"All of us are heaven sent, there was never meant to be only one."

The problem with me? Take your pick.

I'm a strange megalomaniac with an inferiority complex.
I think I'm the worst, but it kills me not to be the best. I'm the world's least successful perfectionist.

So what I do is I try to plan ahead and control my present by preparing for the future. In high school it seemed viable: service the future and you’ll have a good life. But one day it dawns on you, isn’t this life yet? Why make the present lousy for yourself just because it may help you be more comfortable in the future? A popular Zen gong I saw a few times when I was in Japan said something that struck me:

“Birth and Death is a grave event;
How transient is life!
Every minute is to be grasped.
Time waits for nobody.”

I don’t think there’s any divine report card coming to us at the end of this life, when you’re done all that’s left is your memories and the lives of the people you’ve touched. If St. Peter is waiting for me at the “pearly gates” after I die, I think he’ll ask me something along the lines of “how much did you love people when you were on Earth?” If there were any eternal judgment at all, the single criterion not too trivial for such a thing would be the amount of love you gave during your tenure as a human being.

St. Peter wouldn’t dare remind me of the time I got hopelessly lost on Valentines Day in the rain trying to find the restaurant while Andrea got carsick in the passenger seat and almost had me pull over so she could throw up. And if that sort of thing holds any clout up next to the years of devoted love I’ve given to countless people over the short period I’ve been alive thus far, then I don’t want to be in heaven’s stupid little club anyway.

My favorite living person, Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

Life is so
short
precious
beautiful
fuckin’ amazing
beautiful
devastating
so devastatingly beautiful that I can not go another minute letting fear of failure keep me from doing the things I truly desire to do. Fear of pain-- hell, fear of death: these things seem so minute.

Hindsight is 20/20.
Ajhan Chah said, “If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.”

Perfectionism may be good and well for some people, but I believe now that it’s keeping me from my full potential. I kiss perfectionism a not so fond goodbye, and now on romantic evenings of self, I’ll go salsa dancing with my own confusion.

"buy the sun... I'm selling the night"

I've been grieving multiple losses lately-- both on my behalf and on the behalf of others-- and this seems to have come to a head in the form of a humorous short story loosely based on the idea (see last post) and now this short film I put together in all of about five minutes (it made me five minutes late to something).

It's abstract and self-indulgent, so I don't expect anybody to really understand exactly what I meant in this piece, but if anyone sees meaning of their own then great. I'll probably take this post down in a day or two, because that's how you deal with grief: you allow it in for a little while, then you let it go. I'll be letting this video go from my blog soon. This goes out to Lindsey Smith and the rest of Kelsey Smith's family.

"The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still"

--And now for a short Themindtaker story--

Once upon a time there was a small village of woodland creatures living on a vast green plane under a crystalline blue sky. Mickster McAlister the muskrat lived in a beautiful split-level suburban hollowed-out log with his stunning muskrat wife Melinda (a real looker, as far as muskrats go) and his two and a half muskrat kids. All of the McAlister’s friends agreed, Melinda and Mick were a great couple… even if their split-level log wasn’t exactly the cleanest. You see, from a young age Mick had collected toilet paper rolls, and his collection of mint condition rare and precious rolls had gotten rather out of hand. But Melinda had great fun arranging it, finding new and different ways of displaying the humongous hoard of lavatory paper. She had helped Mick with his collection since their courtship.

The muskrat community gave Mick and Melinda a lot of flack over the strange cache of toilet paper that had amassed in their house over the years. I should point out that muskrats almost never use toilet paper at all—they’ve been quite fond of the bidet ever since a door-to-door salesman came and introduced them to their town. The muskrats even held a town meeting over the ridiculous amount of toilet paper bulging out of the McAlister residence. They decided that it was a bit of an eyesore (“why couldn’t it be something other than toilet paper?” they asked), and it couldn’t be a very suitable environment for the two and a half McAlister children to grow up. Something had to be done.

Unfortunately, Mick wasn’t in attendance at this meeting to defend himself, because he had camped out that night in front of the local Musk-o-Mart to be the first in line to buy the new Softin’ Fluffy three ply, Extra Absorbent 7-Series Toilet Tissue which had just been released (Mick was not only the first in line, but the only muskrat in town to buy ANY toilet paper that day whatsoever, save for the kindly Miss Marjorie who accidentally bought some thinking they were paper towels).

When Mick got home, his loving muskrat wife informed him of the town’s decision to burn their pile of toilet paper. Melinda snuggled up with the distraught Mick in a very soft (very absorbent) pile of TP outside under the stars, which Melinda had laid out for the two of them upon hearing the terrible news. Melinda and Mick held each other and spoke of the great times they had buying and arranging the great reserve of loo paper. Like the time uncle Meyers had used an entire roll by himself, or when they had forgotten to buy baby clothes for their first child, so they wrapped her in toilet paper for the first day, or that funny roll of tissues they had received as a gift with little pictures of muskrat politicians of it, like George W. Muskrush.

They spoke until dawn of the fond times they’d shared over the years, but decided that even to lose the great TP collection wouldn’t take any of those memories away from them, and their love was stronger than it ever had been. “Bring on the townspeople!” said Mick. “Let ’em take my collection of ‘shit tickets,’ they can never take away my happiness!” Just at that moment, it started to rain. First innocent little drops that Mick and Melinda danced around in, and then big dense rain drops that almost hurt your head when they landed on you.

Before too long, it became the biggest downpour that the little muskrat village had ever seen. The water level rose and muskrats came bursting out of their houses to look at the phenomenon. It was unbelievable. Everyone started to get nervous as the floodwater grew deeper and deeper. Mick and Melinda looked out the window and held their children tightly, when they saw a boat come floating up to their house. Martin Mitchum, the head of the town council shouted at the McAlisters to start throwing their rolls of toilet paper out the window. “Let the tissue issue go, Mitchum!” shouted Mick. “At least until this rain clears up!”

“No, you don’t understand!” responded Mitchum. “It’ll help absorb the flood!” Melinda and Mick looked at each other as a slow smile grew upon both of their faces. “No one else has any paper, they’ve all got bidets!” Soon the whole town was over at the McAlister log throwing little muskrat handfuls of toilet tissue out of the house. Slowly but surely the floodwaters receded. The great current was impeded by a great dam of toilet paper, which as quickly as the rain appeared absorbed and disintegrated into nothingness, leaving no traces of the great flood, or of Mick’s fantastic TP collection.

Mick and Melinda were heralded as town heroes from that point on. And the town council apologized for plotting to force them to get rid of the life-saving pile of toilet paper they had collected. Mick and Melinda (especially Melinda) took it all in stride and said that everything must have worked out the way it did for a reason. “Easy come easy go, I suppose,” said Melinda in front of the town council. Mick never regretted losing the collection because that rainy night, he realized that the TP never made him happy, it was sharing the collection process with Melinda that had brought him joy all these years, and no floor or town council or anyone else could ever take that away from them.

That night the McAlister kids had a sleepover at a friend’s house, and Mick and Melinda made sweet sweet muskrat love, all night long.

THE END

Good old fashioned visceral experience...

So... after a little while tonight we decided to head out for a walk around campus (I know, woo hoo for us). We got to the campanile and I decided it would be awesome to head out to the 50-yard line on the football field (a la Dazed and Confused). No one else was game, so I alone jumped the first fence and headed over there. I hit another fence, at least 15 feet tall, and climbed it as well. The top was seemingly lined with razor-wire (I guess they really don't want trespassers), but I climbed over anyway. I cut myself up pretty badly (the pictures above are pretty tame compared to the rest of the cuts I got), but I made it out there and walked around by myself for a little while and laid out on the field at looked up at the stars.

Maybe it was a shitty idea, I am bleeding now and all, but I have no regrets. It was a lovely evening of visceral experience (see my last blog). I've earned a good nights right tonight, and I intend to cash in on it now. Good night world, I hope you sleep sweet.

"This is your time, this is your day. You've got it all, don't throw it... away"

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."
--Kierkegaard

If you haven't seen Vanilla Sky, I highly recommend that you check it out. It is perhaps Cameron Crowe's finest work, yet it continually falls behind Almost Famous and even Jerry McGuire on critics lists. Yes, it's simply an adaptation of Abre Los Ojos, but Crowe made Vanilla Sky his own movie in all regards.

I initially intended to give you a serious analysis on whether or not I would stay in the lucid dream presented in Vanilla Sky, stay in a the blissful ignorance of a consistently perfect life; stay plugged into the Matrix and taste steak and Tastee Wheat.
HOWEVER, I am currently sipping a Red Stripe in a recliner wearing my aviators and hanging out with a small group of people while listening to some badass jazz. Sometimes waxing philosophical over sophomoric hypothetical questions must take backseat to some good old fashioned visceral experience.

So if you are currently sitting down at your computer reading this, I implore you: go outside and dig your toes into the dirt. Go watch the sky move sideways. Go get your hear broken, just to let yourself know your heart still works. Life is an amazing thing even when we don't realize it. I choose to participate. For better or for worse. Now I've got some Red Stripe to finish.

"Could I be read if I was see-through, or would you just see my spine?"

With each day that passes it becomes even more painfully obvious to me that I see the world around me very differently than almost everyone else I know. I’m practically in a different dimension. I like to think this is a good thing, but more and more it becomes my burden to deal with— and I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody else.

My world deals almost solely in feelings. Emotion. Sentiments and sensation. The universe is only existent to the extent that people perceive it, so our world is dependent on human beings. Humans are only existent to the extent of our own perception as well. If I ask you how you’re doing, you’ll respond with how you perceive yourself at that moment. Good, bad. Logic helps us out, but the only way we know anything about ourselves is through the feelings that make us who we are.

So the Earth is full of people, but more than that it’s full of emotions—the emotions of the people living here. How can anything be more important than how people feel? If the Earth is comprised of a bunch of people bouncing off of each other acting on their thoughts and feelings, then why aren’t people doing everything in their power to make themselves and everyone around them as happy as possible? Everyone is more responsible for their own happiness than anyone else’s, but if you had the power to make someone else’s life just a little bit happier, wouldn’t you?

In the world I see, strangers that you might never think twice about have entire intricate lives, and the second I see the suffering of innocent people, I emote heavily and empathize with extreme intensity. In most cases these episodes of intense empathy are for people I don’t know and never will know, but the existence of their suffering hangs heavy on my soul, like thick sheets of ice in an early autumn ice storm. Sometimes the brittle branches of my psyche can barely take it.

The only cardinal sin in my world is hurting someone, causing them to feel bad mentally or physically. This sounds just fine, but eventually you run into problems when people have overlapping feelings and it’s literally impossible for the two to be happy at the same time. But these things happen, it’s downright idiotic to think it’s possible for anyone to never have to feel pain in their life. These circumstances are unfortunate but sometimes unavoidable.

However the truly catastrophic times to me are when people hurt others intentionally. I am literally unable to comprehend the kind of personality that must hurt other people to be happy, but I see it almost every day… and it scares the shit out of me. How am I supposed to live, how am I supposed to compete in this world where you can plausibly get ahead by backstabbing other people? I have no intentions of ever hurting anyone I meet… and the irony here (there’ve been a lot of ironies lately) is that I’ll likely end up hurting myself in the process.

So the next time you see me doubled over in pain, look around me. I’m probably not reacting to something that happened to me, but rather I probably overheard some stranger on their phone just learn that they’ve lost a loved one, their parents will divorce, or their boyfriend/girlfriend doesn’t love them anymore. Go attend to them instead. I’m in the process of learning where these feelings come from, and why I was wired this way. All I ask is that you be patient with me, I’m carrying a little extra here. I know I can’t be the only one who’s like this (though I typically try to hide these feelings from the world—I can’t believe I’m coming clean right now), if you know anyone else who seems to be carrying a little extra load with them I implore you: give them a hug, a hand shake, a kind word. Chances are they really need it right now.

"One way or another, one way or another..."

Sounds of chimes lightly suggesting their tones onto the soft wind, cool grass in the diffused morning sun, sweet smells of spring flowers offering their buds to their Earth: these were not the things the Heart experienced as he sat and contemplated early in one morning. He was in a small hot room with a handful of middle-aged people running a video conference call. The call went through, the conference was under way, and with one eye on the monitor, the Heart sat in meditation.

Almost as a cruel joke, the Venetian blinds were pulled all but closed over the broad window in the room. The Heart looked at the tangle of branches and leaves blowing in-between the slats of the blinds, and let his brain fill in the data absent from his perception. He could practically see the whole picture of the branches heaving to and fro and its leaves flowing in tune with each other. Then he attempted to stop completing the pattern and see the window for what it was-- tan slats of plastic on top of thin strips of luscious green motion. Who's to say whether or not the leaves hidden by the blinds truly existed? The Heart couldn't prove it; out of sight, out of mind. Maybe we're more adept visualizers before we learn the concept of object permanence. Perhaps the leaves were only real when they were visible through the slats.

The Heart then decided that it’s totally unimportant if someone sings the wrong lyrics to popular songs, as long as they're singing from the heart. "Jo-jo was a man who thought we was a woman, but he was another man!" Who cares what other people think? Fuck 'em all. Fuck 'em.

The conference eventually came to a close and the Heart dutifully put away his equipment and wrapped his cables, all the while assuring the Board of Regents that it was actually very interesting for him to listen to them blather on about god-knows-what for two hours. The people filed out of the room, continuing their discussion, and left the Heart alone for a few minutes. He slowly walked toward the window and pulled the blinds wide open. The leaves were there, all of them. If somehow they had disappeared when the Heart stopped perceiving them, they were certainly back now, and greener than ever. Beautiful.

The Heart carried his equipment out to the van and prayed so hard that the beautiful tree and all of its leaves would still exist even after he had left the building entirely. He couldn’t take the thought that the true simple beauty he had experienced would just cease to be. That had to be the ultimate tragedy. Later, the Heart listened to U2 and sang along as loud as he could, “It's all right, it's all right, it's all right / Shamu, the mysterious whale!”

"When You've Seen Beyond Yourself"

On a beautiful cloudless day, The Heart, hands in pockets, walks apace to the music ringing in his ears. His head bobbed up and down to the beat, though he was sure this spectacle must have been an odd sight for any passerby. He almost always walked in time to his music, but rarely ever permitted himself to get a good head-bang going in public.

He feels the hot sun on his dark hair, and it doesn’t seem to bother him. The Heart is fully aware of the beauty all around him without even taking his eyes off his feet. The music spills out of his head and soars sparkling on the breeze, within and without the trees lining the sidewalk, pulsing through the leaves. It pours like thick waves upon ground before him, cushioning every step of his walk.

“Turn off all thoughts, surrender to the void.” The Heart gains momentum as the song does the same, picking up speed towards his unknown destination. He enjoys every step of the way; the path is laid out just for him with the trees and the grass moving in time with his music. He sheepishly reaches a finger or two out to touch the colorful swell of liquid music on the air before him—it feels as good as it sounds. It’s tactile, cool to the touch, silk.

He now has both hands boldly out in front of him, participating fully in the moment. One song ends and flows right into the next; the colors change, the wind continues to dance. The Heart closes his eyes to achieve total mindfulness. The music gallops forward and his pace quickens, his whole body is moving, his eyes are closed.

SMACK! Everything stops. The music continues, but The Heart is no longer at one with it. He slowly opens his eyes to see what happened. A tree stands defiantly in front of him and in his own carelessness, he had walked straight into it. In his attempt to be fully present in the moment, he had accidentally taken himself out of it.

He brushes himself off and continues on his way, letting go of any aggravation over the unplanned pit stop. The irony was not lost on The Heart that he had lost his way within his very attempt at being present in the moment. He was always pretty good at missing the point of things—but The Heart knew that after this minor discomfort he could just keep going. It wouldn’t be too hard to get back into his groove, as long as he kept going. It is still a beautiful cloudless day. The Heart keeps going, hands in pockets, walking apace to his music. Smiling.

No more FIlm journals 5/9/07

Well, for the past couple of months I've been writing my film journals on scraps of paper, notebooks, cocktail napkins, et al. I couldn't tell you exactly why I was unable to go ahead an just type the damn things in here for you, my dear readers, but today Prof. Jacobson let us off the hook with these things anyway.

So I am left to continue this thing, no longer for a grade, at my leisure-- now that I'm not being forced to do one every day, human nature being what it is, I'll have more motivation to actually write (go figure). I don't intend to actually type in the past ones that I scrawled down, unless maybe I go through them and find a particularly interesting one. It's mostly describing my process of working on my project The National Anthem.

So instead of boring you with all of that, I'll just show you the first cut of the piece. I have a few changes planned, I'll change this out with the final cut once I get it on YouTube. In the mean time, here's The National Anthem:



Basically, I wanted to make a statement about how the media had an incredible opportunity to unify us as a nation and keep us genuinely informed about a horrendously tragic event as it was unfolding-- but they totally dropped the ball. Then every day since 9/11/2001, we Americans have been hot in the face with 9/11 by talking heads and politicians humping the catastrophe for their own personal gains. I mean no disrespect to anyone who lost family in the event and hope viewers will agree that despite my lampooning of the media in this piece, I treated the event with respect so as to show sensitivity the the loss suffered by the whole country on that most cataclysmic day.

SO thank you all who have actually come back to check for updates after all these days. Now that I'm not required to keep this thing up, I actually have the desire to try. :)

Film Journal 3/16

Well, today marks the beginning of Spring Break, which means all sorts of crazy relaxation on the horizon for our young hero. I’m going to make serious attempts at continuing my 9/11/Kid A project over the next week (although I can’t say how successful I’ll be). I would love to have the whole song paired with footage by next week, although I may not have that accomplished with a lot of news footage digitizing yet to do.

I think if I can get events in the footage paired with events in the song, then I can start doing the “experimental” stuff with it (i.e. effecting the image and distorting stuff, plus the couple of effects shots I had planned). I don’t think we were required to keep these things up over the break, so I’ll give you a big update on how the project is going when I return, oh faithful readers (if there are any of you), and hopefully I’ll have good news to report.

Film Journal 3/15

I'm currently working on my 9/11 project for class, and it's almost surreal cutting those events to music... especially in the way that I'm doing so. I recieved 12 hours of footage from the Fox News Channel from 9/11/01 in the mail today (c/o eBay), and I've started going through it to see what I've got... and I almost feel like I'm exploiting the event for creativity, but I assure you (and me) that I'm not!

I really want to try and provide my perspective on that particular day's events, without getting too political or anything. I hate Mr. Bush and his war, but this project is not the place to make those statements. What I do want to say in this project is that the TV media did a great job in freaking us out that day, when they should have been trying to calm us down (considering the terrorists wanted us to be, well, "terrified").

So I'll start keeping you updated on how that's going, but so far so good. I like what I've got, even if it is sort of odd.

Film Journal 3/14

Well, I've lost at film festivals before, and been constructive criticism, but recently someone (who I don't know) put this on my Zombie Movie YouTube post:

"Umm what did you plan to make when you first thought of this video"

I'm not entirely certain what to make of this. I mean, I can take the idea that someone might not like my work, of course there will be people who don't, but It's kinda weird to get random anonymous criticism from the internet. It's a first for me. Almost feels good-- hey, at least he watched it. :)

Film Journal 3/13

I made a bloopers reel for the modern adaptation of Job that I shot a year or two back. I realized that I never really made an "official" DVD to give to my cast and crew as thanks, so I made this for the DVD I'm making. Maybe it's less funny if you haven't seen the film (which I'm not sure I really want to put on YouTube... I'll think about it), but nonetheless, you can check this out if you like:

Film Journal 3/12

I'm thoroughly enjoying the Chocolate Alphabet assignment so far. I think people are really
changing the way they approach the words these days as they watch themselves do them in the early cuts of the ones we've already done. People seem to know how to be entertaining more now that they've seen what works and what doesn't.

I for one have stopped trying to seriously explain the words, in favor of using the word as a means to have fun and make silly connections. I think it's just as valid, and more fun to do, plus more fun to watch. Everybody wins. :)

Film Journal 3/11

Baby squirrels are adorable. I’m so happy with the availability of baby squirrel/kitten/puppy/anything cute videos on youTube these days. Anyone can just get on YouTube and search for devastatingly cute animal footage and find it.

I’m curious if short readily available videos such as the ones on YouTube will ever replace the fictive feature film. It’s been such a classic tradition for over 100 years now that I don’t think anything (especially not YouTube) would possibly topple the likes of Hollywood, but it certainly may change how things are done. I’m curious to see what’ll happen.

Film Journal 3/10

I mentioned Zodiac last time, so I thought I’d follow up by mentioning that Zodiac is indeed the first film to be shot on digital and send directly to a hard drive. No tapes involved. Films shot in HD are not a new phenomenon obviously, but most feature films shot that way are shot on tape, but this was the first one to go directly to a hard drive.

I find this interesting because at work (KU Media Productions) we shoot most of our footage, especially the High Def stuff, onto an external hard drive called the FireStore, and it works really well. I suppose this is the future of cinema here.

Film Journal 3/9

DAMMIT! I never saw The Fountain in theaters. I don't know how I managed to miss it. I'm a huge fan of Darren Aronofsky (though apparently not enough to actually look up the official spelling...) but I didn't manage to make it to the theater to see his latest film.

I also haven't seen Zodiac yet, and again, I'm a huge fan of David Fincher (I do know how to spell him name). I might just be a lazy movie fan, which saddens me. I have the excuse for a lot of the independent films that never made it to Liberty Hall, but after those come out on video, I'll have to catch up on those too.

I've really got some catching up to do.

Film Journal 3/8

I always like popping movies into the ol' DVD player when I know I have nothing else to do but watch sit back and relax for a while. This is not the case with watching television most of the time. When you have commercials to deal with, and you are only getting 21 1/2 minutes of entertainment for ever half hour, and you're aware that the producers only produce TV shows to make you watch the next show, and not allow you to just enjoy one show-- it's just nowhere near as good.

I love movies so much more than television (and don't get me started on movies on television... ulgh, "full screen" [shudder]...).

(yes... it's the Goonies)

Film Journal 3/7

Someone actually posted a comment on my YouTube post of the scene we reproduced from Citizen Cane for my video production class. I'll be the first to admit: it's not really that good...... and THERE'S NO REASON TO REPRODUCE CITIZEN CANE. Sorry.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that someone I don't know saw it and said, "excellent man, really good."

Boggles my mind.

Film Journal 3/6

I wish there were a better way to light night shots to make them look like what it actually looks like to the human eye at night. Perhaps this is too dark to be aesthetically pleasing, I'm not sure, but I do know that it almost never actually look like "night" when you see ext. night shots in movies.

I recall one scene in Red Shadow: Akakage (I believe) where they shot day for night by putting a dark blue filter over everything. It looked cool, but it didn't quite look like real night. I should look into being able to do that...