48 posts from October 2007

We had Curtain Call last night.

It doesn't mean that the show is over - there's still some more shooting to do and I've still got a week left and hope to shoot up until the day I leave - but...

I am trying not to unwind just yet, but I am so tired. I took the film to the lab last night, slept for a few hours and picked it up at 3pm. 11 rolls, 180 shots.  I'll total up the previous bit later, but I did get some nice stuff this weekend. A  bunch of that shooting was bracketing one series of shots. It was six frames, left to right of the main cast out front on stage. given the tricky lighting, I shot it four or five times at different exposures, so that's a bunch of stuff right there, for just one scene. In any event, there's plenty of material, enough to keep me busy for the next year, I suspect.

I didn't want to shoot that scene last night, because I was afraid that it would mean that this was over. It's a tricky business, symbolism, because on the one hand you can see alot, learn alot, and even effect some kind of sympathetic transformation, but on the other hand for that to work you do have to surrender some control. It's a collaboration, you and the work, and sometimes the end comes sooner than you'd hoped.

Still, I do have plenty to do between now and next Monday, so I am excited at the prospect of being past the three quarter mark, more or less.

I learned two valuable lessons in film school. The first one, I believe Sandra Davis said this one, was "Film is cheap". Now, anybody who has ever worked with film (and this was a class in 16mm Cinematography) knows full well that film isn't, ain't never been, and never will be, especially if you are broke and living in Tampa going to art school, cheap, but she was right. You never get a second chance to shoot what is in front of you. Not if you are alive and you are staring the world right in the face. You are better off shooting and shooting and shooting until they pull you away (to debtor's prison most likely) than you are regretting the money you've saved. I can attest to this.

The second lesson was from Sonya Maxwell (same class at USF actually) when I was finishing up my semester's film project. It was days before the end of year screening, for which my project was due, and I still wanted to go out and shoot more, before I could finish editing. She yelled at me (figuratively, nicely, well-meaningedly, coming-from-deep-wisdom-and-experience-hoping-I-would-listenedly) and told me that there was a time for gathering and a time for editing and I needed to learn when to do both. I made some fast cuts that I still regret and showed the film [This was back when you could still get the  4X B/W Reversal Stock in 16mm from Kodak. I loved that film. For those  of you listening in from home, reversal film was a motion-picture equivalent to slide film: once processed you could look at the original without having to pay for a copy print from the lab. That's good if you are studying film-making and have no money, bad if you have issues about cutting the original film up in a scramble to finish by some arbitrary deadline.] To this day -19 years later- that remains the only film I've completed, and I still agonize over the cuts I made in my haste and inexperience.

OK, so I didn't learn the lesson about when to stop gathering very well then, but maybe, maybe now it's working its magic. I can feel myself shift gears, making my preparations mentally for leaving. They say that the art of living is essentially learning the art of dying well. Another lesson I hope to learn, but am reluctant to hurry into. Meanwhile, I am exhausted, having spent the last month sleeping late and pushing myself onward with alcohol and caffeine. I wish you could see the work, but that'll have to wait until I get home and can set the scanner set up. Until then you'll have to take my word for it that the work is lovely. Some of it is. Whether it all holds together in the end, well that's another story but maybe Beauty is sufficient for now. Sometimes meaning gets lost when we try to hard to make it show itself. It can be quite shy.

Start with a premise: Your Mind is everything there is.

Or to try it another way: Your Mind is the emptiness, the blank space, within which everything exists, or at least within which everything you experience exists. [Not in the sense that “things happen and your brain processes chemicals which recreate things hologramically in the three pounds of tasty bits inside your skull”, but rather in the “entirety of existence happens within” something that essentially is-not.]

Without getting into the bit where “Your Mind” isn’t even yours but just is “Mind,” pursue this premise to its logical conclusion: which is that everything that you think is “You” and “Yours” and everything else - everything that is “Not You” and “Not Yours” - become one totality. “Mind” is the parentheses that surround every event.

Or, to put it another way, the table is the stage that the Play takes place on, and also represents the space within which the Drama takes place. All the objects on the table are the Actors in the Play, and represent everything that happens within the space within which everything happens.

Having got this far, lose the premise because premises make for pedantic art. Instead, try to make a Drama that is as sincere as possible given the level of craft that the actors posses (this is table-top community theater after all…). Along the way notice how many subtle autobiographical details work themselves into the narrative (if there is such a thing in this world) and try to hide them as best you can because while all art is essentially biographical, it is the universal emerging from the particular that makes for transcendent work.

Repeat as necessary until Curtain Call.

Kao-Soi

Ok. So it isn't really a picture of Khao Soi. It' a picture of some of the ingredients.
Try this one:

Curry

Listen. If you want to see a sexy picture of Khao Soi, the "National dish of Chiang Mai", then go to Pim's wonderful blog: "Chez Pim" (http://chezpim.typepad.com/blogs/2003/11/khao_soi_northe.html). That's what Khao Soi looks like. She also has a recipe for the dish, and I'm mentioning it here because when I get a craving for Khao Soi (which is often because it is mind-blowingly-stunningly-fantastic) but don't happen to be in Chiang Mai (which is sadly also as often as my craving) I turn to Pim's recipe because it's a good one. I don't follow it exactly because I can't follow a recipe exactly to save my life (which is why I am a better cook than baker), but you can make a great Khao Soi, just do what she tells you. (I add more of everything and then wrestle it back to what it's supposed to taste like, but it is a "to taste" dish anyway).

My only complaint is that I thought we had red curry paste here, but it was actually yellow curry paste. If I didn't tell you, you probably wouldn't have noticed, but that's just the deal. Use red curry paste. Also, I had a hell of a time frying the noodles which almost blew it for me, but again, see above. As a note, don't buy those awful crunchy paste-y noodles that are commercially available. Get extra of the fresh egg noodles and fry them. That's just the deal.

Lime. Add more lime, and add more fish sauce. You'll have to add more palm sugar (dissolve in hot water), at which point you'll have to add more fish sauce again. Add some more coconut milk and realize that you need more lime. Repeat as necessary until Curtain Call.

Sweet-Perrin

Sorry, Lucy; sorry, Annette.
I had wanted to send you on your way with a good loaf and Essential's Sweet Perrin, with pear, figs and hazelnuts would have carried you to NY in style. I put in just slightly too much salt, and the crust was bit chewy, but it was one of the better breads I've made so far. Do track down a copy of the book and make a loaf of Brown Bread for me when you get to London, and don't forget to find my friend and take him out for drink.

Books I have read while at Elsewhere

• Catch 22  Heller
• Stranger in a Strange Land  Heinlein
• Artisan Baking Across the United States  Glezer

Books I have not read while at Elsewhere

• The Experience of Nothingness  Novak
  
• The Audible Past  Sterne
  
• Michel Foucault: Power  Faubion (ed.)
  
• Relational Aesthetics  Bourriaud
  
• Archive Fever  Derrida
  
• 1000 Plateaus  Deleuze
  
• Key Concepts  Deleuze
  
• Images Music Text  Barthes