Aim for Ridiculous...

I considered giving up driving for lent last year. The idea got poo-pood enough (for good and bad reasons) that i stuck it on my back burner.

It would have demanded a lot of bus riding (so - waiting and patience) reliance on the goodwill of friends and family (so - self-abnegation and humility) and coordination of schedules and expectations (so - talk and relationship).

BUT why go through all that when you *have* the other car? sitting there in the driveway!?

I'm just getting increasingly convinced that when everybody responds to your ideas with "ludicrous!" and "absurd!" --

maybe thats when you know you're on the right path...

Disambiguation

this is not an entry about dictionary.com's word of the day servic.

this is not an entry about Andrew's everyday life.

this is not a rant about some esoteric political issue.

this is not a post about what its like to live in a world where googling leads to misdirection more often than it points us to true north.

this is not a post about the way that misdirection, short attention spans, rabbit trails and esoteria have become more constitutive of the human quest for knowledge than an old school card catalogue.

this is not a blog about how much empathy is required of web-designers who want to create intuitive and inviting web experiences.

this is a post about that poem that robert frost wrote where he was walking in a wood and two paths diverged and he, he took the one less travelled by and it has made all the difference. and maybe its a post about stumbling through woods and thinking that you're on a path for a moment and then realizing that you're on a *totally* different path than you thought you were. and then looking backwards at the path you chose and admitting that sure: it has made all the difference...but what the hell path was it...?

(BTW ~ i don't mean to be pedantic, but in order for this blog to make much sense you have to hyperlink the title...just a little last minute disambiguation there...)

The Plan For The Day

Just finished an hour and a half of writing. He's about to drop the cyanide into the wineglass, but I thought I'd save that for tomorrow morning. I think I've set it up believably, though.

Had two cups a joe.

One english muffin with lemon curd melted into the nooks and crannies, and in anywhere from

one minute to one hour (that's right, i'll be on the precipice of individuality and parenthood for all that time or just that little bit of time), someone will call out: DADDY! and I'll:

1. run upstairs and we'll spend about 30-40 minutes waking up, making up stories, tickling and remembering the good old days (specifically, yesterday and the day before)

2. we'll have pancakes, probably with sprinkles cooked into them.

3. we'll bathe in mosquito spray and then ride training-wheeled-bikes at evil-kneivel speeds (addison carefully removing and then replacing his bike helmet EACH time he gets on and off of his bike)

4. we'll play with little people (rough plot line probabilities: the people go to camp. the people go swimming. the mommy and the daddy go off to work. the honies (which is, for whatever reason, what the kids are called) will misbehave and be punished, and/or there will be a volcano and dinosaurs will attack.)

5. We'll put away our toys (four times).

6. We'll invent a dinner menu. Something on the grill surely.

7. Based on weather, I'll mow the lawn or not.

8. I'll consider, but decide against:

- cleaning out the gutters,
- power washing the siding
- weeding the mulchbeds
- painting the entryway and the door

9. a telemarketer will call. I'll politely let them know that its not a good time.

10. we may go to the YMCA pool based on how many good decisions everyone makes.

11. Mommy will return from bringing home the bacon and we will take a family walk around the circle.

hope your day is full of:

peace~

So Few People Own Their Own Stories.

It’s a claim I made a few posts back and I wanted to talk about what I meant.

I think to own your story, you have to tell stories.

Good news: anecdotal party banter does encourage such telling. BS sessions which fall under the general headings:

“remember the time when…”

and

“you think that that’s bad!…”

are, I think, one of the great vestiges of oral culture left threading through humanity. I think that this tradition is great – it fits in well with deipnosphistai (below). I’ll wager that if you know someone who you would say – “So-and-so is a great storyteller.” – that they are experts in the two genres mentioned above.

So my complaint is not that these stories are bad (again, they’re GOOD!) but that they’re insufficient.

Somehow we relish opportunities to swap these stories (which generally affirm collectively held values, demarcate micro-cultural boundaries, and reinforce shared criteria for evaluating humor / art / performance) – but turn to the movies or novels or church or the newspaper – to hear stories that raise and answer the bigger questions of meaning and morality.

We lack, it seems, opportunities to tell our stories.

And in some ways, I think, maybe its okay that we don’t always tell our dark stories to just anyone or to everyone. Most of us tell these stories to a few people and that’s hard enough as it is.

But there’s a middle ground. Another place. A point-of-view, a way-of-seeing, a way-of-being – which both enables us to tell the big stories, but also preserves the delicacy of intimacy and the dangers of disclosure. It’s called:

Fiction.

I’m convinced that honing your skills as a creator of fiction is a way to own your own Story. And your own stories.

Are you skeptical? Delighted? Nonplussed at my rantings? There’s only one good response to reading this blog. Use your imagination and tell one fiction story today. To someone. See what happens to you….

Peace~

The Worlds Longest Independent Study Comes to an End…

*note: the end of the world has been postponed. this world, that is. the showing date has been moved back several months. just one more long boring story summarized under the metanarrrative of: Technical Problems.

Some of you read that title and panicked: “I turned that paper, didn’t I? I graduated already. I had to turn it in…they can’t revoke my diploma can they?”

Others recognize the title independent study as a short film that I’ve been talking about making for the last, I don’t know, two years?

Well the bad news is final. After an epic number of twists and turns in the road of post-production, a death certificate has finally been issued.

Editing Problems
Hard Drive Breakdowns
Audio Recording Disappearing

These are the three specific chapter headings which define the long arduous (and boring-to-tell) post-production of the film that we guerilla shot in 12 days with the hard work and dedication of a fabulous cast and crew.

In the end – it turns out that the time it would take to do the necessary voiceovers and audio remixing – make it infeasible for me (or, I think, any of the other ol’ indy-study folks) to manage a final cut of this film that we could actually ship around to festivals.

BUT – I am grateful to many of you for your work and patience – AND – I’m increasingly devoted to the importance and value of ritual – so –

I’m going to show a not-really-perfect draft of Independent Study as a means to:

-reunite a bunch of fun, great people
-celebrate art and artists
-thank some of the vendors who donated free food (based on the promise of a publicly shown “thank you”)
-give myself permission to move on to new projects

on SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12th at 9 p.m. in the evening & (probably) in the Malone College Theater.

I’m going out of town for the month of July, but I’m scheduling now so that those of you who think of passing this on to other indy-study-folks who I may have lost touch with – can pass it along to them.

It will be an event that will be open to the public – but at no charge – I’ll be using copyrighted music in this not-quite-a-real-draft-of-a-movie. So the official word will be:

This is a big gathering of friends to watch a movie they made together.

Hopefully the RIAA won’t pick up on our sinister little non-money-making plot and name us as co-defendents along with their host of 6 year old Kazaa users…

Sorry to those of you who aren’t in the independent study loop for taking up bandwidth….you’re welcome to come to the party, too!

peace~