right behind me, matching me footfall for footfall. Goddamn, I thought, they are right on me. Keeping this fast pace was starting to wear on me but I refused to relent, I refused to stop. No matter what I am not going to let this runner pass me I thought.
Up ahead, a woman was walking her dog on my side of the trail. She saw me coming but did not move, necessitating me to move to the other side as I passed her. This required me to look behind me to make certain that no bikers were coming but it would also give me a chance to look at The Runner. I was annoyed by their dedication and respected it at once. Maybe they liked me overtaking them? Maybe they were using me as a pace runner? Helping them to achieve their internal goals? I then looked over me left shoulder as I moved over for the dog lady and saw that in fact no one was behind me. No one was ever behind me. What I heard and mistook for footfalls just behind me I realized, was the water in my bottle sloshing side to side. No one was on my heels, no one was using me as a pace runner, no one was there. I laughed out loud with a sharp ferocity and the woman with the dog looked over to make sure I was okay. I kept running.
Sidewalk Film Fest 2022 highlights
outside Alabama Theater on Friday Aug. 26, opening night of Sidewalk FF
I spent a few days in Birmingham AL last week to attend the Stowe Story Labs* and saw a ton of great stuff at the Sidewalk Film Festival (occurring at the same time). Wednesday through Saturday daytimes for me were filled with stuff at the Labs so screenings all in the evening. (The Festival officially started on Friday so anything seen prior was a Festival Spotlight, a designation that probably isn't germane to this post but I'm including it anyway.)
tues 8.23 flew in and checked in to my room. It was evening. Unpacked and walked over to the Sidewalk Cinema to see a block of Alabama-made shorts, narrative and documentary alike. The quality ranged but a couple were standouts (notably Vanderwaal's Journey and Love Without Parole) and my god, the Sidewalk Cinema, a subterranean two-screen outfit with snacks and full bar and Shining themed restrooms, was straight out of my dreams.
wed 8.24 Sidewalk Cinema. A Run For More, doc feature about the first trans woman to run for city council in San Antonio. A very compelling story and look at some of the obstacles she faced, both the tactical ones and the more sinister close-minded ones among her possible constituents.
thu 8.25 Sidewalk Cinema. Jasmine is a Star. narrative feature about a young woman in Minneapolis who won't let albinism prevent her dreams of being a model. Awesome on its merits but also as companion piece to the doc the night prior, both focused on people overcoming impossible odds to be their authentic self. this had the added bonus of being a movie I supported in crowdfunding several years ago and so I found my name in the credits. You should watch this.
fri 8.26 Alabama Theater Butterfly in the Sky. opening night for the Sidewalk Film Fest, movie about Levar Burton and the production and impact of Reading Rainbow was a joy and positive force in the world and we need more like that. Also, Alabama Theater is lovely and the opening-night energy was notable.
sat 8.27 Carver Theater 11:40a Our Father, the Devil. I had seen this movie on my iphone the day prior (b/c the director Ellie Foumbi was giving a Q & A to Stowe and we were all sent a link to watch beforehand) and was so in awe of the film that I had to see it on a bigger screen. Lucky for me it was playing the next day. The film is very amazing. Seek it out and see it theatrically. The performances and cinematography and score all work together to create an indelible cinematic ululation. pure joy for me
Carver Theater 4.30 Color of Care. I loved Strong Island by Yance Ford and was eager to see this, a feature documentary about disparity of healthcare among people of color. While parts were compelling (and enraging), the doc is produced by Oprah and has her appearing on screen no less than three times - beginning/middle/end - to comment on the events we are witnessing and to put it generously it was a detractor to the impact of the film.
Birmingham Museum of Art 7:30p The Integrity of Joseph Chambers. I really dug Killing of Two Lovers and when I saw this was at festival I knew I had to find it. The theater had some sound amplification issues at the start, maybe the first 10 minutes which was doubly unfortunate b/c the sound design of the film is very deliberate, beginning in a hushed domestic environment and all of us in the audience strained to make sense of the opening dialogue. Anyway. Still thinking about this film and it is worth your time for what is mostly a movie about a man in the woods pretending to be something he is not.
Sidewalk cinema 10:30p Genre Shorts block. a range of quality but some def. innovations and joys. Standouts for me were Free Noir Papillon and Cruise.
sun 8.28 10 am Sidewalk Cinema. Animated Shorts block. some standouts: Demi's Panic by Bill Plympton (written by my Stowe colleague Danny Leonard), Memento Mori, Five Cents, In the Mountains, and Prayer for my Mother: The Eva Brettler Story. All outstanding in different ways. After the animated shorts I left Sidewalk Cinema for the last time and took shuttle to airport. Very positive experience and already strategizing how to return next year for their 25th anniversary.
*the Stowe Story Labs are a 4 day enterprise for writers and directors and writer/directors to workshop their scripts and pitches and interact with peers and mentors. Very awesome and powerful but the subject for another entry.
Loss of Control
at roughly 5:37 am the cat wakes me up by jumping on my face and foot. I walk into the kitchen and the window over the sink is open. I hear an unusually loud grinding noise coming from under our car in the driveway. I race outside with my phone. I bark "hey, hey, hey" and the grinding stops and a thin bearded man in a tie-dye shirt slides out from under the car with some sort of cutting instrument, jumps in a nearby idling car, project interrupted.
Later down in my office - normally my writing or focus time - I can’t write or focus. I talk to M to apprise her and go for a run. After I come home I look under car (here, car 1) to check the damage. The converter is cut, blade still on ground. This means I have to take car 2 (the one we don't drive b/c the engine we were advised is about to explode) to transport F to camp in N Portland, at a school off Lombard. Drive home and can smell the motor and its odors of imminent doom. Car 2 can wait though. One catastrophe at a time. N rides his bike to his camp, much nearer. I call our auto place about car 1. they refer us elsewhere.
I have therapy with my practitioner. much dominated by events of the AM. we go deeper and a triplet refrain is bouncing in my head: fear of death, fear of change, loss of control. all intellectual constraints that are harder to find when you're in it. We talk about the distractions of the era, the coexistence of joy and doom.
I drive car 1 to dentist - and it now roars like one of those unmuffled street racer deals - for scheduled deep scaling on quadrant 2 of 4, here the lower right. bone loss is discussed, deep pocketing is discussed, grim future decisions about an extant wisdom tooth are discussed. I leave numb-mouthed and bleeding and drive car 1 to muffler people. They need time so I have to leave car 1 there. I take bus home and at 2nd bus stop I get phone call that N hurt his hand at basketball camp. I arrive at home, get in car 2 (the exploding engine one) and drive to his camp to find his hand indeed looks hurt, jammed forcefully against a basketball in motion. I put bike in car, drive him home, engine not exploding. N ices while I clean out garage so as to park car 1 in it from here on out instead of driveway (but garage it should be noted is dumping ground containing furniture, boxes, drum set, ping pong table, giant spiders and making space is therefore no small feat.) M takes car 2 to get F. I get call from muffler people who say bad news the morning visitors also cut the O2 lines. I say what does that mean practically, to which I meant how does that impact the vehicle, to which she answers about 500 bucks. I say okay do it even though we don't have 10 bucks b/c we need at least one vehicle (and because the fix for the exploding car is a new engine so far more pricey a fix than this one.) M & F come home. I advise on the situation. Muffler people call to say car is done. Our friend Andrea is nearby by coincidence and gives me and F a ride to muffler people and M takes N in car 2 to KP to xray the hand.
F and I drive car 1 home and park in newly cleaned garage. (or whatever word is the analog for a bunch of junk moved to one side to allow a vehicle space to park in). M texts me that N's hand in fact contains a broken finger and will hence impact several upcoming events, birthdays, tournaments. We lament and make plans. I look over and stare at our elderly dog - his settings lately are sleep all day /breathe heavy when not sleeping/poop in house when not sleeping or breathing heavy and silently urge him to not make today the day. His eyes say either okay no problem or more salmon treats please or what is this world? but I don’t have the skills or space to translate so I go with choice 2.
M and N return home and N, his arm in a splint and a sling, notices the kitchen appliances are oddly all turned off. It turns out the GFCI into which several gadgets and items, notably the refrigerator, are plugged tripped. I click to reset. It won't reset. I go downstairs to breakers but nothing is tripped down there. So is GFCI outlet the issue or something else. We work backwards and determine that the fridge - which has been in slow descent into hospice for say the last 18 months or so - has selected today as the day to cross over. We hose out the spiderweb dusty coolers in the garage so we can transfer all the over-priced food into them, and M takes car 2 to get ice. New seasons has no ice. Safeway has no ice. They say check bimart or liquor store. Both are closed. M continues an ice quest while I make dinner for kids. Eventually ice is located in outer SE and M makes her way home. I put kids down while she frantically puts all the melting items into coolers and covers with ice. It's 10 pm.
I fall asleep at midnight with that earlier mentioned triplet ping ponging in my head, feeling grateful for healthcare and air conditioning and still being alive and vehicles in whatever state, my mind landing on loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control
On Quitting
Two rejections in one morning for two different projects. One for a screenplay contest that I don't care about anyway (but would have appreciated the nudge for this particular project) and one for a Fall Marketplace for the revised edition of a script I retooled earlier this year with considerable determination. The latter rejection has the further indignity of being a semi-professional association that required me joining for $125/year just for the privilege of being able to apply for an additional $50 (which I did twice this year, once for the retooled script, and once for their episodic lab with a script they rejected that happens to be the same one rejected for the screenplay contest I don't care about anyway.) Each rejection stressed that it was a very competitive year! and said the decision bore no reflection on the merits of the project, only on the random variables that washed ashore this year and both wished me well with my future artistic endeavors. If you've done this for any duration of time you know that those sentiments are cut/pasted over and over like endlessly replicating strands of an ungovernable virus.
Okay, who cares? This Sisyphean enterprise is just part of the drill. Rejection is like breath after awhile and you get accustomed to expect it, not in a self-defeating way, to extract any personal sensations, to not take anything to heart etc etc. I get all that but I have arrived at the place where I seriously need to be done with this arm of the artistic craving/aversion couplet. A quick look at the money spent this year on labs and film fests and grant applications is not unsubstantial and that amount doesn't capture the sustained effort on some of these applications, early morning after early morning, revision after revision and it certainly doesn't capture the time lost for actually writing screenplays or making movies b/c i was too busy working on applications for things that could maybe oh please oh please help me write screenplays or make movies. Meaning I am feeling like all this hope and aspiration - sometimes bordering on delusion and certainly a requirement for any aspect of filmmaking except maybe bookkeeping - is getting in the fucking way.
I need to stop looking up and weighing my progress and experience against false markers and bellwethers like whether a meaningless screenplay contest thinks I was good enough to advance to the quarterfinals or whether some anonymous ego on twitter is cryptically announcing their very exciting news or whether this course/class/video will the key to unlock eternal shimmering success as a filmmaker. An entire industry is out there to cater to this urge for approval - much of it a half-step from snake oil - and I think I need to unplug from that too. Unsubscribe, unfollow, mute, block. All this chattering that announces itself as somehow an aid to a desired destination but in fact becomes another obstacle. I need to put my head down and work on the adaptation for a short; I need to put my head down and finish post on this webseries; I need to summon whatever it takes and find the resources to finish the feature whose production got interrupted on by pandemic; I need to continue making movies but subtract the ego-validation mommy they gave me a certificate bs that ribbons its way across my internal narrative and mindframe for decades. This is tricky to do in film as opposed to, say writing or painting, b/c movies are dependent on other people for finance, for production, for post, for festivals & marketing etc. At some point you will get on a knee and look up and say please please do you like this? in some form. I need to turn off all that noise like a spigot and sit in the required silence patiently, let the work truly be the only thing. Not just say the work is the only thing but then still get snagged by approval/rejection. Quitting frankly seems at times like a liberation, like the best possible dry land there could be. Imagine being free and unencumbered by the tendrils of this thing, bundled with guaranteed misery and regret; imagine waking up to think about the lawn or the TPS report instead of racing to rewrite this draft by Thursday to apply to the GFY Labs which could lead to something or someone to help you make this next project. What glorious indulgence.
Maybe the mistake is thinking the Sisyphean rock you're pushing is to get your movie made. Maybe the rock is in fact the ceaseless need for approval/validation that deep down in the cavernous dark you think/hope getting the movie made will neutralize. But maybe instead let go of the rock entirely and still get the movie made. Maybe instead step to the side and let the rock roll past you, crushing ferns and insects as it rolls to the bottom, and then walk up the hill free and unencumbered.
On Survivorship
getting proton beam radiation, MGH, November 2005
Reminder: if you have good health, or even okay health, the kind of health where you don’t worry whether you’ll be dead in 6 months, you are in a privileged position. Mortality is the great equalizer of course but we are not equipped to deal with our oblivion 24/7 so we fret about what that car is doing parked in front of our house or if our skills are undervalued in the job we don’t like anyway or if this is actually a great blouse. I’m 17 years out from being in the thick of my diagnosis, surgeries, treatment, and if you met me you wouldn’t know at first I’d been there. But I have and it feels like I never left. Like I am straddling two spheres, one containing the signifiers of the prior life - the small talk, the striving, the annoyances of daily living (including but not limited to underqualified people speaking with perceived authority about cinema or bike lanes or artisanal ice cream) - and one containing the urgency of the clock, forever ticking in the foreground, watching helplessly while everything and everyone winds down to their inevitable doom. It’s like I can’t leave either place, which sounds unfortunate but it’s a million times better than being stuck in the dark sphere until time is up. I am grateful to still be here, to be writing and making movies, to be drawing breath. But to imply that what I went through is behind me is false. I am guessing most (all?) survivors feel a version of this. And I haven’t even addressed the fear/anxiety/depression component of surviving yet. But now, I’ll stop writing, go for a run, take a shower and stop thinking about this for a little bit, which is a privileged position. Related:
On Patience: Los Angeles & Screenwriting
downtown la (background) & prospect studios (foreground), april 2022
I was back in Los Angeles last month for a film festival and have been living alongside LA again since, in both memory and real time, the mirror and it’s reflected image simultaneously. I lived there from 1997-2004 and cede authority to LA as the constant, though it’s changed just as much with the passage of time, a nail salon where once stood a video store, looming condos in what was once the chevron at Franklin & Western, and so on. There’s the aspirant me of 20 plus years ago and the filmmaker me of now, both still having ego driven needs for validation but one older and, let’s presume, wiser. I don’t need the same version of things I needed then but I still am in touch with that part of myself, patiently observing.
On a related note, found a journal entry from early 2001 (below, in italics). It is a snapshot of the then me in space and time. The prose is a bit flowery to be generous (and heavily influenced I suspect by a couple intoxicants) but still has a power for me b/c it encapsulates where I was then, at a Los Angeles crossroads, 2 yrs post film school, just started working the mailroom at a production company at a job I felt/knew was beneath me but took hoping it would open doors (update: it didn’t) all while I was desperate to get my scripts read and my talents acknowledged on a broad scale, presumably globally. I had been in LA for several years here and was fully wrestling with all aspects of breaking in, particularly the unexplained delay in my celebration. I arrived in LA, like many, full of arrogance and entitlement, knowing in my bones that it was just a matter of time. My goal was easy-peasy: sell some scripts, take the acclaim and $$$ to make my own films and along the way advance cinematic language and form. No sweat. A legend in my own mind but with no real world reflection of this. I had been hip pocked by a not great manager who didn’t move the needle and left him and was now flapping around while everyone, seemingly, was selling scripts by the side of their pools, getting development deals, getting the white-hot glare of attention, acceptance, validation I was wailing for like a baby sitting in its own mess. I was desperate to the marrow to be validated by the machine and lived within endless recurrent cycles of hope and despair (like many/everyone in the film industry). To counter this, I had been working actively on being patient and trusting that, if only I could stem the gushing flow of my ambition and learn to be zen and in-the-moment, it would all come together for me down there (update: it didn’t). This moment is reflected in the journal entry.
I moved out of Los Angeles in 2004 but still feel the force of its draw on me, like an ex who still has complete ownership power over you even though you’ve both redefined yourself, like a recovered addict who forever hears the looping seduction call from their vice of choice. I know that I am so much better without LA in my life but that doesn’t mean I don’t still lay awake sometimes and wonder what if.
2/28/2001 8:51 AM
A word ‘patience’ repeated ad nauseum like an aspirin for an unintentional amputee; a song teetering on the edge of a gaping abyss wherein should I fall I can content myself with the lunatic mutterings of ‘what ifs’ and ‘if only’s. There are times it’s maintainable; controllable - and then there are times it’s not. My monster, demon the gruesome grey block of ambition that has hitherto propelled me into the illusion of being propelled anywhere now sits sour and congealed in the heat lamp glow of the sun. A forgotten monument to youthful naivete. And now, alas, to cling to such a monument seems to indicate more the desperate (and uncertain) aims of a fool than the strength and endurance of a survivor. If any midway or reconciliatory pose between the two can be struck it has of yet remained unrevealed. How I’ve pined for ____. For what? For approbation, acceptance and money (?). Unshakeable the realization of shaky steps , missteps in the forest. Alien paths, alien lanes heading toward seeming unscalable, impenetrable brick walls stretching skyward. So desperate the desire but one only needs to take one step back and gaze upon a larger image to allow the demon clouds of doubt to billow in and overtake the landscape; the indelible black sentences that appear to hang in the air before me: “who are you kidding?” - “how much longer will you let the joke be played?” - “When is not enough enough?” - “when shall you relinquish your grip on the illusory aims of a heartsick fool?”. The blunt, crude edges of that word ‘patience’ my only defense; slay the dragon with a pebble. Impossible. The dark storm clouds gather exponentially w/ no sign of abatement and I’m left to dreaded admittals of failure and resignation. I can trace my steps backward and exit or wander for several more years of seeming futility banging my head against the trees leaving smears of blood in my wake, hoping , praying, waiting for a sign that could never come. One more step back: and now these black musings seem entwined in the process, that the way one deals with them is the test. What’s past is preface. Climbing into the density of trees is one component but the more essential is the battling of grim (predictable) emotions when no clues are left. No discernible paths to follow. And then the soothing balm of that monstrous two-syllable pebble: Patience. Patience.
PATIENCE!
VF BS VS CS
artifact | 2005
artifact | Jan 2005
A recent piece in Vanity Fair discusses a fraudulent television writer. I didn’t really care until I came to the word chondrosarcoma and then got reeled in, my rage accelerating with each successive paragraph. I was diagnosed with skull-base chondrosarcoma* in April 2005 (the final biopsy was delivered after two brain surgeries, transsphenoidal in February 2005 and craniotomy in March 2005 to remove a golf-ball size tumor.) In Sept 2005, M and I drove across the country in a rented van and moved to Boston for 2.5 months and lived in a hotel so I could get proton beam radiation at Mass General 5 days a week, one T stop up on the red line. The entire enterprise was a sustained period of profound darkness and fear, all-consuming, line-in-the-sand of my life against which everything else then or now or to come is measured, a seismic depth charge detonated 17 years ago which still reverberates and ripples through each moment I have the good fortune to continue to draw breath. I have met and interacted with people in the throes of the reckoning, newly diagnosed, those headed to the beyond and everyone in every station in between. I know many non-skullbases who did not make it but I know skullbases who didn’t also. I belong to or have participated in chondrosarcoma (CS) message boards, yahoo groups, FB groups. Some are particular to skullbase, some are for all with CS. I have lived through it long enough to experience all registers of emotion and emotional treatment particular to survivorship: PTSD, standard issue therapy, somatic therapy. I have lived past every-3-month MRIs, semi-annual MRIs, annual MRIs, biannual MRIs, semi-annual endocrinologist meetings and consults, semi-annual bloodwork, daily thyroid medicine, twice a month testosterone injections**, and a pulsing black worst-case scenario mind frame about every possible situation that unfolds before me from a kid’s cough to M being 5 minutes late coming home, every deviance from the norm or the plan is a possible portal into uncertainty, decay, death. Chondrosarcoma, in other words, is unwittingly part of my identity and to discover it fraudulently co-opted to aid someone’s success as a television writer is at once entirely unsurprising (having lived for part of my life in Los Angeles, where authenticity is a fluid concern, speaking generously) and body-quaking, table-pounding, screaming into the backyard rage-making. To the person in question, or to anyone pretending to have cancer or illness of any kind, I summon all my decorum and eloquence on behalf of all afflicted chondrosarcoma patients, victims and survivors to say: FUCK YOU WITH THE HEAT OF A MILLION SUNS.
* In the chondrosarcoma community there is a division between the skullbases and the non-skull bases, referring to how the disease presents initially. The skullbases have better odds b/c if it presents there first it will not metastasize (my radiation oncologist at MGH in Sept 2005: “don’t be the first”).
** my internal production was impacted by the position/removal of the tumor
new year, etc
New year is here. While number systems and conventions like this are manufactured I do find a certain value in checking in/refreshing on a cyclical basis. 2021 was very good for me on a couple different fronts despite the chaos and inferno in the world at large. I aim to take this goodness and expand it further this year.
M has been away a lot the past few weeks (scheduled back today) - first at a residency for 12 days in early december and then home for 11 days across xmas and then for 10 days to attend low-residency graduate school (or put another way, for 22 of the last 33 days) That’s afforded me some time to watch some films (during the day mostly when the kids were at camp or school). Here’s the list, more or less in chronological order with asterisk marking the ones that floored me:
Ugetsu
Pather Patchali
Power of the Dog
Annette
Small Engine Repair
Tick Tock Boom
The Bad Sleep Well
Undine
The Unforgiveable
Driveways*
Rules of Attraction
Matrix Resurrections
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
Earth (N. Weyrhalter)*
Bad Influence
The Witch
Kajillionaire*
Wings of Desire
Homo Sapiens (N. Weyrhalter)
Ghost World
The Killing of Two Lovers*
This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection*
Happy Hour*
The Sweet Hereafter
Last Black Man in San Francisco
The Card Counter
Stuff I watched with the kids
Spirited Away
Adventures in babysitting (remake)
Sonic The Hedgehog
Iron Giant
Like Mike
Goonies
a year
Today marks a year off alcohol. I didn’t set out to do it really. I was just sick for a couple days last december and skipped my daily 2-3 beers and then a couple days turned in to a week and then weeks and then months. The first few months were energizing both internally and externally, like a fog lifting, but then i hit a sort of plateau. I definitely had used alcohol to blunt some of the problem areas in my life (internally speaking here), some of the areas that needed tending to and some that required confrontation. Not that I’ve cracked that code fully, only that I was able to survey the depth and complexity of what I’d hoped would go away on its own. The hardest stretches were before, during, after production in October and a real low stretch this fall, where my autumnal depression came to roost for a bit and my fatalistic what’s-the-point-of-anything-at-all-so-who-cares vantage popped up for duration. but I moved past that and am here now.
Directing Notes from MICROAGGRESSIONS S2
literally moments after wrap! amazing crew (+ amazing actor D’vonte Robinson)
Oh man, just wrapped Season 2 of Microaggressions! I am a mix of exhaustion and elation. For an underfunded 5 - day shoot that included out-of-town actors, non-actors, no art department and a tiny crew, I could not be more joyful about the way things went. Dicky Dahl asked me at the end if it all cohered to my vision. I had to think about that for a second (in part b/c I felt awkward referring to my vision w/o sounding pretentious) but then answered that I don’t see vision as a fixed thing anymore; vision has to be a fluid, the second you bring something into the real world, whether by casting, by weather, by location, it always always deviates from your original conceptual idea. I’ve done enough of these to now become comfortable with that and allow for change and deviation, recognizing that vision is a malleable thing, always evolving, always broadening. Every day on this show fell within the boundaries of my original vision, so it was a win. As long as you can keep the whole moving production/narrative apparatus between those boundaries you’re in a good spot. It’s tricky though b/c yes you have to be flexible but you also have to be cognizant of the lines/moments/details that absolutely cannot be deviated from and be able to make them happen one way or another. Here are a few directing bullet points from this show (really for me to remember on upcoming shoots):
Cast correctly. This is so so vital. It’s sometimes hard to know in the abstraction and toil of pre production if a certain person feels 100% right or not (even harder in the zoom era) and it is largely an intuitive enterprise. But if you do it right there is not much to say to the actors on set, short of making sure the energy level is right and showing them their marks. Built into this is the idea that you should also take risks in casting. I took a couple different risks on this one, driven by intuition partly and by tightly-crossed-fingers and hit the jackpot. Also, I cast one of my oldest friends from high school in one of the leads (known her for 30 plus years!) and a friend from college as well (who I hadn’t had contact with for 25 years). Don’t get me wrong, they both brought the goods, were A+, and I didn’t cast them solely on our shared history (but it was a factor, partially b/c I am prone to nostalgia.) More than anything I am feeling so positive about the range of performers that came together for this. Definitely elevated the project beyond what I anticipated. Cannot wait to see these actors and performances all cut together.
Get a producer. I did not have a producer on this and yet again was splitting duties between the capturing the narrative and getting enmeshed in the details related to production of the project. I’ve produced or co-produced everything to date and this has always occurred out of necessity, b/c the project wouldn’t get made if I didn’t wear multiple hats and strain to straddle different worlds (if you’ll forgive the imagery). But I am at the point where I really need to not worry about SAG or craft services or flights or lunch management or insurance any longer. I mean, I can if i have to so I’m always grateful for the experience but that stuff all strips my focus from the narrative, from what we are shooting, instead forcing me to consider how we are assembling the resources to shoot. I am happy to have made it to the finish line on this but man it took a toll on me, manifesting mainly in anxiety and exhaustion.
Sometimes new is good. I am a creature of habit. I am also a creature of not ever ever going outside my comfort zone, both professionally and personally. Alas, due to a series of variables shifting, I found myself in the spot of either not making this now or making it now but with some different people on crew. I rolled the dice and went with the latter even though it put me in an uncomfortable, unknown zone. I mean, this happens everyday on productions so it’s not like some groundbreaking thing, but for me personally it was a step forward. (Peripherally related sidebar: I have not had alcohol in almost a year and I attribute it to helping me make some stretches this year, helping me see the cul-de-sacs and snags I’ve fallen prey to in previous outings. ) I bit the bullet on this and was oh so glad I did. Being in a new situation with new people really helped reframe the focus of each day, of each setup, of each shot. I came to set each day in a different headspace than previous shoots as a result. Big props to DP Sean Conley who was keyed into the project narrative from the outset and was very easy to collaborate with. And props to everyone else on this show too. I’ll give them all individual shout-outs in the coming weeks. It was a great mix of acumen and knowledge and personality on this show.
Write with the shoot in mind but stay flexible. I wrote the screenplay this season toward locations I knew we could get. I designed two whole episodes to be shot in different parts of my house. I designed one episode to be shot at my parents’ house and one to be shot at a downtown building I thought I could get entry to. That left just 2 episode locations to secure. One was originally written as a campground at the ocean but as the shoot approached it was revised to a campground at a river. We could have sought that out but since there’s a creek near my house that I run by frequently we shot there, guerilla-style. The other episode had a revolving series of possibilities. It was just a house exterior which shouldn’t be that difficult to find but it became a challenge b/c the particulars of the house and yard were important to what happens on screen. It couldn’t just be anywhere. First thing we considered was a friend’s house in SW Portland but the light was not optimum and if we had to move the shoot time then we had to move plane flights for an actor and who wants to get into that business? Next up was another friend’s house very near mine, which would be great for staging purposes, but the production time was not optimum for them since they have a life and kids to manage. At last, slightly out of desperation, I reached out to a crew member, our very outstanding script supervisor Stacy Brewster (who has a book coming out next month that you can/will pre-order here) who very generously allowed us to shoot at his home. This location, though selected with the clock ticking, ended up being exactly right and impacted the shoot and the narrative in a perfect way.
Stay open and trust yourself. This is a mantra we’ve been trying to express to our son at his basketball games. (with my deep apologies for relying on sports metaphors.) Stay open and trust yourself. Open means turn toward the ball, open means put your arms up, open means your body is ready for whatever might happen. Trust yourself means, you were good enough to get here, trust yourself means even if you miss the layup keep going, trust yourself means you are doing exactly what you want to do so find the joy in it regardless of outcome. Stay open and trust yourself. You can control the energy and you can control the enthusiasm but you cannot control the outcome. Stay open and trust yourself.
DO NOT STOP. I’m saying this one out loud for the me of the next project (maybe a short film, maybe a feature, depends on financing) and for the me of 25 years ago (wherever in space-time his clueless ambition-driven self may be now, probably writing in his journal and deriding modern cinema and smoking borrowed cigarettes): The road is long and serpentine and rife with endless obstacles, hazards, and infinite opportunities to pull out everywhere but whatever you do, do not stop. If you heed nothing else, do not stop. Do not fall prey to the allure of rejoining the masses or the comforts of turning your back on this road, even though it has no outward reward and sometimes literally nothing to urge or propel you forward but your own automated repeated footsteps. Do not relent. Do not give in. Do not give up. Do not quit. Do not stop.
That’s it for now. On to post-production. Drives with audio/picture will soon make way to Evonne in Los Angeles and we’ll go from there. More updates to come.
about to roll Day 2; my son watching Jason Esquerra in monitor while 1st AC Anda Arroway and sound tech Dicky Dahl look on.
Delay in Microaggressions
If you’re tracking the ins and outs of my production schedules and announcements (hi mom) you know that by know I should have wrapped Season 2 of Microaggressions. Sad to report that we had to delay b/c Margaret and F both came down w/ Covid-19. Even though I avoided it I had to be present for them to caretake as well as to run the appropriate timelines for quarantines/isolations. It was cutting too close. At the same time, my DP Scott had to step away from the project due to a professional opportunity. So, it was time to put a halt on the shoot. Stoppage is never a great sensation but I have been embracing it, feeling like perhaps it was positive development, allowing me to edit screenplay, refine intent, continue to seek locations and opportunities; stepping away from my comfort zones in production and being cognizant of how that can trickle down to interactions and comportments and basic things like shot selection and vantage points. Maybe the stoppage is a gift. I’ve already been working to hone the script, refining thematic bits, ironing out wrinkles that I can’t believe I let stay in there for long. At a certain point a screenplay becomes white noise b/c you think you know all the beats of all the scenes but maybe you don’t. Maybe delay is the best GD thing that could ever be imaginable. We are hoping to restart this thing soon, definitely before the year is out. Watch this space.
movie extra
My mid-life looking backward tour continues and led me to a giant box of correspondence* wherein I found an entire letter I had typed to my family immediately after being an extra for a day on Outbreak, which shot in Ferndale, CA in 1994. I am very thankful for my devoted documentation b/c I remember about 5% of the details. I include it below in its entirety along with a couple of cool documents they issued to me then. Kind of miss the idea of writing letters - to say nothing of typing them - and appreciate revisting my unjaded take on being on a movie set, not to mention me listing prior credits of the cast to my family. (note: I mention Joe Don Baker and saw him on set throughout the day but he was ultimately cut from the film). Funny to think that 7 years later I was working in the mailroom of a production company in Beverly Hills who also shot a movie in Ferndale, hearing reports and seeing dailies from the set of this town where I had been an extra on a movie set, a town adjacent to Arcata where I had lived and incubated all my filmy dreamings. It all felt like some vital profound bookend to me then, past and present intersecting to create a star-lit pathway clearly designed to illuminate and embolden the trajectory of my ascendant cinematic destiny whereas now it just feels like the sheer randomness particular to the yawning indifference of the ice-cold unfeeling universe. (Or maybe it’s me that’s changed?) In any event, I ended up doing two days total on Outbreak but the second was a week or so later and came after what’s documented here. You can’t see me on screen per se but I am located somewhere in the circled mass of humans above.
*I am unable to shed anything like this - letters, trinkets, errata - except for my biannual manic gemini throw-it-all-out-it’s-all-void-of-meaning nights.
grants + labs/craving + aversion
This year I have been attempting to refine my mind’s focus with regard to validation and approval from outside forces. I’ve gotten a lot more patient with grant and lab applications and have been mostly successful in letting that process, the slow refining of each paragraph and sentence in the application, be the satisfaction, not the acceptance of some shadowy dream-making circle in the wings to whom I have previously ascribed mythic powers to grant me everything. Once I hit send, I presume I won’t get it - not in a defeatist way but rather a sort of relaxation of expectation - and get on with my life. Sundance Labs are notoriously selective and competitive, this is not news. But a couple years ago, in 2018, I got in to the 2nd round for one project on an application that I sort of phoned in so using that as a baseline, I busted ass on this years application. I was patient and took my time. Waking at 5:30 am every day and for weeks, polishing it, rearranging, refining, and shaping; getting it to the place where I thought it was good, and instead of hitting send, waiting a week, re-reading, finding the areas to improve and then doing so. This helped me speak with clarity about the project and about myself as filmmaker. I was operating from a position of confidence, not a position of deference; not needing the approval of validation, not striving to impress or dazzle, but only stating with transparency the narrative strengths of the project and how I was going to make it. When I finally hit send, I felt pretty good about my chances to get to the 2nd round, not in an arrogant or unjustly expectant way, just compared to the efforts of the 2018 application. That one I phoned it, this one I honed and refined and nurtured and patiently grew. Suffice to say this degree of confidence, despite its pure nature bred the tiny seed of expectation in me. This seed grew over the several months of waiting for response and eventually became as close to a foregone conclusion as my mind would allow. And so naturally, I did not advance to the 2nd round! It hit me in the gut, what? I had actually read on reddit about how one batch of applicants were emailed the wrong notifications once, denials instead of acceptances, and my mind actually went there for five minutes, thinking that a mistake was made. The proportion of negative reaction learning this lined up exactly with the size of the expectation. A lesson there. Or as Pavement says at the end of Shoot the Singer: don’t expect, don’t expect, don’t expect.
poster + grants + cinema
1) the poster above is from my friend Amanda who had outgrown it and asked on a whim if I would possibly be interested. I reacted swiftly. It serves the dual purpose of inspiring me and frightening people away from my office. I am in love with it.
2) season 2 of Microaggressions continues to form itself. Most of the casting is locked up, w/ a couple voice roles outstanding and one role outstanding. (note: very excited to work w/ this cast!) Need to work on finalizing locations next, along w/ and finding local resources for food and beverages and the minutiae of daily set life. I should probably get some help but I always find myself doing everything up until some breaking point a couple weeks before the shoot. This is an area I def need to improve upon. The project is shooting in September. Also, trying to slowly work my way back to shooting 2nd half of Sister/Brother, trying to put short film Child Care together, and waiting to hear from a few festivals about the fate of Man of La Mansion.
3) Started to apply for a grant this week and got a couple days in until I realized it was for 2020 and didn’t extend into 2021. Oh well. The good part is working on grants is always helpful to refine what you are doing or aiming at. River water polishing stone. Speaking of grants, there was one I applied for recently and apparently got close to getting (got a nice email from the organization to tell me so) but didn’t get. In fact someone I know ended up receiving. That dynamic - you losing, someone else you know winning - can be a very prickly enterprise. Been thinking of tattooing the phrase Don’t Compare Yourself To Others to my eyelids b/c it bears repeating and b/c it comes up all the time in the arts. or at least it does for me. (see also: Don’t Ponder Others lojong). Very destructive and eats up a lot of time. Honor the success of others and leave it there.
4) Been to the movies twice this week, in the theater. Even though I abhorred one of the films and mildly enjoyed the other, being in a cinema is a reverent space and sitting in the dark (even while watching pre-show corporate offal) I felt something inside me click back into place, something profound and elemental center itself. GD, that feeling I had missed. I don’t want to get too goofy here but I have spent much of my adult life in movie theaters and, with a few exceptions, there is nowhere I would rather be. I understand myself and my life much better from that spot. Watching at home or on phones or elsewhere are pale whisper facsimiles of this experience.
5) And yet I do watch things at home. This week watched No Sudden Move (which I loved esp the continued bravado of Peter Andrews), Body Double (a rewatch, not perfect but so damn good), and The American Friend (which I had never seen and adored, esp the Müller/Wenders pairing and the Ganz/Hopper one). The latter 2 movies are part of the CC neo noir series which I have decided to bathe myself in until every last one has been consumed.
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.
darkness
Been contemplating darkness lately. i have my own internal stories - both good and bad - that I’ve believed for decades that I’m just now starting to wrap my head around, just now starting to feel the breadth and context of. If you take away navigation lights, even if they are wrong, you are in the dark; you are on the ocean, panic rising, far from shore, nausea and vomiting, aching for the form and contour of the known. The further I get from these stories the more my anxiety rises in proportion. What do crests/nadirs actually signify? Anything aside from the egomania of the observer?
On vacation recently, a tremendous place of beauty and I am wracked with panic and not-quite-right feelings. This shit is all in my head. And I know it’s all in my head. But impactful nonetheless.
I need to detach from the ego connection of filmmaking. This is nearly impossible to do. The ego impels you forward, compels you to bring something into being, requires you to do a dance before/during/after to sell or celebrate. How to get to one without the other? This, I am beginning to understand, is not something to be transcended, only managed. Just like the dark I keep carrying, that keeps living alongside me instead of dissolving, despite my repeated efforts and entreaties and mix and match attempts of faith and health and magical thinking. Perhaps recognizing this is alone a form of victory. Perhaps accepting this is the tiniest of lights bobbing on the black chop in the distance, illuminating what must be, what can only be, please, a path to shore.
death + time + nostalgia
As Margaret would tell you, I’m forever living in the past. I’ve been like this a long time. I kept a journal feverishly for many years starting in college, documenting every sensation and moment (in part to deliberately not interact with other dorm mates) and every couple years I’ll absently grab one and read a line and then get pulled in like a tractor beam until I’m back on the floor of Cedar Hall in autumn 1992, smoking cigarettes and drinking Black Velvet and documenting my obsession with a certain person or a certain film and lamenting how everyone is full of shit and how broke I am. I don’t know if nostalgia is the appropriate term b/c it is not necessarily a rose-colored turn backward, but it does at times approach a zealous fascination with who I was then and the details and signifiers of my life at various checkpoints. (At other times it approaches, let’s say a manic unhealthiness.) The older I get however, the more of these checkpoints there are and the further the distance between the me of now and the different zones of memory.
Recently I was cleaning up my basement office and opened the metal toolbox that has travelled with me from the undergraduate film program at Humboldt State, across nearly 3 decades, 2 states, 7 residences. It’s always just been a sort of fixture in the accumulations and detritus of my life, something I gave little regard to and just accepted. Inside I found several 16 and super 8 films of mine. I knew there were there, they’ve always been there, but this time seeing them activated a sort of burning white-hot urgency to get them transferred to digital and SEE THEM RIGHT FUCKING NOW before they were lost to the sands of time and subsumed by oblivion (note: I’m not being dramatic, these are the terms I think in which should probably be a gentle reminder to self to go back to therapy). I found a local man named Gary who does transfers and set it up with him.
Here are two of them. The first, One Wacky Mornin’, is shot on Super 8, features all my house-mates on Beverly Drive 1994 and Margaret who was then just my friend. The second is called The Omega Man (why though?) and features George running through the woods in 1995 and getting beat up and was shot at the 11th St house, after we moved out of Beverly.
There are multifold sensations here watching these films that can only be particular to me. At once a portrait of life then (ie, a visual not just rereading journal entries), a document of my nascent filmmaking (why oh why didn’t I focus the camera or make cleaner edits?), and humming underneath it all a sort of living breathing pulsing reminder that everything ends, everything dies, everything fades, everything changes. This sentiment alone can fuck me up for months at a stretch, though it’s not an intellectual conceit as much as a sort of emotional gut blow beyond my agency. These are the same sort of musings I had circa 1992, sort of nihilistic and collegiate in register. The older I get the more I feel this in a physical way, in my body, a cellular response.
So let me be honest: Lately, I have been deeply embedded again in the looking-back zone. Transferring these films were more symptom than end. Lately I’ve found old people I knew in passing 30 years ago and looked them up to see where they landed. Lately I hooked up the VCR and watched old video tapes that me or friends are in b/c i had to SEE THEM RIGHT FUCKING NOW before they too were lost to time. Lately, I am contemplating running a road race in a couple months in a tiny midwest town I was raised in for a few years, partially just for kicks and partially b/c I feel a sudden compulsion to return there. Why though? If I sit and and think on it, I have to presume it is some sort of reaction to middle-age, some sort of desperate flailing measure. I suppose if it’s in lieu of having an affair, or buying a suite of high-end power tools or whatever cliche mid-life crisis manifests, then I’d select this. But I have to confront the abnormal surge of what I guess can be deemed nostalgia, for want of a better term.
Possibly related: This morning I got up early and felt sudden panic/anxiety thrumming, a function of middle-age, each day propelling us/me closer to oblivion, a quick peek behind the curtain, the mammalian life-cycle nothing special or unique, no one coming to save you/me, just the furnace kicking on and the black sky out the window. When these come, I’ve been trying of late to not fall to despair but to sit with the sensation. This is harder than it sounds. Body chemical response saying one thing, mind meekly urging another. But I’ve made some progress. Eager to look back at posts like this say nearly 30 years from now and see how far I’ll have gone from this present moment. Or maybe I’ll have mastered the below, which I found here, an article about the uncertainty of aging. Meantime, I have some old photos and journals to occupy me while the clock ticks upstairs.
Yosemite Trip
merced river
spent a few days last week in Yosemite, which is always glorious just in general for obvious reasons but profoundly improved upon b/c it was winter and there was almost nobody there. We stayed in the valley at the ahwahnee cottages, adjacent to the hotel. One morning it snowed. One morning I got to run a couple miles, along the path to Mirror Lake as the sun was coming up. It was below freezing and there was nobody around except me and one giant-lensed photographer on a bridge and I was reminded of samsara/nirvana couplet that recurs everywhere there, the signal to noise ratio, the stress of travel and sharing a small room with 2 kids vs the 360 degree view of eternity, the mountain air, the endless human aspiration in the face of certain oblivion. It really helps recontextualize everything a person is doing or hoping to do with their allotted few moments.
Mirror Lake
new project, new trailer
Man of La Mansion is an 8 episode series about Steve, a middle-aged suburban man who makes an ill-informed decision to pursue screenwriting as a means of staving off his encroaching identity crisis. He becomes enmeshed in all the attendant trappings - rules, contests, twitter - and mistakes very minor incremental motion for shattering breakthrough. Along the way he has to manage his day job at an ad agency, family life, his low self regard, home repair.
The project is comprised entirely of photographs and voiceover. Going out to festivals soon. trailer below