the grounded

Here's a truck stop instead of St. Peter's
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
~ "Man on the Moon" by R.E.M. (1992)

During the past couple weeks Netflix has been sending my fiancée and I the award winning mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, which neither of us had seen during the fourteen year stretch since its release. What an appropriate time to take a gander at it, since coincidentally Sally Ride recently passed and an SUV of sorts has landed on Mars!

A little known fact: during my sophomore year of college I receieved my highest grade ever (a ridiculously high A) in Astronomy. For one who went from studying elementary education as a paying job fallback for a posited film career to college dropout turned self-taught whoknowswhat, this comes a bit out of left field. But space is facinating! Give me science fact or give me science fiction, especially of the extra-terrestrial variety, and I'm interested.

The mini-series had its aesthetic failings, primarily minor directorial choices, but it was quite in depth. Separate some added trivia for the noggin one of the things that really stood out is the realization that everything great truly happens at a snail's pace. A million tiny steps, circuits, and moments of time move us from big point A to bigger point B.

(213)

= 64%

π challenge.

On November 11th, 2011, I began a new blog challenge, as a means to further hone my photography skills and to place additional pressure on myself to become a tad more prolific. The challenge is simple and open-ended: post 314 newly taken pics in one year's time.

(as of this posting, I just passed #201)

My earliest memories flash before me like a photographic flipbook. This is much like an occasion when a dream is being recalled. The brief bursts of significant moments reveal themselves a few at a time. As we retell it we weave it into something else entirely - a new thing. It's got some structure and it's got flow, unlike the film school avant-garde of our more daring dream space. Our brains don't require this as we sleep. I believe this is something pertinent to our awakened state, however.

When something already exists, we tend to take it a little bit for granted. It becomes part of our pre-packaged idea of how things are. Our recognition of the things that are and the things that seem not to be become very distinctive. This is why a moment like riding your bike out of eyesight of mom or off the block entirely is something I recall being quite powerful.

It's the realization that something more exists. And this something is far more captivating than what is present now. Many people fear it. Expanded horizons are so full of unknown. We don't tend to partake of very much unknown, since the known looks so good on our mantles just the way it is.

Ultimately this creates stagnancy. It breeds unpleasant relations that harbor resentment and complacency.

I was given my first quality camera when I graduated high school. Before that I had borrowed the family 110 camera or would use that cheap 35mm I was given for an eighth grade overnight field trip. My true passion was filmmaking, but I made the most of the point-and-shoot experience I had with this above average 35mm with adjustable settings.

This was a time that pre-dated even the most primitive household digital cameras by several years to say nothing of social media. It was a time when people would still shy away from the lens of a camera. I wonder if it has anything do with the contemporary instant ability to veto shots as they come.

Whatever the case, this was a particularly formative period for my creative juices. As an aspiring filmmaker, I saw photographic images as pieces in a larger visual puzzle. At least that was my hope. But my comfort level and skills were still at such a pedetrian level, I was a long way from connecting meaning into my pictures.

Since that time, I have actually had the chance to create extensively, in a variety of forums. It took me a long time to recognize the fact that no one project really had any more importance than any other. For an artist, what matters ultimately is a body of work.

The debacle from one year ago at my theatre led me to turn my back on the place that did me likewise. As is the running theme of the past couple years, I have grown up far beyond what it currently offers. There are other horizons for my artistic contributions.

Toward the end of last year, during a year when my writing had been at a particularly prolific high, I decided I wanted to tune up my photographic powers as well. So many people who post on blogs have attempted to knock out a picture a day for a years time, or some variation therein. I am not like most people. I decided to be honest with myself and curtail the number of pictures to 314 (based on π, which carries certain significance for me) within the span of one year.

As of this post, I have posted 201 pictures to this challenge. (Sure, there are a few freebies along the way that I haven't applied to this for one reason or another.) Even though they may at first seem like a potpourri, scrolling along should tell a number of continuing stories, full of my usual dose of subtext.

I also feel that I have become far more comfortable with creating something from nothing. Most of these pictures were taken completely on the fly.

Sometimes overthinking can ruin the best things.

(-113)



easy tonight.

a song that got you through a hard time

Life always has a way of working itself out.

When things are rough, it doesn't often feel like it, though. Change is frequently drastic, evolution can be exceedingly painful, and much like that twisted comedy we are all cast in, everything always seems to fall apart all at once.

There is an undeniable healing quality to music. These are a few of the songs that have had that power to me:

"Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley & the Wailers (1977)

• Don't worry, 'bout a thing. Every little thing - gonna be alright. It's as simple as that. When all else fails, Bob is there, giving it to you straight. This is a perennial favorite of mine, and one that works in a multitude of contexts. The spirit of the track ensures its portability from lullaby to funeral anthem, and back through all of the times it was just the sentiment I needed to hear.

 "I Can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash (1972)

• I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. This little breakthrough reggae-infused gem is so full of positivity and hope. Simple as it seems hope doesn't always come in big doses. Sometimes it feels downright unlikely. I have been that man. I once found myself under that constant cloud of uncertainty with a dangerously murky view of the road ahead. This is the song I prefer when it comes to being reminded that the sun will come out tomorrow.

"Drive" by Incubus (1999)

• Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there with open arms and open eyes. This is arguably their best song. Even though they often had the tendancy to mince styles, the MTV unplugged vibe merged with occasional subtle record scatch expresses to me the moments when life truly jumps the groove. Fear often keeps us from the path we should be following. I have known well the freefall feeling of not knowing what's next, but allowing it all and taking enormous chances. Sometimes you just have to let go.

"The River" by Garth Brooks (1991)

• Choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance that tide. Pursuing a dream in the daylight is very different than that overnight afterthought we so often stumble upon. Whether or not we jot them down, we all have a bucket list. We all have in common longings for certain experiences or tidbits on our dossier. What we're rarely told is, though we may pick the big picture idea, the universe gathers up the details. How our dreams play out is never how we conceived of them. Often they nonetheless become just what was needed though.

american splendor

Love will remain a mystery
But give me your hand and you will see
Your heart is keeping time with me . . .
~ Aqualung ("Brighter Than Sunshine", 2005)

(128)

super 8.

move·ment (n.)

• an instance of moving; a change in place or position
• the suggestion or illusion of motion in a painting, sculpture, or design
• the progression of events in the development of a plot
• a self-contained section of an extended composition
• a mechanism, such as the works of a watch, that produces or transmits motion

Movement.

The word flows through your lips with such power, only to be unceremoniously scrubbed at launch time. Its lifespan appropriately works in similar starts and stops. It is a concept that comes to my mind quite often. My soul was born at the wild intersection between artist, gypsy, drifter, dreamer, and being relatively undefined.

I remember a hastily assembled piece of prose I wrote for my sixth grade English class about my life at thirty. It was etched in the penciled shorthand chicken scratch I used to convey my ideas at the time. It involved a world far from the one I was presently living in, due changes in time, location, status, and level of hope. The actual details don't stand out this far down the road, but it brings to mind a level of longing I have always had. Not coincidentally this was the time that my passion for writing, filmmaking, music, and sex were building up momentum. My tastes were more fully finding foundations, and my sensory development was enhancing.

June 10th of this year, J.J. Abrams new film Super 8 found its way to theaters. My girlfriend and I dropped in on it during opening weekend. Wrapped in a veil of Spielberg worship and with throwaway thrill ride sequences that recalled Cloverfield was the story of innocent burgeoning filmmakers trying their hand at the craft in the brilliant beige of 1979. It was unexpectedly a great work of cinematic entertainment and one that touched me deeply.

Dreams grow old with us. They evolve, find better music tastes, have children, lose aspects of themselves, but never fully disappear. Unless we do.

(30)

wu wei

Funny how I blind myself
I never knew if I was sometimes played upon
Afraid to lose,
I'd tell myself what good you do
Convince myself

It's my life
Don't you forget
It's my life
It never ends

- Talk Talk "It's My Life", 1984

Intersections can be fascinating. I have found myself watching the flow of traffic moving in those four distinct directions, everyone intent on leaving this place and moving on to the next, recognizing that the destinations of some are remarkably similar to the recent location of several others, and noting that within all of that shuffle so many are really in the same place. In metaphors by-ways, highways, crossroads, and other means of point A to point B are used to signify one's present position in life. Here is never good enough.

Today I find an intriguing intersection of time. I see these quite often, but usually keep them to myself. I find significance in measuring and taking note of time, as I see it, whether or not there's anything tangible about it. I grew up listening to "Time in a Bottle" and watching Quantum Leap, so my concept of time has a wide birth. Only with our conception of time can we view synchronicity and supposed coincidence. We need such borders to see the overlap.

One month from today my play opens. For me that's crunch time. We are getting down to the wire. I see all of these dots bouncing about throughout my mind, and slowly each becomes connected, and together we are creating more and more viewable images. But there's so much more work to do. Last week the poster was completed. This is the first line of attack in any promotional campaign, and I think of the difficult trek it was to even get there. The original poster designer became revved up by the idea of working on the show, back in early June, but all subsequent communications lacked response. The second choice artist wasn't even known to me until after that struggle of wills and patience, but the end result assures me that she should have been first.

Today also marks ten years since the completion of my first feature length screenplay. I had dabbled in writing scripts for many years prior. I ran out of interest for many of them after about ten or fifteen pages. This was the first one that involved extensive research, revision, and revelation. This was my baby, and the one that got whipped the most by the Hollywood perspective. It was deemed many harsh things, all of which became badges of honor that I would ultimately wear happily. It was accused of being too rough, too raw, too edgy, too left of center, and maybe appropriately too long. I did have some cheerleaders and fans, who wanted to work with this ballsy novice, and a couple interested investors, but I had a really poor business execution given the faith I put in an enthusiastic, charismatic, but ultimately flaky partner who was intending to help me get the film made.

What did I know? I was still grappling to find my voice. Translating it from my mind to the page never quite came across how I wanted. About five years ago, I completely dismantled the material and started to develop the more comfortable novel version. It languishes with many other original bits and bauble, awaiting the intersection of time, interest, and inspiration.

This morning I had a brief Facebook chat with a good friend who I met at the height of the above script's fateful trip to the screen. He sold his first play, a Civil War musical that uses royalty free period music and is geared toward kids - his preferred audience. I updated him on the progress of the current play. I recounted the time when I was anti-theatre and could only see myself working in film. I viewed theatre as musically cheesy and dramatically boring. My theatre experiences were clearly narrow, but I also wonder if I might just be a really bad audience and far better suited for the other side of the stage.

mon amour

Sometimes words escape me.

I will borrow some.


. . .

We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won
as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly
into the mystic

And when that fog horn blows,
I will be coming home
And when the fog horn blows,
I want to hear it
I don't have to fear it

And I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And magnificently we will flow
into the mystic

When that fog horn blows
you know I will be coming home
And when that fog horn whistle blows
I got to hear it
I don't have to fear it

And I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And together we will flow
into the mystic

-Van Morrison, Into the Mystic, 1970

cosmic love

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows.
For love is the beauty of the soul.
-St. Augustine

Been beat up and battered 'round
Been sent up, and I've been shot down
You're the best thing that I've ever found
Handle me with care
-Traveling Wilburys

Humans always like to explain away all of the brilliance of intangibles.

I choose to give them metaphoric wings, because I view entities less as they are and more as they are when they associate with other things.

That said, love is a chemical reaction.

It might not look like much in a crucible, but then again the human body broken down to its finer elements is really only worth about twenty-four bucks, thus reminding us that life itself is indeed an intangible. That's two of the biggies. What is real then? What's concrete? Not faith. Not belief. Hardly thoughts, dreams, or ideas. Time is said to be fleeting and most clocks have stopped ticking. Supposedly God is dead, romance is dead, and punk is dead. The dollar has no value and humans have no souls.

Maybe.

But not for me, though.

Sometimes I feel like we all have our own little decoder rings, shining light for us on things that exist in our little corner of the world and are real for us. People are sometimes referred to as another person's 'rock', but of course that's putting weight on an intangible concept and not the truth. But perhaps we're not meant to see the same truth, but merely different particles of the same prism.

For some it's important to see mankind's ideal upright stature as humans overcome adversity. For others it is the hint of viewing the soul, passion, and beauty in other's eyes that fuels them. And for others still, they can just be comforted knowing there'll be another forest to be seen tomorrow morning.

in dreams

Once upon a time I had a dream. I was going to be a Hollywood director. I would spend my free time sketching out teasers to the next James Bond feature or waste hours of time crafting titles and concepts for upcoming releases or muster ridiculous ideas for sequels to ones I knew. I began to put my imprint on video projects at school and began to go public with my dream of life in the Hollywood director's chair.

This dream never came true.

No matter which way I slice it, the dream I chased for twenty plus years changed far too many times to be achieved, so why don't I just say it. It never happened.

A love for artistically inclined independent films took hold. A full-on growth of myself as a struggling writer gained momentum. A major conflict between art and commerce probed my philosophical inner Jekyll or Hyde. A bevy of projects that saw more darkness than light drowned the idealistic perfectionist within. And a discovery of the theatre as an immediate way to create and share art with an audience ensured all bets were off.

Things have changed too much. I am too jaded by life and myriad experience for this specific childhood dream to ever come true. The loose ends of this story represent somebody else entirely and are not really a part of the same tale. Don't get me wrong. I still come alive when the creative juices are flowing but this dream died within me many years ago. Underneath everything else lurks a figurative garage full of wishful thinking and naive imaginings.

When there's one foot in the distant past, one foot in the perhaps foreseeable future, the main results are lumbar issues and a difficulty walking.

So, what are today's dreams? That's what really matters.

mortal majority

I started to write something new this past Tuesday night. I didn't end up posting it because I wasn't certain if I had anything interesting to say. Some thoughts began connecting in my mind, but there is a filter which all of these ideas, observations, and revelations are shoved through. There's a personal censor that seeks to thwart my every attempt at keeping up with this blog. I have that part of me sedated at the moment.

The wife and I have been meeting our friend at films on the lawn type screenings for the past several Tuesdays. The season has been arranged as somewhat of a world tour. Last Tuesday's film was in Britain for "The War Game", a short anti-war pseudo-documentary from the mid-sixties that deals candidly and topically with a theoretical aftermath of a nuclear attack. Clearly it's a perfect date movie - an upbeat, laugh-a-minute sort of affair, if you will. Actually some people did laugh a lot, but I think they were drinking.

Separate from the tenuous political situation and short mental fuse of our government, what I really want to talk about is the dream I had the night before this. As usual I don't remember very many details, but it did contain a surprising nuclear attack of our small Northern Florida town. The predictable emotional elements of such a thing were intact from the consommate fear and panic, but it's not as if my dream was without whimsy. The bomb itself flew right past where I was and was shaped not unlike the animation in "Rocky & Bullwinkle".

I'm hardly the paranoid folk that my parents are, so I quickly wrote off the obvious, foreboding implications of my mind's inner musings and dashed straight toward a Google search. The dream interpretation site Dream Moods says this dream:

...suggests feelings of helplessness, being threatened and loss of control. You may be experiencing great hostility and rage to the point of being destructive. Alternatively, you may be expressing a desire to wipe out some aspect of yourself. It may also be an indication that something crucial and precious to you has ended and important changes are about to occur.

There might be something to that. The strength of my slumber has changed drastically, especially over the course of the six months since we moved to this new house. The immediate changes that happened were stark. The insomnia wasn't hitting me. I was sleeping through the night and all of that. In itself this is something unusual for me.

Lately my body has followed my natural circadian rhythms toward official night owl status. Now my sleep has been deep, my dreams intense, and I feel myself leaving a heavy indention on the mattress. There's clearly something recognizable going on.

Toss this into the mix:

I dreamt that I was going up the side of a hill. It was visually a hill at distance, but once I began to make my ascent it was a fuckin' mountain that I was foisting myself up with my bare hands. I held on for dear life, as I groped at dirt and clumps of sod to get to this specific destination, this hotel, or some such. What was peculiar was that no one else around me seemed to be having the same struggles. Bicyclists, pedestrians, and runners moved along with seemingly no effort.

This one seems a touch more obvious, but:

To dream that you are climbing a hill signifies your struggles in
achieving a goal.

To see mountains in your dream signifies many major obstacles and challenges that you have to overcome. Alternatively, mountains denote a higher realm of consciousness, knowledge, and spiritual truth. To dream that you are climbing a mountain signifies your determination and
ambition.

1-1/4" aspirin

I have a friend who seems to have a fantastic dream world! Not only are things intense and metaphoric in there, but he can also retain an immense amount of the details to share with others on-line, in person, and likely at parties.

There was a period that I recalled most of my dreams. Then it was gone. I thought that the theater had gone dark, but as my own psychology changes so too do my inner-imaginings. Generally I wake up disappointed to have nothing remain from the other side (so to speak). My mental slate is cleaned from where I had been overnight, as if the Men in Black showed up or I exited a sorority house during Rush Week.


Anyway, last night I had a dream so slight, I'm hesitant to share.

All I recall had to do with a visit to Minnesota and swallowing the brads (as screenwriters call brass fasteners) off a script. I tossed them back without question. No water. Nothing. I remember feeling like there was a barrier within my chest created by all of these things taking up residence at the pit of my stomach.

It's a fascination and an occasional talent of mine to analyze these sorts of things.

My first thought springs to mind this quote by Picasso:
"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction."

Hmm.

sublimated reality

previously published by me elsewhere:

A dreamer tends to be associated with thinking big, but finding myself in that pool of whack jobs I've often found myself restructuring my impression of what actually constitutes "big". There's the big that's conveyed as the carrot on that dreadful movie-related program "On the Lot" on the FOX Network. Just mention the name Spielberg to a group of moviegoers or moviemakers and they flock in droves, cash in hand.

Granted Spielberg is probably the reason I got interested in film in the first place since his Reese's peddling "E.T." was the first flick I ever saw, but as I've inched my way through my career's pursuit I feel far more enamored by the Cassavettes of the world. That's the other big; the little-big, if you will. I don't really get a rush from the prospect of having my name in lights and being associated with well-oiled moneymaking machines so much as representing something honest that welcomes ideals and sustains in a different fashion. It's the more accessible and sometimes more ordinary part of the (dare I say) industry.

With that in mind, I've been working on a reality show for the past couple months. I absolutely never expected to utter or type, as the case may be, those fateful words, but it's an honest job and entirely different than I had predicted. The show has aired its first four episodes already and just this week received its first comment on IMDb. Even though many aspects of it strike of the big Hollywood machine with stockholders, executives, and a network to please, the day-to-day labor that I participate in and hold a modicum of power over feels separate.

There's something very real about the collective coming together, working through the unbearable sweat cascading from our brows and everywhere else it may, to assemble this (pardon me) "Little Show that Could". That's at least what I've gained from going to work everyday, what I felt while watching our most recent episode amongst my new peers, and the thrill I felt from reading the vague thoughts from some random viewer. It's the upward climb, the nursing of the whole project that I respect the most and puts me to bed at night.

dream abacus

previously published by me elsewhere:

"I just want to wake up!"

It was the sentiment that ended that great surreal Spanish film "Open Your Eyes" as well as the local horror flick I was working on this past summer.

Sometimes the difference between the two states is so confused that questions arise which is more real. With my unpredictable sleeping patterns I sometimes wonder where all of the dreams go when you don't recall them? Or don't have them?

There was a certain period in my life I would have an amazing retention for them. I'd recall so many in such vivid detail that I started to write them all down until the process got tiresome, and when I got to the point of skipping the more bland among them as a form of self-censorship.

That feels like such a long time ago, though. Now I feel like I have such silent periods. Sometimes I wonder if it's completely dark up there most of the time. Maybe the divide between the two realities is just too stark.

I know someone who is so in touch with their non-waking state that they have a predilection for things in the realm of astral projection and the like. It's fascinating science fiction for those without it, and hyper-reality for those that know it.

People all share a certain amount of common life experience whether it's one of the major passages like adolescence or the conventional fear of death, or some ironic combination of the two. Is there common experience inside the head, or is the internal wallpaper merely another example of zebra stripes in nature? Can someone share the same dream?

There's always such a distance between what goes on in the head to the expression of it. Sometimes it's satisfying enough to consider that's why we have art.

Everyone has their means of dealing with their problems, flaws, hang-ups, and indiscretions whether it's in lucid dreaming, shock therapy, alcohol intake, or by ignoring it altogether. Sometimes I start to wonder if my dream world has started to feel so under populated because I've gotten deeper and deeper into combating my demons, re-imaging my regrets, and working on my soul through all of the writing I do in the waking state.

I know someone who doesn't even believe the "real" world is much more than another aspect of the astral plane. Whatever we concoct in our heads is truth for us, and sometimes attempting communication with other figments of our imagination just fucks things up.

Then again, maybe I'm just not sleeping enough.

status que?

previously published by me elsewhere:

Many of the most important people in my life, the people that really feed my soul, live at geographical distance from me. It's something I've surely recognized in the past, but it seems to be a recurring theme in my life that I've been noticing a lot more lately.

There's a certain safety, and personal comfort in having a lot of people at distance. To a certain extent I can't stand the daily update chit-chat that occurs with people who you see all the time. I think I like to constantly develop and change, recognizably, which tends to occur at distance.

It seems that a number of people I've grown close to have their sights set on being nearly everywhere but here. Sometimes my life gets into this holding pattern, and for whatever reason I have to sit back and watch everyone else live life around me.
Worse than feeling like a grade school teacher watching all of their students run off and live these far more interesting lives is watching things come far too easily to other people around you.

Watching people get to certain personal milestone points with minimal or no effort frustrates the hell out of me! Like the exceedingly scattered, youthful director of a recent movie I worked on, who took for granted that this group of people who he mistreated on a regular basis would ensure the project wouldn't fall apart, just because we were the responsible ones.

I guess the stable and the experienced always hold the shit end of the stick and clean up the mess left by the Mr. Magoos and the George W. Bushes of the world.
Sometimes I wonder why I must be one of the rational ones. Why can't I just make wild-eyed impulsive choices, assuming everything will just iron out in the end? What's with non-prodigious people finding personal successes with a snap of their fingers? What - are you one of Jerry's kids, or something? Why are you living your dreams, and I'm still stuck having them?

I guess everyone has something, whether it's home ownership, popping out smart babies, getting that dream job, or maybe riches and fame. My feeling is that if everything comes way too easily, you end up taking credit for that silver platter you had nothing to do with shining, to say little of having nothing else to look forward to.

Well, I guess that's the key to my perception of personal success. As sad as it may sound, I suppose I can only consider it success if it took a lot of work to attain it.