Tuesday, February 27, 2007

February is Almost Over!

Emotionally, February is the longest month of the year. Not sure why but those 28 (sometimes 29) days drag on like pony at a children's zoo strung out on heroin.

CityMinx and I broke up. Don't want to talk about it. Probably explains the valentine's day blog entry (apart from my general allergy to all things sugary-sweet). We're still friends, though, so that's good.

Got through a particularly difficult shoot. Typical post-partum depression afterwards, followed by the also-typical anxiety about income and the next job.

Lot of other things happened this month, most of them difficult.

The scenery isn't helping. New York City looks wonderful for about ten seconds during a snowstorm. Then the stuff hits the ground, mixes with the grime and crap and motor fumes, and suddenly the place looks like a big hairy dog in a bathtub.

But then you see something like this and everything's all okay again:


It's not a very good photo, but the sunrise on the Astoria Blvd. platform was beautiful.

And the book I'm reading right now, "Care of the Soul," is helping. The writer, Thomas Moore, was a monk for many years before becoming a therapist. He argues for a "return to soul" that's not specifically Christian or even necessarily religious, but is spiritual in a deep and meaningful way. He's not New-Agey (well, maybe a little) but rather recognizes the complexity of life's issues and states outright that he's not looking to "cure" anyone or help them "perfect" anything.
Anyway, I wish I'd read the thing ten years ago. Then my February probably wouldn't be crawling along (or, better yet, I would appreciate the crawling from a different perspective).

Here's to the Ides of March.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Happy F***king Valentine's Day



(And no, it's not real).

Monday, February 05, 2007

Production Fatigue

So the reason you haven't seen an update in a couple of weeks (or if you know me personally, haven't heard from me at all in a couple of weeks) is that I'm working on another indie feature.
This one has a great script, great group of people, and looks really good so far.

But it's becoming more and more difficult to work on. Hard to say why, and I don't want to really go into it. But it's days like these that I wonder why the hell I got into the production department.

A part of me is a classic messy-artist-type: I'm not great at filing things, and have automated all my bill paying so I don't run into late fees (which I used to constantly). When I'm working on a project, I tend to let other things fall by the wayside.

On the other hand, I'm capable of being very organized, even anal. So I get hired to keep other people organized while they're being messy artist-types. That's pretty much film production in a nutshell - the messy folks getting enough crayons from the organized ones so they can finish the drawing, without emptying out the whole box.

So how did I get from being one of the messy ones to being one of the grownups? I never wanted to grow up. I still don't.