Acting in a short film this weekend called Foxteeth, a period piece set in the 1950s. I’m playing a transvestite living in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, who’s trapped in a destructive relationship with a deadbeat hustler.
Grad school application progressing slowly but surely…just finished a five-minute sampler of my 28-minute short film “Imp of Satan.” struggled with Final Cut Pro export options and various DVD-making software for two days. now on to the resume, personal statement, letters of recommendation, transcripts, academic writing sample…
3:39 PM
In the airport again. Really short visit with the family this year, cuz of my work schedule at the restaurant – I have Fri-Sun off every week, and had to travel within that timeframe cuz I couldn’t get any additional days off.
It’s good to see my parents and sister. I wish I could see them more often, and not have such compressed visitations. We hang out and watch TV, go to the movies, have dinner, play board games… it’s a separate sphere from my life in San Francisco. Whenever I come back to the city it feels like I’m waking up from an extended dream. And I’m eager to get back to work.
Here I am hooked up to the "dream machine"!!
Last night we filmed the Space Station scene for “Outside World,” at the Box Factory. So crazy!! It took nearly four hours to set up, and then about 2 and a half hours to film. By the end we were all dragging ass and semi-delirious. Maria passed out on the couch. But our shots look awesome, and I think we got everything we need!
So now we just gotta film two more sequences, the Fields and the Forest. For the Fields we’re going to Palo Alto and using that big park near Stanford, the one with the satellite dish. Dave’s gonna bring his torso-mount steadicam again. I still gotta figure out my outfit but hopefully I can get Avocado Jones to help. It’ll be a fairly easy shoot, cuz we’re using natural light and I’m the only one on camera. The fields are beautiful and the sense of space will really complement the atmosphere of the song.
Feels good to be making another film. This will be my first directorial effort since Tweaker with an Axe (which is still in post-production). And I’ve never done a music video, so the process is kinda different. But luckily I’m working with talented and enthusiastic folks that share a similar vision! Can’t wait to see how the finished product will turn out.
We’re filming our first music video for Sex Industry this weekend. I’m excited and nervous – I haven’t shot anything in awhile, so I’m doing my usual over-thinking and under-planning thing. Writing this now on my laptop that is slowly losing power… schedules and lists and fragments of song lyrics rushing through my head. Listening to Crystal Castles on my headphones. Worried about it perhaps being too easy. Music videos should be simple, collage-like… and we have a pretty cool story going on in this video, very sc-fi and surreal.
Now I just gotta sit down and write the script! hehe
Promising to “live a life full of good stories.” To write things down. I think it’s a worthy goal. These last several years have complicated matters, but things are changing… I’m slowly digging myself out of this mire of conflict and angst that has choked and muddied my desire.
Living in transit, finding minute spaces of creative thought, some synthesis of emotion, knowledge, and experience, awakening in real time and pushing toward ending, toward the inside inevitably spilling out.
As I write this my eyelids flutter with exhaustion, and my shoulder still throbs from the muscle I pulled last week. Yesterday’s workout was difficult but necessary. The beginning stretches hurt a lot cuz I hadn’t done them in 4 or 5 days. Amazing how soon the body forgets, but how grudgingly cooperative it becomes when asked to remember. For the past 6 months I’ve been doing gymnastic stretches that I used to do as a kid, and now I can almost do a middle split. I haven’t been able to do that for about 20 years. Seriously.
The places in the mind become like desk drawers full of odd knick-knacks whose use and significance muddy over time. Every day I’m assailed by memories that take on a garish, bloated quality as they pop up from their places in the drawers, without any provocation or real urgency, just leering and animated rot, broken teeth and just-so-happy-to-see-you… “hey catalogue this before we fall off our hinges.”
You’re ”on a roll”… Dissolution of self in reaction to constant appraisal… bringing a capital “S” to the fore, blocking out the background. Fear of the courtship ritual and what it means… revelation of weakness within Self, revelation of need… siphoning power off established markets of desire.
Starting a blog with no intention of revelation, while nonetheless marketing the ”true story”… numerous “behind-the-scenes” references… “so you want the real me?” … The blog is breeding ground for interest markets, a Reality TV ploy to foreground interest in the background workshop. The workshop is where the shit really goes down, but interest must be appraised for that work to be validated. Impetus for any work is hard to kindle, as hard work means concentration and minimizing distractions (nearly impossible – markets foster distraction).
But the free zone is here in the lined notebook, giving established form so that boundaries need not be considered – easier, in fact, to work within forms, although perhaps in counterpoint to one’s ideological view of writing as a mechanism of personal freedom.
Conjoin the notebook. Distilled then, in a freeing gush, through the blog, and given wide access to appraisal. The work continues. No use penning alone in a darkened bedroom…
