THE NAME OF THIS BLOG

is now the name of a video series (how often this is called a youtube series) I'm working on. me, talking and painting. here's the intro boilerplateI just finished. now onto editing some conversations.

this is what it feels like.

One Side (Or The Other)

As far as my new show script is coming, I've been horribly stuck for awhile now. Not sure which direction I should take. I usually have pretty sharp feelings about things; generally speaking I will "see" what direction to take, or more accurately, "see" the final result. I'll see myself on stage, performing in a certain way. Seeing that particularity will help me figure out which way to go. But that kind of data had been lacking for awhile, leaving me at sea.

I started painting again recently, really getting into it, piling up the canvases, getting all stocked up. Got to get my work up on some walls and in other people's homes this year. Need some sales.

But then, after painting for a week, I realized that the painting itself was helping to access that other realm from which I hoped and expected to get some Answers. So there. Pretty cool.

Changing, not grinding, Gears

Changing gears, as is our perfect wont and habitual method. To more performances, short video pieces. That should complement each other... The idea of writing, shooting, and editing a whole movie is just crazy to me now, after doing the same for a brief scene. The time line is the main thing that brings me up short: it can take years before your efforts are seen. I don't seem to have that kind of time. I need results now! That's what we are all about here in the modern world, I've read. Guilty then. But my sporadic-seeming efforts do pile up into a recognizable (at least to me!) body of something-or-other. More to come soon. Here's a screenshot of the intro to the next series of as-yet-untitled vids that will tell the story of Death Herself.

SHOOTING

So we got the space - our second try - got the folks assembled in the face of my reluctance to ask for help, three cameras, audio, storyboards, props. We fell apart on art direction, audio, and continuity. Mostly due to the fact that my management skills had been topped out, and even though I knew we needed some more help, I was maxed and couldn't ask.

It was an amazing experience, the acting. Trying to maintain, or even achieve, a mood, a motion, a look, a feeling, all in the midst of a bunch of technicians and bright lights and extras not sure what they're supposed to be doing. I'm in awe of good actors - I think it's a skill not many of us really understand. Good acting seems to be a weird combination of being in the moment, i.e. authentic, really be-ing - in a totally contrived narrative. Being totally honest and real in a made-up configuration.

Now to the editing, the logging of files, the looking at everything to get the moments of, forgive me, truth, and seeing if, in the midst of those hours of footage, there exists a 5-minute story, as we planned.

Ha - planning.

Remover of Obstacles

Matthias said yesterday, why don't you just do the first scene?

uh

DUH

yeah, that makes it not only easier, but POSSIBLE

thanks, I needed that.

So we'll do TOD in the cemetery at dawn, then over to The Bar for the fateful meeting with one Dorothy.

See ya there.

Location Joke Here

Got the first scene location nailed. The Coppertop Lounge, sadly no longer open but available for us to use. And they still have that copper topped bar.

Yeehaw. Feels more and more real all the time; because it is, I guess.

About halfway through the script, hardest writing I ever did.

Have to get out to the cemetery before dawn, find a spot where the light is good that time of day. Death, aka Tod, will be resting with his back against a gravestone as the sun rises. He'll then walk away into the fate which my story has in store.

Not altogether specious?

You can think that your inspiration is gone sometimes because part of you is fighting so hard to make something Not Happen. I smile softly feeling the desolation, knowing that the level of resistance is somehow tied to the potential of a project.

It's also interesting how these things kick in those middle-of-the-night thoughts that I usually assume everyone has but are so disturbing we don't want to talk about them, share them, look at them, accept them. I mean, it's disturbing to ask, what in thee hell (that's a kind of Southern Indiana "thee hell") is my life for? What has it all meant?

Maybe other people never wake up and wonder that, but I doubt it.

I have an ingrained sense of obligation that leads the question to a place many others say ain't no good, like, "What should I be doing?" It assumes a hierarchy, a system of posts and jobs and tasks like an army. I'm told that the should is my SuperEgo talking. Perhaps. I remain skeptical.

But I accept as possible something else that I've been told: our deepest desires reflect and manifest God's will. Yeah, possible, but there's so many layers on top of that "deepest" thing, and our minds are so devilishly clever in fooling themselves, arranging things the way we want them and saying, that's God's will (or the equivalent phraseology for the agnostic or non-theistic). I mean, there's a million people thinking that it's God's Will that they kill their neighbors and take their land, or kill gays, non-believers, or whatever. T'was Ever Thus. It's no kind of guideline at all. Sure, they would say as they light fire to a house, this is my deepest desire, and it's also God's will.

What are we left with when all our cogitations lead us to the same "this can not be known" area of town? We need another method of making decisions, coming to clarity, sensing things - other than that thinking process. I come from a family of lawyers, and I practiced holding forth about and arguing for things I didn't actually believe, just for the exercise. This kind of decision making just takes in, at one end of the mechanism (something like a large piece of farm equipment) our initial premises, and then goes on to spit out some kind of conclusion. But those premises are often unconscious, if not altogether specious. Something often masquerades as a premise, i.e. "I want to make the world a better place," while covering up some other agenda.

I can say this: regarding clarity, progress is slow. Just Keeeep Working. What else is there to do?

Obviously I'm talking about making a movie.