The Master Says 001 Redux

There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.

Federico Fellini

A river derrchee

I've started a new blog that has nothing to do with filmmaking. If you would like to read it, please contact me and I'll send you the URL. I'm keeping it anonymous until I have a better idea of what I intend it to become.
Finding Fellini is just about finished for me. I have nothing more to say about film, either publicly or privately. I didn't plan on it but a switch got flipped early this year.
I'm committed to finishing Dangerous Writing and Made Crooked. The process doesn't move me to blog about it. For now. Should the urge take hold, I can always log in and post something as I don't intend to delete the blog.
Finding Fellini has been a wonderful part of my life for the past four years. I can track my progress as a filmmaker and as a human being reading the nearly one thousand posts. Some of it makes me cringe, much of it makes me proud.
I've changed a lot in this time. I'm grateful to have let go of some of my less appealing character traits and to have become a bit softer, gentler and humblerer.
I bid any remaining readers farewell. Thank you for being part of it. Federico Fellini was a great man. I hope we can all continue to find him.

nc

Happy-Go-Lucky

That's a good film, in'it?
Yeah.

The Visitor

See it.

The Master Says 365

If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can
only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to
collect their money.

Andrei Tarkovsky

The Sights, Sounds and Smells of Morning

We're in Carlsbad, California in order to fulfill Henry's three year obsession with going to Legoland. Today's the big day. I woke up early and took a ride up the coast to Oceanside and back, about sixteen miles. Oceanside is the town at the gates of Camp Pendleton. It was a sensational hour, in the truest sense of the word. I heard reveille and saw some porcine military wives showing up for their day at the beauty college. Along the beach I saw surfers catching the morning breaks and retirees taking their morning strolls. I saw a surf betty shedding her wetsuit in the cab of her truck. I smelled the ocean and the beautiful flowers in bloom everywhere. I heard two motorcycle cops chatting as I climbed a hill past them. I saw other cyclists, Mexican gardeners and a man shoveling sand from the sidewalk back onto the beach. Not a lot of sunshine yet, but a beautiful morning nonetheless.

nc

The Master Says 364

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

Henry David Thoreau

Freedom

I spent much of Saturday night and yesterday driving to California. I've made that journey south on I-5 many, many times in my life. It's always been a passage filled with reflection and memories of the thoughts of journeys past. All of my life seems to have been plagued with ambition and fear, both of which fuel endless musing and the determined resolutions that are made more easily in transit.
Even with a car full of children there was much time to reflect. Aside from a brief discussion of the possibilities of buying a house in Corbett, there was no talk or thought of the future. It's a strange thing for me to be in the moment, but that's kind of how it went. I marveled for a short while on how my ambition to make films has disappeared. My wife thinks it will return. I'm not so sure. I have a strong idea of why it has left, but I'm not ready to articulate it.
My entire life has been a battle royale of and with all the stories rumbling through me, torturing me to find a way to get them out. Suffering, anxious longing, frustration, neuroses, self-loathing, fragmentation, self-dissemblement - lots and lots of self hyphen terms. And now? Not so much. Leaves me feeling slightly confused and empty, but I'm learning it is something much more positive. And I'm enjoying it. That's part of the reason I've lost interest in telling stories.
When we arrived in Monterey I went for a walk along the beach. It was very sunny and beautiful, but also extremely windy. As I walked along I could see gusts of swirling and driving sand ahead. In the past I would see such tempests as things to avoid and signs that things weren't going well. Yesterday I anticipated entering the petite shamals joyfully with the confidence that the stinging grains of sand would be an experience of elemental, natural life -- the life outside of the mind that I've come to embrace. There is suffering involved at times when pushing my body against itself and the elements, but it cannot compare to the mental anguish I've been suffering for most of my life.

nc

(Signing off as Signore Direttore doesn't feel right these days)