Thursday, March 09, 2006

Unwound

I'm a ball of string piled on the floor. Making the film wound me so super tight that unwinding went beyond restoration to a pile of frazzled silly string.
And that's just how it should be for a guy like me doing the things that I do. The challenge has been to leave the pile of string alone. To avoid trying to pick it up and start winding again. When I do that things get weird. I want to point fingers. I want affirmation. I want to build alliances and destroy others, both imagined and actual. I want to draw lines in the sand -- to define all relationships and responsibilities. I want to hold on.
It feels a bit like grief. Yesterday morning I started crying after I had been awake for awhile. My wife was alarmed, but she quickly and quietly came to my side and let me weep for a few minutes.
I'm trying to resist the all too familiar temptations of holding on this week. I'm trying to accept that some tears might be a better restorative. I'm trying to learn to stand on my own two feet and to allow others to stand around me. Some behind, some in front, some close, some further away - it is necessary for the artist to learn to do this in order to own his work and his process.

quietly,
signore direttore

1 comment:

David Millstone said...

Every day, it seems less and less like an accident that we met.

David!