Marching Towards The Storm

I don't know how relevant the title of this entry is going to be but it sounded cool when I thought of it yesterday, I was more or less literally marching towards a thunderstorm during the evening. Par for the course on a day that would have otherwise been uneventful, I was walking up the the park that runs up along the Hudson River, this time instead of a sunset you could clearly see dark, ominous clouds making their way down towards me. And instead of running back to civilization I decided to continue venturing north, towards the storm. On a hot summer day there's nothing better, it begins to slowly grow quiet as the joggers, bikers and tourists start evacuating, the wind starts kicking up something fierce, and then about two miles later drops start to fall. Anyone with any sense by now would run to find shelter, but I kept walking, starring at the sky and witnessing the rage of lighting and thunder, slowly coming in sync with one another. And once it did, that wall of rain began approaching and buried everyone under gallons of water. Makes a shower feel like a garden sprinkler in comparison. And at that point there's not much left to do but to soak it all in and slowly make your way home to change into something dry.

What does that have to do with anything? Not really sure. I guess if I were to make an awful analogy (which I am about to), I'm going to be marching towards that storm again tomorrow. In case you didn't hear yet, finally got the first public screening of That Thing coming up tomorrow, or tonight I guess, about eighteen hours from now. In case you actually don't know yet and are somehow reading this on the 25th of July, and happen to be somewhere near New York around 8pm, make your way to The Lovinger Theatre at Lehman College tonight, 'cause it'll be pretty rad of you to do so.

Anyway, the first public screening, yeah. Up to this point only about half a dozen folks have watched a mostly complete version of That Thing, who knows who many will tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it for the obvious reasons of course, but also nervous for the obvious reasons. I worry that we won't have a decent number of people show up to watch, it's a huge theater as it is, I hope it's not too empty. Didn't have much time to attempt and spread the word, I probably could have done more. I was so tempted to try and plaster the Bronx with fliers but this would have been a busy week even if there wasn't a screening. Having to prepare masters to send and other assorted things took up some time on top of everything else, I just couldn't make myself design and photocopy and tape up enough fliers to even make a dent.

The big thing that scares me though, what if people don't like it? Would anyone even tell me if they didn't? Putting something you work on for so long on public display is frighting concept. You're putting yourself on the line and unless some critic randomly strolls in and writes what he thinks of it, will I know what people think of it? I'll likely never be privy to the private conversations that'll happen once that auditorium empties out. Heh, the other day I got a random youtube comment on “One more cup of coffee” from some dude in Kentucky, along the lines of “Homeless people are murderers! Thank you so much for helping me see the light." Obviously sarcasm, and one would guess that he probably didn't like it much, or perhaps it offended, or he just thought the whole thing was stupid. Doesn't bother me though, I appreciate the perspective. But the thing I found curious was that he removed his own comment a day later. Even on the anonymous forum known as the internet people are afraid of saying what they think, how will I know if this movie I made is straight up bad? I'm sure I'll find out one way or another. Bah, I'm probably over-thinking things like I always do.

For what's its worth, over the last week I've grown a fondness for That Thing, not something I felt towards it before. Maybe because it's actually done, it's in a tolerable state and watching it doesn't make me want to rip it apart and put it back together anymore. Maybe it's because I have no choice anymore, I cannot take back what is about to be said in those eighty minutes tonight. It's out of my hands. And thus is the nature of trying to create anything, it's done, a small piece of your life is released out into the wild and you can't do anything but hope it speaks for itself. No choice but to march towards that storm and brave whatever elements the sky throws at you.

The Blank Page

The blank page. Nothing there but the possibility of everything. Shoot, I've been starring at this blank screen for way too long, and it's just a stupid blog post. Trying to physically write stuff on paper with a pen when you don't know where to start feels is a scary proposition in comparison. A void of nothing, only there to soak up ink. Where do I start, where do I go? So many choices that sprawl out in many directions, and without a map to figure out where each path leads. What if I take a wrong turn, will I have to turn back and start again? Even thinking about the task at hand has a paralyzing effect.

I feel like I'm out of shape, it's been a good while since I've sat down in a random location and started scribbling whatever came to mind. When I used to write a lot it would be for at least an hour a day, every day. Words came much more freely then. Now I'm struggling to type out this stupid blog post that's going nowhere. It's those first steps more than anything else, you know that it's going to take a while to get wherever you're going. Man, do I really want to put myself through all that? It's going to be a lot of words, a lot of pages to fill. A lot of scratched out words and torn out pages, lots of trial and error. That doesn't sound fun.

It's not like I don't have any ideas, that's the easy part. All this time not writing stuff was time I was spending thinking of things to write about. Vague ideas, rough ideas of events, moods, colors or the lack of, and hazy outlines of human bodies that only bear a slight resemblance to what might eventually become characters who speak words. It's just the sitting down and actually doing it that's difficult. Hopefully it'll get easier once that first page is done. And then the second, and so on. A step at a time, right? Maybe it won't be as awful as this stupid blog post. I apologize if you actually read through this. Ideas for blog entries are easy to come by, actually sitting down and writing said idea isn't.