Buried Memories

No matter how much I disparage myself when reflecting on past works, I'm still glad I made them. Usually it takes a few days for that new project smell to wear off and I begin to hate it, and with That Thing I knew it was awful by the third month into editing. But I don't regret making it. Aside from the fun of taking part in the process, the lessons learned from the reflecting on the mistakes made afterward, there's at least one more good excuse for making something when it was made. It becomes a little time capsule, preserving a moment in time.

Much like a picture of yourself looked back on decades later, revealing stories told so long ago you nearly forgot them. I remember hearing somewhere that memories work like a record, as in the vinyl platters that spin around and make music when a needle is dragged across. The more times you play that record, drag that needle through and wear down those grooves, the more warped and noisy it becomes. A memory you don't think of is like that sealed album going for exorbitant amounts on ebay; when it's actually played back all these years later it's as beautiful and warm sounding as the day it was pressed, as faithful a reproduction of musicians playing fifty years ago as you're going to get. That dusty 45 you keep spinning every week? Full of crackles and pops, sounding like frying bacon. But it's yours, you know where every imperfection is, and if you hear the restored CD re-release you'll think it sounds like crap. That's not what you remember, it's too clean.

A roundabout way of going about it, but yeah. Film is kinda the same way, making one at least. That Thing was an attempt at trying to preserve a few of those memories. 138th Street in The Bronx, in particular. I've been walking down that road for decades, or at least riding the Bx33 on it. It doesn't feel like it's changed much, but when you walk that path every day you realize those grooves have worn into your subconscious. It's probably cleaner than it was twenty years ago, but I didn't notice that gradual change. It's the deep scratches that catch the eye, like when they finally closed down The Key a few years back. It was this roller skating rink, not that I went there much. The mother wouldn't approve, she was kind of overprotective. But it was this brightly colored building that was always there, until they painted over those pink and yellow walls. I think there's a window factory there now? It feels like a shame that it's gone, a place buried in the memories of the regulars and any photos living in a shoebox somewhere. A small unwritten piece of history, without anyone to tell the tale.

I guess I wanted to try and save a few of those memories in a form that's more permanent than a shoebox and hearsay. And sure enough, another scratch was made on 138th about a month ago. That Kentucky Fried Chicken on 3rd Avenue was torn down. The one featured in the second episode of That Thing. That story wasn't too far off from the truth; back in the days of the old South Bronx people did say that they sold pistols behind the counter of that place. The mother wouldn't approve of stepping inside that place either, though she never elaborated on why. I think I heard the story again when reading “Amazing Grace” by Jonathan Kozol, but it's been years since I read that book. They closed it down, then reopened years later only to close it again. Might just have been slow business that killed it the second time. And it stood there for years, until they knocked down those walls.

138th Street obviously isn't the same place anymore. I just tried to dig out what few memories were left of that childhood before it was all gone. And now that old fried chicken place, and a bunch of other little stories live on.

Impotent.

Can impotent be a feeling? A state of mind? Not just a sexual dysfunction? 'Cause I'm kinda feeling that way. The pipes are working, it's just the brain that's feeling limp and lifeless. I don't know, when your being revolves around something you're currently incapable of performing, it kinda gets you down.  Makes me feel like a waste of a human being.

Been hacking away at another idea for a script over the last month or two. A self imposed deadline for a first draft of a half hour short is about two weeks away, and I only scribbled out maybe three usable pages. Traveled to my usual spot today in hopes of churning a few more out, but only got through about half a page of the usual wrote and tired dialogue between the main character and a potential love interest before realizing that this was the crap I was trying to avoid. More of the same tripe. Ugh. Now I want to toss this idea in the trash, it's going nowhere. It would be the third script I've ditched in the last year, since I finished that feature length one that I wrote in two weeks and ended up hating.

Hating everything that your hands create, doubting every step. Makes you want to stop walking. Lying in bed doing nothing sounds like an easy life. Why can't I do that for a few years?

Feeling really useless right now. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I've practically resigned myself to the fact that I'm not going to have a normal life. Forever alone and all that. It gets lonely sometimes, but more than that it's like I have no purpose. I admire the 99% of Americans doing the nine to five, living life the only way they know how. Sure, a third of the day is given to the man, and another third is devoted to sleep, but the third left over? That's freedom right there. Not just economic freedom, but a mental freedom. You're reasonably assured a stable couple of decades.

Meanwhile, what the fuck am I doing aside from wasting time? Spending time in front of a blank page, wanting to destroy the pen in my hand out of frustration of not being creative enough to create anything. Or succumb to urges of substance abuse, but being too chicken-shit to even do that. Just end up pacing around for hours, thinking about entering that bar but coming up with a hundred and one excuses to do anything but. I'll do it tomorrow.

Today was a waste, I'll do everything tomorrow.

A Merman I Should Turn To Be

On the eve of summer, as children return to school and I return to the routine that is the daily grind, I look back on the last two months and realize that it was more productive than I've been in a while. You know, I did stuff. Actual stuff, not sitting around complaining about the heat. Maybe it helps that it was a relatively mellow August, the humidity didn't really grind me down like it usually does. Shot stuff, edited stuff, got shit done.

Most importantly, I came to the realization that I think I finally found what I want to do with my life. You see, I got this weird habit I've been following for the last ten years, more like most of my life: I'm a quitter. A lazy quitter. I get into an activity, say for example playing music, or anything really. At first I like it, it grows into a near obsessive fondness, and then when I hit the point where I've invested too much- I grow tired and bored of said activity. End up quitting cold turkey and move on to the next obsession leaving it all behind, including the folks associated with that activity. Not with this film production thing, I think I love doing this more now than I ever have.

There was a period a few months after That Thing where it got dark. Invested two years of my life making a mediocre flick, wasn't in much of a mood to do much. But I guess I recovered? Working on various no-budget productions of friends over the last few months reinvigorated my fondness for this work. Despite waking up at four in the morning and running off two hours of sleep I enjoyed doing it. If I could somehow figure out how to make a living doing this then I would never work another day in my life.

The biggest obstacle in the way? I think I'm still half-assing it. Dipping my toes in, not going for broke. Am I content just doing this stuff in my spare time? I've got a friend who's an actor, he's been at it for years, trying to catch a real break. Dude just got into a prestigious school for his masters, potentially diving into a mountain of debt. But he's doing what he wants to do, he's happy. I'm too chickenshit to take that sort of risk. But could I see myself doing anything but what I want? Six months ago I was having a conversation with this cinematographer dude, well, at least as much of a conversation as I could muster, and the dude had some profound advice. How many people want to do what I want to do? Hundreds, thousands in New York City alone? What would make me stand out, why would they pick me over someone who wants it bad? There's a bunch of folks trying harder, I'm just dipping my toes in. Ain't going to swim that way. If I want to do this I can't half-ass it. Why haven't I listened?

On another tangent... I let my youth pass me by. I saw it come and go, utterly self-aware of the process of growing up, refusing to accept that was the way it was supposed to be done. Nothing in particular, I just mean living life. You were supposed to make a fool of yourself when you were a kid. Say stupid things, be socially awkward. That's how you learned the right things to say, how to act in the company of your peers. I'm normally not one to regret things, but I regret not doing regrettable things, making mistakes when it was expected of you to. Where I'm currently standing, not only am I self-conscious of the learning process but it's all sitting underneath a layer of being too old to pull that sort of nonsense. I'll have to rip off those scabs eventually.

Tangent number two, since the fingers are still in the mood to type. Crowd funding in its various incarnations: what's the deal with that? Specifically in regards to film-making. Am I just getting old and cranky or does it seem like a stupid idea? Asking random strangers for money to make your own selfish project? Most independent film is selfish, don't mean it in a derogatory way. I guess you gotta have enough of a ego to believe that what you're creating is worth other people's time and ticket sales. But to extend the hand and beg for cash before you've even made it? I don't know, what happened to maxing out credit cards and subjecting yourself to medical experiments to raise the cash? If you have to ask for it, do you deserve it?

I don't know, been seeing filmmakers who I follow on the social networks trying to raise large amounts of money for large projects, but they already have large followings they've earned over years of providing content in one way or another. They've put in the work, they'll be fine. But what gets me are the fools who are trying to scrape together two grand for a short. What could you do for two grand that you couldn't do yourself? How many fans do you actually have? Ones that enjoy your work so much that they would dig into their pockets during these rough times and hand you money for what in the end is the selfish endeavor that's called independent filmmaking?

Who am I to be talking this trash in the first place? I know nothing about money. All I know is that if it's a story worth telling I'd tell it by any means necessary and forgo the two grand in rental fees. But I know nothing.

Final tangent: Listening to Jimi Hendrix's “Electric Ladyland” while crossing the Madison Avenue Bridge at two am the other night was beautiful. The tracks ceased to exist and the songs melted into each other. The old lady asking for change or drunk group of Mexicans throwing their styrofoam cups of beer at me as I walked home couldn't harsh my mellow. It was just a very chilled evening.

Sitting

Sitting in front of a computer. Not doing much of anything really, just watching microwaves explode on YouTube. Thinking about anything but what the mind has been on as of late.

Sitting on a bus. Air conditioned, though it was actually a nice enough day today. Watching various women sit across from me, all shapes and sizes. Thinking about those women, where are they going, what's in store for the rest of this day once they get off the bus. Wondering if they're in relationships, what sort of music is blasting through those earbuds. Noticing a fancy ring, watching them reach their stop and get off before I do.

Sitting on concrete steps that lead into the Hudson River. Watching the sun set. A pretty clear day, not much in the way of clouds, which makes for a boring magic hour. At least the waves were alive and kicking, relentlessly pounding against those stairs to no avail. Took off my shoes, let my pale feet soak in the warm breeze and a few brief moments of the sun's rays. Stayed until it was dark and the few strangers also watching have left, the only company were a few confused ducks. Lots of quacking, I'm assuming asking one another for directions. Far be it from me to point the way.

Sitting on a bench at the High Line, once an abandoned elevated railroad track turned into a beautiful park. Watching the moon rise. Found a small part of park with the lights off and it didn't occur to me until after I looked up as to why that was. The brightest moon I've ever seen, I look down and see I'm actually being illuminated by that blue glow. I've never seen that happen, after all these years I don't think I've been outside during a full moon in a place that wasn't saturated with street lights. Saw a bunch of folks pass by, nearly all in pairs. Hearing small glimpses of conversations, wondering why nobody else seems to notice.

Sitting in a subway train, watching the stations pass by. Given up on thinking, just zoning out on some music when I notice the mother with her child getting on. I give my seat up, stand the rest of the way home.

Heat of the Summer

Haven't been sleeping well lately. For many reasons. Being in the midst of summer is chief among them. The humidity feels abrasive, moving through it creates a friction I'd rather not subject myself to. Doing anything feels like a chore. I don't really feel like doing anything.

Last night I was up until four or five am, the norm for this time of the year. Accompanied only by an increasingly old fashioned circular fan to push the air around. That and a water-bug about as long as the sandal used to squash it was wide. The heat tends to drive them out of whatever crevasse they were hiding in. Once I did drift off I had strange dreams of doing battle with twelve foot tall roaches, gladiator style with a sword and shield. Wasn't a fair fight, they had three sets of weapons against my single pair of arms.

Awoke sometime in the afternoon, tried to muster up the energy to do anything productive today. This entry is about as good as it got. I have had the time to start catching up on a backlog of “This American Life” episodes, a pretty cool public radio show if you're not familiar with it. A list of shows sitting on the ipod stretching back to late November, kept putting it off 'cause of work and such. But the list is being whittled down, and now I worry about what am I going to do once I actually catch up. At this rate I got another two weeks to go. What then?

So what's the deal with...

I know, a shitty way to start a post, but yeah. So what is the deal with people trying to take pictures of fireworks?

I’m down over around the west side of Manhattan, not having anything better to do when it hits me that the fireworks are about to start in half an hour. So I follow the rest of the sheep, hundreds slowly marching towards the Hudson River. Around 11th or 12th avenue we run out of street to walk as it’s packed with folks sitting on sidewalks and cops swarming the place. Figured I had a decent enough view of the sky so decided that was a good a place as any, across the street from the northeast corner of the Javits Center.

A nice warm summer breeze wafting by. A generally peaceful and jovial mood around. And the smell of hot dogs all around, two carts within a hundred feet doing business. Then that familiar whistle rings down the street, everyone rushes to their feet and the explosions begin. I will say fireworks are a cool thing, I've been missing out these twenty-something years. Actual fireworks, those things are loud and just create a very satisfying rumble, and the light in the sky they create are a sight. Once it began I quickly realized how pointless those television simulcasts I used to watch as a kid were. It’s akin to a roller coaster or porn, watching it just ain't the same. I enjoyed being a part of that today.

All that being said, what’s the deal with these fools with their cameras feebly trying to take pictures of it? You guys have a chance to watch this majestic spectacle in person and what do you do? Watch it through a shitty three inch display while firing away at the shutter, and getting shit for pictures. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with photographers doing their job, but I look at this sea of people filling up this street and at least one in four have that telltale glow of an lcd illuminating their faces. I got some dude to the left of me popping a flash every minute, always chimping down at the screen to take a glance at another lame shot, then trying again.

I mean, you have a multi-million dollar television crew shooting everything, you have dudes with the proper lenses and tripods probably taking way better shots from rooftops, you ain’t gonna get shit in the middle of the street with that thousand dollar camera loaded with the stock lens while shooting at the shutter speed a flash would induce. Why bother? I assume it’s because they have to try and justify that thousand dollar purchase, have something to show the friends when they get back home.

But why bother? You’re missing the forest for the trees. It ain’t about the fireworks man, it’s about the fireworks.

Yeah. Happy Fourth of July, folks.

Aimless.

Once again, the night before. Always waiting 'till the last minute to write these things, not like anyone is reading them anyway. But just in case you are, and happen to be reading it between the time it's being written and 8:30pm on Sunday, July 3rd, feel free to stop by the Anthology Film Archives where we'll be screening That Thing in its entirety. Open to the public and all.

In an e-mail I sent to the cast and crew the other day I felt like that's the only motivation I could think of to come. How often do you get a chance to sit back and watch a thing you made on the big screen amongst the company of friends and strangers? If anything it probably will be the last time. Too broke to enter the flick into anymore festivals, even getting into this one felt like a strange stroke of luck. I also feel like I've finally moved on, That Thing was a thing I made a while back, feels like a forever ago. Shoot, last time I watched it in its entirety was the screening over at Lehman College about a year ago. But then again I don't think most filmmakers actively watch the fruits of their labor for any sort of pleasure. Tomorrow will probably be a painful experience.

I suppose that usually is the point, to make something so that it can be seen. You're not saying anything if nobody hears you say it.

Life has been odd lately. Ups and downs that are messing with my head. Usually life's passing me by at a slow and steady clip, but the last few months have felt like I've full tilt run into brick walls, followed by taking a moment to admire the wall before dusting myself off and churning ahead again. Another shitty metaphor, I know. Been doing things, living, but I think my quality of life has suffered because of the living. Going between being calm as a cold river and stressed as a tree torn apart by the wind is... another shitty metaphor. It's also an odd way to live. It probably also only makes sense in my head. Not much in the way of deep thoughts tonight.

Sense is something I don't have much of at the moment. I swear I'm not drunk, though I wish I was. Let me try and get some sleep for tomorrow.

Episode One

So, uh, I shall begin another blog post with the word "So". So yeah, the first eighth of That Thing has been uploaded to the internet. Free for the world to see, to judge, to be entertained by or to move on and be entertained by the millions of other video things that compete for that brief blink of an eye that constitutes our lives. It is out there and I can finally stop trying to hype it up or make excuses. If you're curious enough, by all means please watch. I would appreciate it. Hopefully you'll dig it enough to seek out the next episode and so on, subscribe and maybe even comment, if it stirs up enough emotion and motivation in you to do so. Whatever you please.



I've been finding it difficult to write this entry, for at least a few reasons. Already at a third attempt at trying to definitively put down the last word on That Thing, and perhaps that's why it's not coming out easily. I've wanted that thing to end for years now, never to waste another thought on it. But here I am noodling on words for a vaguely egotistical purpose, thinking somebody actually wants to hear the how and why we made this thing. I suppose if nothing else it would be good to get this out now, a confessional while I can still remember what went on while making it. But nah. Ain't feeling it.

Simply put, the shooting of that thing wasn't that interesting. No real drama or anything, the shoots themselves came and went mostly without a hitch. Maybe we ran over schedule once or twice, but otherwise the shooting wasn't interesting. To me, the editing was the entertaining part, a slow decent into madness and such, but that's the part I actually wrote about in earlier entries of this blog. I don't think I could come up with any neat stories of behind the scenes happenings. Makes it difficult to come up with anything worth reading.

More importantly though, I don't want to sit here and explain That Thing. If I had to do that, then what was the point of doing it in the first place? That'll accomplish nothing but spoil whatever the viewer had in mind, taint their mental image of the flick. The one screening we had sometime last year, it was an alright evening. Got to watch the movie with a few other folks who were all going in completely blind, the best way to see a movie. But what happened after, the post screening Q&A, that wasn't fun, at least for me. People asked the obvious questions, the why was this like this or that like that. And I dislike answering those questions. If the viewer cared enough to ask, they should care enough to take a second to think about why it was done that way in the first place, right?

Don't mean to get on a high horse about that sort of thing, it's that borderline pretentious half of me speaking. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't really feel like saying anything. Sorry about that. If you have a question I'll try to answer it, but I'm not contributing anything more to this conversation other than the work itself. Hopefully it speaks for itself.

Near a week away...

Yo, it's been a while. Haven't been feeling the urge to write lately, a lot of nonsense on the mind, most of which wouldn't make for good reading. Wouldn't want to subject you to that.

So what's been going on? First off, I wrote up an entry describing some of the trials and tribulations that were run into during the making of That Thing, at least the ones I could recall while not getting far into the specifics. It's over at a cool blog called “Tell Me About Your Movie” and my entry is one among near a dozen other directors takes on their first features. Not surprisingly, I'm probably more down on myself than most of the others, but I suppose that's par for the course. Check it out over here.

Other bit of stuff resembling news: That Thing is finally being put on the internet on May fifteenth, two-thousand and eleven. Took long enough I suppose. Only held off for as long as I did because of a desire to actually see it played at a festival, not too much luck in that regard. Maybe luck is the wrong word, but it is the word I use whenever I run into someone asking how that whole process is going. What else could I say? Simply put, the movie ain't that good, not better than the likely hundreds or thousands of other feature length films also competing for the handful of spots. I've accepted that, but when you tell someone that it feels like you're fishing for a compliment. Nothing to do in that situation but shrug your shoulders and blame luck for your misfortune.

So it didn't happen. So now I'm going to put it on the internet in hopes of having at least a few folks watch it. And it's weird because now I gotta try to convince people to click on a link and spend at least a few minutes every few weeks on something that only a paragraph ago I admitted to not being that good. It's an awkward paradox. I mean, I don't think it's bad, but of course I'm going to hate it, but does that mean that it's actually bad or do I hate it because I made it or... and so goes the conversation that takes place in my head every time. In any case, it's happening so I might as well make the best of it, self-deprecating blog aside. Spread the word, hope it garners at least a few new fans by the end of it all, get some momentum going, try and build an audience for the next thing.


Put together a new trailer for the date, check it out. Once it starts coming out check back here, I'll probably be recalling whatever comes to mind back when we were making it. It'll be as close as you're going to get to a director's commentary from me.

One last thing to get out of the system.
Fear has been on the mind lately. Trying to figure out where it comes from, its purpose. The chemical reaction it ignites both in the human mind and body. I guess it started back when we were more primitive creatures, stopping our crude minds from doing stupid shit and making our bodies run full tilt when danger approaches. We've inherited that mechanism, but despite being self-conscious of it we still don't understand or have control over it. Well, maybe some, that's why there's always a two-hour wait for the latest roller coaster at Six Flags. The thing I'm trying to figure out is why fear is so capable of both paralyzing and motivating at the same time. Even the simplest of acts, ones so second nature as to continue the propagation of the human race can be caught up in the mind and trapped by fear. For years one could be caught in that loop of not daring to do anything for fear of that unknown.

But of course it works the other way around too. Once that threshold is reached, the fight or flight instinct kicks in and now you're pushing harder than you have the rest of your life. Just like that. A switch is flipped and now steps are being taken to make up for lost time. The big problem with this though is that instead of running on confidence and courage you're still running on fear. At least you're going in the right direction, but there's going to be some stumbling along the way. And what happens when that fear runs out of juice, do we slow to a stop? Just give up? Or is the human will to live (living in its many definitions) persistent enough to endure?

Just a small sample of what runs through my mind at three in the am. Night, folks.

What do I know?

I know so much, and yet nothing at all. Hear what I'm saying?

So, one thing I've been doing lately has been amassing large amounts of information about cameras and where that sort of technology is heading. The nerd in me doesn't need much of an excuse to come out, it craves information like I crave a slice of pizza every afternoon. Just one ain't enough, lets try all these toppings and the fifty different pizzerias between where I work and where I live. I crave it, I obsess over it. That ain't a healthy way to live, in more ways than one.

I have a knack for remembering the most inane of facts, camera model numbers and perspective ratios of various lenses when mounted on cropped image sensors, all that shit. Google doesn't help with this problem, the answer to every question I ever wanted to ask is just a few seconds worth of typing away. This is a bad thing, right? Of course it is. All the knowledge in the world won't make a good movie. Not that I didn't already know this, but it was something I kept pushing aside.

The original moderately crazy plan was to write, shoot and edit a movie before the Sundance 2012 deadline, which would be September. Ambitious, I know. I sorta finished a first draft, but forget that. My head was already racing ahead to trying to figure out a budget, ration off enough cash for a new camera and a few lenses, a computer for editing stuff, a bunch of audio shit, lots of nerdy shit. Lots of numbers, trying to squeeze as much bang for the buck by going over hardware specifications and countless reviews. Stressing out over trying to raise the production value but hey, I didn't even finish the script yet!

Last week, tried to push all that technological stuff aside and focus on starting the second draft. It takes a  few nights of starring into a blank piece of paper before it finally hits me; this script ain't it. Sure, I could add a few more scenes and try to convolute everything, that was the plan. Wanted to pack the flick full of crazy shit, but in the end all that would accomplish was to obscure the actual root of the problem.

Strip away all the words and what do you have?

Rip the 50mm f1.2 lens off the latest Canon HD-SLR that's sitting on the dolly tracks surrounded by a few thousand watts of lights, and what do you have?

It finally hit me, a movie, at least the movies I want to make, aren't necessarily about what's on the screen. It isn't about the words the characters are saying, it isn't about how good it looks, it isn't about how expensive or low the budget is. It's only about striking some sort of emotional chord in the viewer. Making them actually give a shit about what they're seeing. If you don't get that, then it's all nothing but a masturbatory exercise in flaunting a prowess over technology. Not to say that the craft should be disregarded, far from it. But without that core story everything else that comes after, from script to the final cut, is pointless. It all needs to serve that unexplainable something that makes a good movie great and makes a mediocre movie forgettable.

Decided to kill the script, at least for now. Being on the other side of turning words on paper into a feature length film, it would feel irresponsible to take what I wrote and make a movie out of it. Perhaps after a few years worth of perspective I can look back on it and see if I can scavenge anything from it. I'll probably find another use for those words, but for now I feel like I need to start from scratch again. Try and make something new. Something worth watching. Heh, just wish I figured that out sooner.

Inducing Vomit

New Year's Eve, I was pulling what has now become an odd sort of tradition. Wandered around Manhattan before the ball dropped, only to find a spot somewhere along 42nd street a few minutes before and at least be around others who would exercise that pre-kindergarten education and count backwards from ten.

This year I wasn't so lucky to even have that, got suckered into standing at a spot that some odd European tourists were staked out at. A small crowd built up around them, convinced that this particular spot had a great view of the tower. I figured that they would know, there were people with expensive cameras waiting, so I joined the rest of the sheep. You could absolutely hear the Times Square crowd as the seconds were ticking down, a wave of noise and energy which left the folks I was hanging out with utterly confused. A quick glance at the ipod with built in watch confirms the sad fact; it's a minute after and we missed the new year. A group of young girls, wanna be revelers realize their error and makes a run towards the mobs, but everyone else knows it's futile and slowly mopes away. No big deal for me, seen it the last few and there's always next year. I'm guessing it sucks for those tourists though, think I actually overheard a mother of one of those families request that if anyone back home asks, tell 'em they were witness to the dropping of the ball.

The story doesn't really have much of a point other than to illustrate the lame way in which I spent what most would consider a joyous occasion. The only other mildly note-worthy occurrence was the odd sight I spotted a bit after when passing by one of the many bars overflowing with humans. This guy, probably drunk and not feeling too well, burned his face when trying to induce vomiting using the same fingers that were holding a lit cigarette. A sad sight, but one that I think describes the way I've been making use of the last few weeks since.

I've been writing a bunch. Been meaning to for months now, had plenty of ideas I wanted to cover, but it just wouldn't come out. Few days after the new year, I wandered by a Starbucks and figured, why not? Went inside and after sipping on a hot chocolate, took the pen to the paper and just started madly scribbling shit down. Made a habit of it for the following two weeks and the end result is that I now have the first draft of a new script. So there lies the problem. Over the course of writing it, there was this odd arc of satisfaction I had with the material. At first it was just crap, but it was a first draft so it was to be expected. Somewhere around the halfway point I fell in love with it, a work of art! And then up until the last few words committed to ink and paper I hated myself for even writing it down.

Writing that much that quickly is very much an act of inducing vomit. Somehow I found the gag reflex and it all just came pouring out. My regret is that perhaps I may have been holding a cigarette in the hand when doing so. A lot of what I wrote was, if not blatantly personal then at least seeped in old memories. I would be afraid of showing most that know me this crap, it probably says way more than I would care for. However, once those last few words did come down, I fell in love with it all over again. I think it's either the best or the worst I've written, maybe both at the same time. So what do I do with it? Right now, I think all I can is move on to the second draft, make sure the stuff I like makes it to the page while the rest becomes more subdued. But it needs the stuff I hate to make the good stuff work. I don't know, I guess we'll cross that bridge when we cross it.

Yikes, think I wrote way too much, guess I still had some bile left in the gut.