:: anne in the attic ::

Create Your Own Countdown

:: Sunday, May 27, 2007 ::

Yeah, you read it right. Courtesy of the Lark Camp site. Every year, they hold this huge music gathering in the Mendocino Woodlands. I've been wanting to go, and this year I'm on the list. We'll see. I've booked that week off (July 27th - August 4th).

I'd really like to learn more about acoustic bass techniques, and I'd like the try the bodhran and the djembe. Also, it wouldn't hurt to do some guitar picking & rhythm with other people besides my own tracks in the studio.

Right now I'm hip-deep in no less than four creative projects (and one long-running one that's clinging to my back). I'm really tempted to book that floater vacation week I saved just to get some of it done, but I'm still heeding the Rob Brezny column from a few weeks ago that suggested I pace myself and work out a sequence of events. Can't do it all at once, or even by divvying up the tasks-- each step is prerequisite to the next and can't be skipped. I just need to buckle down for the long haul.

:: Anne 10:54 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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"When we care less about our feelings, our rights, our happiness, our security, etc., and begin to concern ourselves with the feelings, rights, happiness, and security of others, we will have found the true power of love."

~Dr. Leo Buscaglia

:: Anne 5:36 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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Is Mercury in retrograde or something? #*%`@*!! I'm trying to write this letter to someone-- a fairly long letter-- and I'm just stubbing my brain on it repeatedly; things just aren't flowing well. Time to set it down for a bit, I guess.

This morning, I decided that, after this plane of existence, if I have the choice, I'd like to live this life once more, at least. Looking back, and within, I'm beginning to see that I have been given a great many options to do just about anything, and my choices have been rather conservative with regard to risk. I could have been a record producer, a filmmaker, a band member (piano? guitar? bass? drums? any one of those), an actor, a painter, a pilot, an architect.... But they all require a certain risk with regard to financial stability-- why was I not willing to risk that? Hm. Avenues of choice also apply to my relationships with people. There are those to whom I'd be a better friend; and there are those whose red flags I would heed with more alacrity. I suppose much of this is hindsight, but there's more to it: you can't do it all. And in some lifetimes, you can't really do much at all, it seems. Sometimes you're just born without the ability. But I believe I've been given a great many gifts that I haven't used, for one reason or another. In short, I enjoy being in my own head (most of the time)-- it's highly amusing, never dull, and I'm grateful to be able to wrap my little brain around so many wonderful concepts and experiences. Not everyone gets to have that, I think. What I have left of this life is fairly planned out, to a certain extent. But if given the choice to come back as however I wished, I would like to try this one again. I wonder if I would have learned enough (and retained the lessons) to step out of the box, so to speak. I mean, I have 20/15 vision, better than average. Why am I not flying planes? Why am I holding myself back from my heart's true desires?

:: Anne 10:37 AM [smartass remarks] ::
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What a gorgeous day for a silly walk....

:: Anne 2:31 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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Yesterday, I could barely keep up with my own thoughts. There were so many stimuli, and the world was so alive around me, that I had trouble categorizing my experiences as they occurred.

Mostly, it was about how beautiful the weather and growth appeared-- this is a special time of year in Oregon. The sun and the rain played hide and seek yesterday, and in between, the neighborhoods were damp and glistening-- steam rising after the morning showers. When the sun would heat up the streets and yards, various fresh scents would fill up the air. In the late morning, I clearly smelled grape juice for quite a while as I walked. At times, it was spectacular. And it kept my head out of the "you're wasting your life" hole for a while.

One of the thought processes yesterday involved a favorite topic, soul versus body. And I hit on the analogy of The Picture of Dorian Gray to illustrate how our bodies take on the uglinesses of aging and fighting for our physical existence, while our souls, our inner selves acquire the more beautiful countenance of wisdom. Well, ideally they do-- this is not assured, of course. Our souls are not without their own scarring, but I believe the choice is ours: we can let our experiences mar us on the inside, too, or we can incorporate learning and healing toward a better end, instead reflecting the beauty of every kind of experience. I think a healthy soul arrives at the end of a physical lifetime having learned and loved and triumphed, and shows that beauty more than the body does. The Dorian Gray analogy fails in that the portrait in the story, which takes on the physicalities of aging, is hidden in the attic-- whereas the body is our aging portrait and is outwardly visible; instead, the more beautiful soul is hidden within the body, not usually visible to the naked eye. I say "not usually," because I believe glimpses are possible through people's actions, words, and especially through a person's eyes.

:: Anne 8:34 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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Soy tan estúpido.

:: Anne 8:09 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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Made this a few months ago, threw some clips together with Imaad Wasif's "Out in the Black." It's just a personal video, not intended to mean anything to anyone else, really.

:: Anne 11:30 PM [smartass remarks] ::
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Making this film is without a doubt the most fun I've ever had. Now I see the draw-- it's astounding. And addictive. The creative decisions, the focus, the attention, the sound-- the big picture. I suppose the adrenalin rush at the editing bay when you see something click perfectly (or better than you'd hoped) is akin to a drug high, to be sure. I guess, having shot and viewed the footage mostly myself, I didn't expect to be surprised. As I've been saying for a while now, I could do this all the time. If only someone would pay me what I make now, just to keep me in cat food and guitar strings....

I had an interview yesterday that was all of this and more. It's amazing what happens as you gain people's trust through this process of capturing who they are. It's like holding a wild bird gently in your hands while it sleeps. There is enormous responsibility in it, but you want to do and say as little as you can so as not to intrude upon what takes place naturally. You simply want to be there to witness and record it, hoping they'll just forget you're there. And when everything gets going and the real stories begin, there are moments that are nothing less than magical.

Also, to avoid having to cover countless royalties for the film, I've decided to compose some transitional and interlude themes -- instrumentals -- in the studio myself: backing music, non-distracting, to fill it out a bit in places. I came up with one last night I like a lot; it may end up being the central recurring theme unless I pull out a better one later. It required a softer connective sound, so I got out the nylon-stringed Takamine that sits in the shadows much of the time (as the Gibson and the Martin are really the stars of the show most often). Added a sparse, gradually building strings accent with the synth, not too much, and it really gelled, at least for me. What a process to have all in your head like this. There are times when it really does feel like a "psychic sauna" (said Jane's character, the producer from Laurel Canyon), and I need to bounce it off of other eyes and ears. I'm looking into a larger venue for an eventual screening, but that's at least a year down the road.

:: Anne 4:22 AM [smartass remarks] ::
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Last night was good. Somehow, I leapt over/crashed through the social barriers and connected with the people with whom I wanted to connect. It had been a while for some of them. The venue was beautiful, with a 360-degree panormamic view of the Willamette Valley. The libations were perfect, and the weather was fine. The usual trepidations were quite toned down.

I am a bit on the hazy side this morning, but I'm up and rewriting some notes for an interview I'm filming later. Somehow, I managed to run out of decent coffee earlier in the week and not restock, so I'm making do with some English Breakfast tea for now, but I foresee a jaunt to Dutch Bros. in the near future for some real punch. So far, it looks as though we may be able to film outside, as it's gorgeous.

Oh yeah, and I received the Barney Rosenzweig book in the mail on Friday. I immediately put a 140-page dent into it, and am relishing some time perhaps this evening to dive back in. It's really fascinating to get the story of "Cagney & Lacey" right from the horse's mouth. If only Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless would write their stories from the same time period.... Anyway, I feel somewhat of a kinship with Barney (albeit a small & amateurish one), as I'm trying to produce a film as well. One of the things he said about himself as an editor hit home so fast and hard that I know this is my calling, if only too late in life. He wrote of being able to look at the same piece of film endlessly and not tire of it. When editing film clips, and the juxtapositions click just right, you know it. It's not something you can delineate easily on paper; it's a sense, I believe. I totally feel that. So much so, in fact, that I have probably committed a huge sin in never mapping out a storyboard for the documentary. At least not while we're still in production. Once we hit definite postproduction, maybe. But even then, I feel I already know each minute of the 40+ hours we have on film enough to pull from it and arrange the story I want to tell. At least I hope so. I firmly believe that the hardest part of this film will be the licensing-- the endless paperwork and jumping-through-hoops that will allow the story to be told. Really, the story itself is already written, being that it's factual, a documentary. The job-- and I'm pretty sure I can pull it off-- is to make it appealing to watch. After that, it's all about permissions.

P.S. Biopsy=negative, foot is at 90% and rising.

:: Anne 7:48 AM [smartass remarks] ::
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