Recently I read a movie review which stated that the movie was "fearless"
that's the key... We should not be afraid.
Chuck calls it mpca(motion picture creation anxiety)

Dream 9/12

In the dream there is a thin old man with a white beard. He walks ahead of me up a trail to a meadow at the top. There is a younger, mean looking man in the meadow standing near a white horse.
I know that the horse used to belong to the old man. I watch as the old man climbs up a onto a rock and then, from above, jumps onto the horses back and rides away.
The younger man is angry but doesn't follow him.
I follow the horse and the old man down the mountain.

Now I am the old man's daughter. He tells me to bring the horse home. He ties the horse by its bridal to the back of my car and then he leaves.
I drive and i assume the horse is following me but I don't look behind me to check.

Now I am following my mother. She is driving her car and i am following her home because i don't know the way.
We get lost, we make illegal U turns. We stop in the parking lot of a Starbucks and get out of our cars to discuss directions.
We don't look at the horse but we know its there.
We go inside and get coffee. when i come out the horse has come untied from the car. I am afraid that it will run away. I approach it slowly with my hands outstretched and it shies away from me.
I am afraid of it.
Then suddenly the horse becomes a man. He isn't wearing a shirt and his side is scraped up and bleeding, so is one side of his face.
'I will not follow you.' he says. 'you don't know where you're going and you didn't notice when i tripped and fell and you dragged me.'
I apologize and try to hug him. i want to cry so that he can see how sorry i am but i don't cry. He lets me hug him but doesn't seem to accept the apology.
He tells me that he will come home but he isn't going to go with me. He is going to wait for his fiance, she knows the way and will not drag him behind her. He says that if we tell her to come here he will be tied to the back of her car and follow her home.
I am jealous of how much he trusts her.
I agree to let him wait for her.

In the end, we realize that if he stays a man and doesn't transform back into a horse, there is no reason why he cannot ride in the backseat of my car.

September and Philip Glass

Dreams and Films

In my dream last night there was a draw bridge which sunk down under the water instead of lifting up. The bridge didnt move in the dream but i knew that it could and that if it did it would sink down.
I was sitting under the bridge, on the slippery cement, afraid of falling in to the choppy, wild, gray-black water.
Later in the dream I did fall it. I was incredibly afraid of how deep the water was and of being thrown against the thick stone supports of the bridge which lead in dramatic perspective away across the whole width of the river.

In real life when i stand under bridges i feel stomach fluttering awe. I learned this summer that I don't feel awe when i stand on top of a mountain. something about the bridge being man-made is more impressive to me.

In the movie I am writing I think I will make my protagonist dream of bridges so that i can film under them and capture the way they make me feel... like i am very small but also like i am floating.

Rain, Sunlight, Shadows and My Children

Re-posting

If You Really Loved Me You'd Blog About Me

Favorite past time = painting things white

needs another coat..

but..

i think i will paint around the prints.


.

The old camera is bad and lazy but I use it because it is light and I can wear it round my neck like a necklace

A Dream

In the dream, Jake Katrina and I wander the streets of New York City. We are in a large group of other friends. It is nighttime and it is cold and we really just want to to be inside some place but there are no open restaurants.
We walk in circles.
Twice we pass a house that does not look as though it belongs in the city. It belongs in a Pensylvania suburb and there is a plastic skeleton halloween decoration swaying in the cold breeze outside the open screen door.
"There he is." Jake says, pointing at the skeleton the second time we pass by it. What jake means is 'We're going in circles.'

Finally we find an open cafe and go in. The menu on the door is pink and half in hebrew. Despite the late hour and the empty streets, the cafe is mobbed. The only available seating is upstairs and outside on a terrece that overlooks the street. It is very cold. We drink coffee.

A orthodox jewish family sits at the next table. The mother sits almost next to me on the bench that our tables share. The father begins to tell his son a story about a father who turns his son out into the cold because the son refuses to live by proper traditional jewish values.
I say loudly "I think this is the story that made me hate hebrew school."
Katrina shushes me and glances worridly at the next table where conversation has stopped.
The mother glances at me.
I had said it wanting them to hear me, but also not expecting that they would.
"what story?" she asks me.
Our group turns to face their group as though we had been one group all along. They have a son and daughter both with huge eyes like hobbit children in the shire. The little girl wears a Fiddler-on-the-roof kercheif round her head.

I sum up the story that I think is the one he was telling. Halfway through I realize that this is not the story that I thought it was. I continue to tell it anyway. The story I thought he was telling fills my head while I tell the other one out loud.
The one I thought he was telling is this: a man sees a child freezing on the street. the man says to the child 'if you say the Shamah I will save you and you will not be freezing any more.' the child refuses to say the shamah so the man leaves the child there and the child freezes.'
I finish telling the other story and then I try to apologize to the mother. She looks suddenly very beautiful, more and more beautiful as I realize that she hates me.

We leave the cafe and wander back down the same roads. The Pensylvania house is there with the plastic skeleton.
"There he is." says jake. What Jake means this time is 'He's naked, he must be so freezing.'

We find ourselves descending carpeted stairs into a basement game room. There are disheveled people, all roughly our own age, they are playing games for money. It is warm in the basement and the floor is completely carpeted.

I notice two boys playing pool, one is barefoot and the other has has floppy brown hair and a safety pin through his ear.
The barefoot one looks worse off then the other, more homeless and more alone. Suddenly, with the omniscient knowledge of the dreamer, I know that the one with the safetey pin in his ear is actually worse off, HE is more homeless and more alone. I know that this is important for me to understand.
I watch them. The barefoot one begins counting some bills, they are folded in his hand and he turns them over quickly, like one adept at counting money this way. The other boy watches him, holding his pool stick with his thumb over the end of it.

Jake and the others wander across the room where they begin to play a game. They throw small colored darts at a mat on the floor. the mat has a drawing of a dinasaur on it and the dinaseaur's legs and head and other parts are all numbered. if you get your dart in that number thats how much money you win.
They stand on the other side of the room and throw the darts at the mat which is near me so they are inevitably throwing darts towards me.
Jake throws a dart which overshoots the mat and lands in the carpet.
"Would you like me to move it back?" I ask him, thinking that if the mat had just been a few inches farther away he would have hit it. Jake laughs and shakes his head. Continues trying.

I turn back to the boy with no shoes who is still counting the money. I notice that there are one dolllar bills and one hundred dollar bills.
I look up to see that the boy with the safety pin in his ear is watching me. He is beautiful, I had not noticed it before.

I wake up.

"Well, This is an Optics Class"

I think i might make a documentory, Bill Brown style, with a voice over.
This summer i am the videographer for a day camp and a waldorf teacher training college.
When I make my clients their one minute videos for their websites, i do a lot of cropping out my own voice.
I ask a camper "what are you doing?" and she answers, looking up at me from under some green leaves that are filtering tiny liquid freckles of sunlight onto her face, "I'm building a fairy house"
"Are you going to put that worm in the fairy house?" i ask and my finger comes into frame, pointing to the worm in the little girls palm.
"I dont know." she says.
"well, a worm is a kind of fairy. sort of. is it?" i say.
"is it?!" she asks.
"i think so." i say.

What i will use in the one minute video is probably: Little girl looks at camera from under some green leaves in sunlight. Little girl says "I'm building a fairy house" some shots of the fairy house. end scene.
Its a lot of fun. i love editing this way. its very simple and the point is often simply: make child look awesome for when their parents watch the video on the website.

But, maybe I will use the extra footage- not the shots of the girl, probably just our voices, and shots that move to quickly to distinguish anything but 'outside, forest, color'- in my documentary which will be titled "putting myself back in" or something.

The best parts will be when i film the teacher training classes. and notice, via voice over, how they are being trained to teach me. I, a waldorf graduate, watch the teachers learning to do what they then will go on to teach... me...

optics class... they hold glass fishbowls and look at the upside down reflections. they wander outisde and look at the sun reflected and the grass and eachother and their hands which cradle the bottom of the bowl and then "o, can i see the camera?" she moves the bowl and i pull focus and there i am... ill put that in.

"They should call waldorf schools 'filmmaker training schools.' i say out loud. "or cinephile school."
"Well, this is optics class." says one waldorf teacher trainee. and i am shocked... as i often am, by this attitude of 'squash the wonderment' from a community that's slogan is 'education towards freedom' and in my opinion might as well be 'education towards wonderment.'
I look down at the woman. She sits at a desk before a pile of colored pencils, a compass, ruler, and a drawing of triangles delicately shaded to illustrate something... optical.
I realize that she is probably here to cure herself of some 'fascination squashing' element of her own education.
Why do waldorf teachers become waldorf teachers? mostly they are not waldorf school alumni. I think it must have to do with fixing they way they were taught. perhaps thats why so many of them seem at constant odds with what they preach. they're unlearning what they never should have had to learn- to be unfascinated and wonder squashed.
o... i should not rant this here. i will put it, bill brown voice over style, into my movie.
and i will never show a subject's face. only their hands, holding worms that are fairies and fishbowls that look like crystal balls and shots that move to quickly to distinguish anything but 'outside, forest, color'
maybe i will call the movie: "Well, This Is an Optics Class."

After finishing Atlas Shrugged

Yesterday, Ayn and I began building a twig awning around the back door. While we worked, we thought about weak twigs and strong twigs. We noted how what we were really doing was creating a tangle- using the weakest, most brittle twigs but twisting and tucking them around each other so they would not fall.
When we began, our structure was based on nothing but chance. We knew that the slightest movement of a tiny twig, disturbed by the wind or the vibration of the door slamming shut, could dislodge the next twig and the next and the whole thing would slip and tilt and fall.
By the end of the task we were experts. we knew to use the Y of a stick upside down, hanging the Y like th^s from a support above. This way we could hang long thicker sticks and then weave others through them, creating a thick basket that held itself together. We wove the sticks around each other, carefully testing the suppleness of a particular branch to see how many times it could weave- over under- creating the perfect amount of tension to hold up the twig wall.
We worked like this for many hours. Small scratches with tiny drops of blood crisscrossed our arms and fingers but we didnt notice. I imagine that the planes of our angular features showed our concentration and immense pleasure at our own ability to achieve our goal.

This morning Ayn and I ate our breakfast and then slipped outside in our barefeet to complete the task.
There were strangers in the driveway. They drove expensive cars and stood in a group discussing something about widening roads and over priced supermarkets. Ayn asked me who I thought they were. I ventured a guess."They must have something to do with the building of the barn." I pointed to the farm behind my house that shares our driveway.
Ayn and I didn't look at the group often as we continued to work. We listened to pieces of their conversation, keeping our faces uninterested and blank, while we put the finishing touches on the awning.
We felt their eyes on us whenever we broke a twig and sent a loud snap across the yard.

Though we remained unclear about exactly what they were discussing or who they were, we began to feel that our incredible ingenuity of thought, as we wove our twigs just so, was beginning to make them uncomfortable.
We are the doers, I said to Ayn with a look. She smiled in understanding. Somehow we became quite certain that, though they had jobs that involved the widening of roads, these people could never hope to be able to create something as simple and functional as our twig arch.

What I Will Write

...it will take place on a island in the winter
...there will be animation with paper water- a birds eye view of the island showing the bay on one side and the ocean on the other. The characters will sometimes be shown as dots moving around the map like The Marauder's Map, accompanied by the sound of sandy footsteps and wind or maybe a bicycle.
....so that the animation will match the rest of the movie, the rest of the movie will be shot with a paper-like color scheme, desaturated and sandy and windy and cold.
...it will open with extreme close ups of the lines in the palm of a hand and a narrator speaking disinterestedly about what each line means. the narrator and the focus will draw your attention to the eerily short life line. For these shots i will use my own hand and my own life line.
...i will incorporate that subway station in brooklyn where you exit below the elevated track and at night the lighted windows of the train curl above you against the black black sky. and when you walk to the left and towards the warehouses, you pass under the highway and over the water. and to your right you see water and factories whose smoke is white against the black black sky and speeding cars on elevated highways that are going around a curve like the train was going around... and all of it is so beautiful because, oddly, there are not nearly enough streetlights so the distant lights are what matters. whoever it is who will walk through this setting will be in silhouette.

but i cannot write it until i clean up.
i am folding clothes and sweeping
and painting my bed and then making my bed.
i am hanging curtains
and hanging lights behind the curtains so that they glow like windows at sunset- but all the time.
i am coughing, because of the dust.
i am sweating because of the summer.
and when all this is over the house will be clean
and i will sit on the floor and write the screenplay and build the map.

Possible Titles

"Looking Into Bars"

"A Love Letter and Molly's Face"

"San Francisco: A Love Letter and also Molly's Face"

"Most Of These Rocks Have faces"

"Earthquakes"

"More People Die From Freezing"

"The Things I didn't Film"

"The Things I didn't Film Because I was too Afraid"

"The Things I didnt Film Because i was too Afraid to Stand Where I Needed to Stand, with the Camera where it needed to be in order to film what i should have and wanted to film"

Beth says: "and maybe that will never change. Maybe you will always be afraid to film and maybe you will do it anyway. maybe you don't have to change the way you feel about it in order to change it."

Song

"Ill Try Anything Once" by The Strokes has caused me to begin stargazing. Twice I've sat in a corner of the parking lot behind my dorm, wasting gas on the radio and the heat, listening to The Strokes saying "you like music we can dance to. Sit me down, shut me up."
I put my chin on the steering wheel and wait for shooting stars, composing inside my head, countless variations of a scene, scored by that song, in which a character, sits in their car and sings along to that song, staring at stars.
Sometimes I decide that the character, usually a twenty year old boy, begins to cry.
Often there is somewhere that he really needs to be but he is hiding, in a corner of a parking lot or pulled over on the side of a desolate forest-lined road.
He turns around to the backseat where there is an assortment of clothing and books and a toothbrush. He stuffs these things into a backpack and, turning off the car, cutting off the song mid-verse he leaves. He shoulders his pack and walks off into the trees, following no visible path, slowly loosing focus, snapping twigs.

Look, my socks match.

There was a blackout on campus and there were creepy flood lights all over. the one in this picture shone right in my dorm room window. It was pretty far away but still gave our room the feeling that the moon was right outside.

flashlights and forties

John's hat. John's gun. In a photo that John took.

Another photo that John took.

stills

Second Star to the left and straight on till morning.

i wont grow up he says
so she tucks him into bed
and tells him stories.
she discovers that he is not crazy,
only very very young.

when he asks, she gives him back his shadow.
He begins to teach her to fly.

"think happy thoughts and they lift you up in the air!" he says
"think happy thoughts or you'll fall a hundred feet to the ground." is what she hears.
she tries and tries but falling is not a happy thought.

because no one is going to teach pirates to fly,
the pirates throw parties on the ground.
and play their music loud and shout
"join the party!" towards the boys and girls in the sky,

so Pete and Wendy begin to dance
and pete and Wendy begin to forget
because Neverland makes boys forget
only the boys.

and dont forget that birds can fly too.
and they eat all the crumbs, even the ones you leave on clouds.
and now its a different fairytale
one about two children and a candy house.

youre leaving no footprints so makes sure to remember
which star to turn at,
and which way to fly straight-on
till morning.

...What we were talking about.

"The candy-seller had a smile on his face: he was happy, aware of what his life was about, and ready to begin a day's work. His smile reminded the boy of the old man- the mysterious old king he had met. "The candy-merchant isnt making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeepers daughter. He's doing it because its what he wants to do," thought the boy.
He realized that he could do the same thing the old man had done- sense whether a person was near or far from his Personal Legend. Just by looking at them. Its easy, and yet I've never done it before, he thought."
-The Alchemist

something that i like is when a gesture is without a face.

"are you making a video from your bed?"

Danger Dreams

I've been having lots of dreams lately that take place on the wooden playground of my elementary/middle school.
There are always children in danger, I'm not one of them, I'm the authority.

here's one dream:

Large, metal allegator-like sculptures have been placed all around the playground. They remind me of the animal shaped fountains in the parks of my childhood; elephants shooting water out of the their trunks, hippos spitting fountains out of thier wide flat pink mouths.
But the allegators in the dream are not fountains. They are mostly just the allegator's backs and eyes, the tips of their tails, they are flat on the ground, as though the artist who made them wants to give the illusion that the rest of the allegator's body is under water.

Some of the allegators dont move, others slide back and forth, on tracks that must be under the ground. Their heads, snouts, are sharp. and the children get too close to them, as they slide back and forth too quickly.

I am sort of myself but i am also sort of a teacher. I am watching the children play on the bigger allegators and dare eachother to get too close to the sliding allegators. i have a bad feeling about it.

My friend comes to stand near me.
"theyre from that film set." she says. "the filmmaker donated them after the shoot was over. theyre for killing."
and then i remember. i saw that movie. it was a horror movie, an art film in which people are killed by allegators. the movie was low budget so the allegators were not made to look real, they looked like sculptures which make it more terrifying. they were these sculptures.

i go to the principle and try to convince him to remove the allegators but before i can explain to him why and how they are dangerous, i have to run back to rescue the children who, again are too close to the sliding sharp-snouted sculptures.

mostly my notes are just quotes

"There are about twenty-five things that are five-hundred dollars that it wouldnt be bad to have. but i can always find a better use for five-hundred dollars." -Cinematography Professor, on camera accessories

"its actually very difficult to determine weather something is exploding or contracting." -Sculpture Professor.

"its hard to tell the value of something in a vacuum." -Writing Professor, on Context.

"pale people in dark rooms, all standing around looking dead."
-film student, on a Carravaggio painting

"candle-lit paintings."

Me: does anything happen?
Prof: things happen, but, you know, its an art movie.


"they're doing the moment of 'oh my god, you're jesus!'"
-Cinematography professor, on a Caravaggio painting.

probably nothing

in my dreams you climb the walls
slip through the window and kiss my neck
which leaves a mark
so i throw you out

you might be Puck
you know all the lines.
you cannot fly
you've learned to climb.

they whisper
clicks and squeaks that fill the room
and you can build whispers,
i decide,
out of clicks and squeaks

i am the sound man
80% of what you hear never happened
i built it for you
so you will understand.

and they whisper because of me
if i wasnt here they would speak
im trying to dream im trying to dream im trying to sleep.

New Poet Love- Bob Hicok

PERHAPS AN ENTRY SOMEWHERE IN A BOOK
by Bob Hicok

There is a night under every one
of these stones. It could be a hundred
years old, a thousand. I used to toss them
into the future, making refugees
of shapes while thinking of words
as river crossings. I am crossing
the Seine—gate. I am crossing the Arno—
throwback. I am crossing the Roanoke—
heartwild. This has been a picture of me
wearing the memory of a house.
The impossible camera takes pictures
of both the looked at thing and the thing
doing the looking, like a dream
in which sleep is dreamed by a woman
who is awake and tearing tickets
at the movies. She gives you the half
of entry and keeps the half of tribute,
while the tearing itself dies
and with it, the music of its proof.
I am crossing perception—tightrope.
I am crossing snow—documentation.
I am crossing the threshold—welcome
to so long. I am lifting my shirt
where loss re: the conservation
of energy and loss re: the conversation
of empathy make me wonder if I
am a fishbowl with one or a fishbowl
with two orange flashings I am called
essentially to feed. The answer:
pending. Meanwhile, the skeleton
is a device for killing time.
You see this in bridges. Not falling
as prelude to falling down.

Photo by Molly Pelavin

One Liners

Movie trailers are like little perfect movies.
The first line of a good movie trailer is my favorite thing to listen to.
This doesnt include narration.
Just, the first line of dialogue, puzzle pieced out of context onto the beginning of a new tiny movie.
its like finding one word that completely explains something huge and complex and beautiful.

i was brainstorming ideas for my junior film when i got frustrated and instead began a list of the first lines of the movie trailers of movies that i love.
I think its a good writer's block exercise- made me pay attention to why the lines were perfect for the films- what is the line saying that the film is saying?- and then i could think of my own work that way. and find my one lines that mean what my film wants to mean and then, backwawrds i know, and i then, find what my film means... and then maybe i could write something.

but in the meantime, enjoy these:

"I don't really know where I am." -MirrorMask

"I didn't wanna wake you up, but I really wanna show you something." -Where the Wild Things Are

"Your aunt is a very lucky woman Angelica because she has two lives. she has the life she is living, and also the book she's writing." -The Hours

"This is a hoax right?" "I assure you, no." "Is there any risk of brain damage?" "...nothing you'll miss." "Ahhhhhh!!!!" -Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

"Excuse me sir, you're standing on my sleeve." "I might point out that you're lying under my bench." -Finding Neverland

"I wanna know what it feels like to care about something passionately." -Adaptation

"There's no story!" "make one up." -Adaptation

"Where you going?" "To sea. I'll send you a postcard." "Send me a postcard from everywhere." -The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Sun