Forwarded by the multitalented Jen Wainz and her partner Deb:
Along with Wickie and some friends, I am in the process of instituting a fixed time each day to work on “onerous tasks.” For me, this particularly includes my creative work, which I’d rather chew my arm off than do when I don’t have an external threat/impending deadline/whatevra. I especially rarely want to work on creative projects alone, without constraints, something most filmmakers I know dream of doing 24/7. Anyhow, I am getting together with one or more fellow sufferers for an hour each morning to get cracking on these human-company-required-or-it-ain’t-gonna-happen types of tasks. Today I storyboarded the SHIT out of a music video I am working on. Did the whole thing! One hour is so much more productive than four.
Hay,
Since my last blog much has evolved. I’ve gotten out of the closet. I do not mean the metaphorical one as in coming out as oddly queer. That I did a LONG time ago. I’m talking about my actual darkened closet, the one I’ve been I was writing in. I don’t know when I started writing in there again or when I stopped. I am sure that the relentless desperation, morose feelings and fear of failure that hound my creative impulses had something to do with going in there. Whether or not they were culpable in my falling out of there…well, let us assume until further notice, that they did. I take no responsibility for the ebbs and flows of my writing patterns. Well, actually I do, but I should know better. Because no matter how much I create writing schedules they all crash into me. We roll around on the floor, get swept into depression, slither into God only knows what rat-hole of my personality and…then here I am again. “Where have you been?,” a queer-punk girl once asked me when I wandered into San Francisco’s only girl punk cafe. “Have I been somewhere?” I asked. I looked at her through the fog of my brain. And that’s the way it goes. I do my creative work with rigor and a discipline then I slip away into the void where we artists go. Sometimes I know I’ve fallen in or out, I never know which. When I know I’m gone, I don’t like it in there. I even try to get out. But can’t. And then. Bam. I’m back, might even know that I’ve been gone. And I get a little more work done. Right now, I’m sitting in our new office (“Our” is Heads Will Roll Films). There is more light in here, but fortunately, there are shades I can pull and a door I can close. So that the next time I slide into the void and am “gone missing” at least I won’t have to answer anymore awkward questions about where was I because no one will hopefully notice I was here in the first place.
My external obsessions: at 3 a.m. they are peanut butter on bananas of right off the spoon, handfuls of raisins and anything else sweet which, in my place, is very little. I remain obsessed with the all things Needles and Pens (http://www.needles-pens.com). I want to get a copy of “My Penguin” Dracula (http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141033471,00.html) which has a blank cover, one that you can draw or paint on. Ryan Adams, the musician, did an awesome splotchy-type painting of Dracula’s castle on his copy. I want that too.
I left Dr. Tieck’s in good shape. He was pleased by my progress and my tolerance of the medications he thinks I’m on.
It’s not very hard to get doctor’s to think you’re doing what they say. No harder than anyone else I guess.
(Fiction; work in progress.)