Gravity

Over the last several days, with the help of a U-Haul truck and some family muscle (thanks, you know who you are!) I emptied three 14-foot truckloads of accumulated mass from several storage lockers, dropping from four very full lockers to two no longer so full. Still some more to do tomorrow. The muscles are having a conversation, everyone talking at once.

I fell down twice, once landing full on my knee on concrete while holding a heavy box. Don't know why I wasn't hurt much. Interesting. It was raining most of the day today, but I was working hard enough to steam it all off apparently, as I was damp but not soaked most of the time. I'm tired.

I was purging backlogged years of files, books, and paraphernalia from three business activities -- Synchron, Gentle Electric, Cell Tech. Many good memories, a few painful ones. I didn't dwell long on each box. Mostly it was a keep (few) or discard (most), but in a few cases some finer grain decisions. Something has changed in me recently that I'm finding it simple to part with the unimportant parts of my past more easily.

It is really interesting to think that the substance of the carried mass and of the earth have such an affinity for each other, that they pull so hard to get closer together. Will we ever really understand how it works?

Writing daily

I'm building a new habit: writing every day. I've concluded that I can't be a filmmaker without being a screenplay writer. I'm a really fast writer, but fiction is new to me. I'm enjoying it. Working on several things at once, like I always do, those two Pisces fish always swimming in multiple directions. Have been for a month or two working on a Cambodian story with Chath, based loosely on his own experiences. And just starting a couple of fantasy stories, so we can show off our dragons.

Over the last several years I've been immersing myself in all things about filmmaking, including a lot of study of what makes a story work. Feels like I have a good grounding, and with half a century plus of life experience, maybe a few things to say. So, the new habit: before I do anything else much in the morning, sit myself down to do "at least 20 minutes" of writing, on anything or any aspect that I'm inspired to. The last two days it has produced over 2 hours per day of work on these stories.

Several key things are emerging in my understanding about writing fiction.

1) When someone acts, the universe needs to react in unexpected or exaggerated ways. Interesting reversals need to happen at least every 10-15 minutes. Surprise, surprise, when you put those into a 2 hour screenplay, you have inciting event in the first 15 minutes, act 1 crisis by minute 30, a change of direction or foreshadowing around 45, a point of no return around 60, all is lost around 75, major crisis of the story around 90, and an interesting or surprising resolution around 105. Sound familiar? If you group those into 30,60,30 minute groups, they form Act 1,2,3.

2) Don't say what the character means. Somehow in fiction, even a good character ends up lying or speaking sideways much of the time, and speaking the truth through subtext and action.

3) Leave the audience a lot of opportunity to co-create the story. Leave sentences unfinished, expressions understated, implications delayed in resolution, questions unanswered.

4) Conflict is important, but that doesn't have to translate to shouting and shooting. Very interesting conflicts can be internal in various characters, or between choices in moral dilemnas. I'm remembering McKee pointing out that a moral choice, to choose between right and wrong, is not an interesting choice for the audience to see, for everyone basically knows that one should choose right. What is interesting is a moral dilemna, where neither choice is obvious or merely right.

Gentle Electric soft machines

This morning, before my morning writing period, I had the idea of recreating some of the analog modules I made during the Gentle Electric analog period as VST/DXI software plugins. The three I was thinking about doing were the "pipe" (an interestingly controllable delay with feedback, which can produce the sound of a reverberant or even oscillating pipe of any size from a whistle to a culvert; the linear control FM audio oscillator, allowing one sound to control the frequency of another in a way that doesn't cause pitch shift, and which can produce a whole range of sounds hard to produce in other ways; and of course the Gentle Electric/AFI pitch and envelope follower, which has had previous incarnations as an analog synth component and a PC plugin card. If I were to do these, I'm not sure yet whether the pitch follower would be best to be live/realtime but monophonic and a bit lower quality, or to do it out of realtime (wav in, midi file out, or something) and allow a lot of computation time to get it really well done. I never got around to making a MIDI hardware version. Would have been nice. Maybe still will someday.

The Mystery of Sleep

Sleep is such a mystery.

Baha'u'llah has said...

"Consider thy state when asleep. Verily, I say, this phenomenon is the most mysterious of the signs of God amongst men, were they to ponder it in their hearts."

For one thing, I have never really been able to understand how waking up works in relation to the ego. In my period of waking up, half dreaming, my ego seems half present. I have a sense that I should be waking up, in some tension with a desire to remain asleep. It is rare for me that waking up occurs as a result of deciding to do so from within that state, as an operation of that partially ego-aware condition. It often surprises me that I find myself getting up physically without having decided to do so. As if my body is getting up on its own. Mysterious. The Baha'i teachings tell us that ego is a function of this world, and doesn't work the same in the next world. Perhaps dreaming plays a role in teaching us some things about functioning in the next world.

Baha'u'llah has likened this world, in relation to the next, as that of the womb experience in relation to this life. The limbs and faculties that we must develop in this world for use in the next must surely include the faculty or quality of reliance upon God. Sometimes in my half waking state I can remember reliance upon God. I am still learning about this and how it works.

And sometimes, in partially awakening from a difficult dream, there is a sense of rising up to light, of transcendance, and I think this is an analogy for us of passing from this world to the next, a waking up to a higher brighter reality, a realization that the previous state was less real, relatively an illusion.

And then there are dreams themselves.

Baha'u'llah has said...

"Behold how the thing which thou hast seen in thy dream is, after a considerable lapse of time, fully realized. Had the world in which thou didst find thyself in thy dream been identical with the world in which thou livest, it would have been necessary for the event occurring in that dream to have transpired in this world at the very moment of its occurrence. Were it so, you yourself would have borne witness unto it. This being not the case, however, it must necessarily follow that the world in which thou livest is different and apart from that which thou hast experienced in thy dream. This latter world hath neither beginning nor end.

It would be true if thou wert to contend that this same world is, as decreed by the All-Glorious and Almighty God, within thy proper self and is wrapped up within thee. It would equally be true to maintain that thy spirit, having transcended the limitations of sleep and having stripped itself of all earthly attachment, hath, by the act of God, been made to traverse a realm which lieth hidden in the innermost reality of this world.

Verily I say, the creation of God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures. In each of these worlds He hath ordained things which none can search except Himself, the All-Searching, the All-Wise. Do thou meditate on that which We have revealed unto thee, that thou mayest discover the purpose of God, thy Lord, and the Lord of all worlds."

"... the human soul is exalted above all egress and regress. It is still, and yet it soareth; it moveth, and yet it is still. It is, in itself, a testimony that beareth witness to the existence of a world that is contingent, as well as to the reality of a world that hath neither beginning nor end.

Behold how the dream thou hast dreamed is, after the lapse of many years, re-enacted before thine eyes. Consider how strange is the mystery of the world that appeareth to thee in thy dream. Ponder in thine heart upon the unsearchable wisdom of God, and meditate on its manifold revelations... Witness the wondrous evidences of God's handiwork, and reflect upon its range and character."

I think that for most of us, precognitive dreams like Baha'u'llah is describing here are rare, or at least rarely remembered. But I have had a few of them in half a century of living. The most distinct in my memory occurred during a time when I was keeping a dream journal in Santa Cruz in the late 1970's. Dream journaling has two interesting effects in my experience. One is that dreams become more lucid and better remembered. And the second is that they evolve a more meaningful relationship to life. When we pay attention to them, then they become more useful.

In any case, I'll relate that dream here, and how it appeared to me some years later in life.

In my dream, I was in some sort of institutional building, green-walled hallways, offices, and more than one floor. In the dream I ascended to the second floor, and at the end of the hall was a jail. In the dream I observed the inmates being taken out of the jail, and into a new jail that was next door.

In 1980 I moved to Delta, in Western Colorado, and when it came time to obtain some local paperwork, perhaps it was a Colorado drivers license, I went to the Delta county buildings, and once I was in the building I recognized it from my dream. It felt like deja vu, but a sustained state of recognition in which I could actually act upon the foreknowledge. After I completed the paperwork transaction on the main floor, I went upstairs, and indeed at the end of the hallway was the county jail. I looked at the space outside the building, and it was an open park, with a small library.

Shortly before I moved away from Delta in 1986, a new jail was built in that space. Although I never actually observed the transfer of the prisoners, it surely must have happened at some point.

I don't know what the dream "meant", other than that there was some connection between the two experiences. Did it merely signify for me that I was indeed on a path that I'd already seen some years earlier?

I continue to learn about sleep and dreams. "Consider thy state when asleep..."

Letters To My Daughters

When I was a child in the late 1950's, and thought about how long I'd probably live, and realized that I'd live the second half or so of my life in the next millenium, and pondered what I'd do with that half of my life, it came to me that it would be a time of passing on whatever wisdom I may then have gained to younger people.

When I first became a father, and reflected on how to pass on whatever wisdom I possess to my three beautiful daughters, and perhaps also to others of their generation or the following ones, I had the idea of writing a collection of "Letters To My Daughters".

Although I didn't begin to do that in writing when they were young, I hope that I've passed on some measure of wisdom to them through our life together. And now, with their prompting to write to them in this medium, perhaps these will be my letters to my daughters, and perhaps to their lovely children as well.

Film school diplomas arrived

I’ve just received my diplomas from the webfilmschool training. I am now officially certified as being trained as a Feature Film Producer, a Director, and a Line Producer! Dov Simens says he checked to see what printer makes the UCLA film school diplomas, and used better ink there than they use. Indeed, they are lovely.

Domestic Superintendent

Sometimes I find myself feeling that I'm falling very short of what I should be achieving.

But, I suppose this is the standard dilemma for the self-employed who is also playing the role of domestic superintendent. It may also be in part a side effect of a PDA to-do list that seems always to increase in the number of tasks I've assigned myself.

My work day, which I feel "should" be focused on my paying consulting work, the development of my new business activities, and my creative filmmaking and writing work, often goes half or more to cooking, grocery shopping, banking, taxi service, home schooling teaching, housecleaning, mail and bill processing, etc. Important family matters, but they weren't on my to-do list. I get tired. But this is good, and it is I think a manifestation of the equality of women and men.

I am more at peace when I remember to shift the balance of my attention somewhat back from becoming to being.

Maybe I need to recruit an assistant!

Screenplay

My dear friend, younger brother, and son Chath pier Sath and I are writing a screenplay based largely his own 1970's escape from Cambodia during the time of the Khmer Rouge, his youth and education in the US, and especially his experiences upon his return to Cambodia in 1994.

Why write screenplays, why make films? For me, it is to tell stories that inspire people to become their higher, nobler selves.

EXT. TRIBAL FIRE - NIGHT
The young are raptly listening to the stories of the elders.

INT. DARKENED ROOM WITH A FILM PLAYING - NIGHT
A family is watching a film, the elders are explaining the mysteries to their children.

Today, the primary form by which our stories are told is in cinema.

What is the difference between a mere story, and a story with a plot? A story can be a mere recounting of events. One's life can be told as a story. A people's history can be told as a story. But plot is the way of telling it that gives it meaning, that connects cause and effect. That ties together the signs of change, of development of character.

Mark Twain asked "Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

An unexamined life is a story, a series of events. An examined life has meaning, one can begin to discern, or even devise, a plot.

Good cinema can make us reflect on the meaning, the lessons, the plot of our own life, by pondering what we have experienced of another's.

Dov Simens 2-day Film School

Recently attended the 2-day intensive film school that Dov Simens gives. Excellent gifted and entertaining teacher. Drinking from a fire hose but able to swallow it all somehow. Come away feeling that you have yourself done, and remember how to do, all the things he's taught.

Musings

Well, at the urging of my daughters Rebecca and Kelly, I have stuck my toe in the ocean of blogging. A little shiver, but not too cold.
Questions.... Is this a good use of time? Will it be of value to anyone? Will I be able to tell?