Potpourri

Posted on 25 August 2010

I find it hard to start writing about stuff here again. First, I’m pretty tired, yeah, finishing directing the movie, Grassroots. Followed by a couple of days in LA and then on to NY, where I’m now starting to shoot the TV show Blue Bloods, about to premier on CBS.

Again, I find myself drifting to “…what’s the point?” What’s it matter that I’m tired, that I look at the news, mere ghosts of images when you’re working on a set 12-15 hours a day, but the news, nonetheless? What’s it matter that I look at the news (a guy among six billion souls). But setting that aside – I find myself even more exhausted because so much of what goes for news just feels like lies and spin, all of it set in this belief (it seems among those in power) that if you dance fast enough you can get away with anything.

When does someone really speak the truth? For instance that we’ve made a disastrous mistake staying in the Middle East with these wars. (Does anyone really believe the news that proclaims we’re leaving?) Aren’t we really beginning to really slide down the hill like every Empire that has ever existed before us (ie: Afghanistan, “the graveyard of Empires”). And we were an Empire so briefly. And China is scary too, isn’t it? That gigantic army. And why was Obama so stupid playing with this Mosque thing right now? Okay, he’s right, but — so what? And why now? Why right before an election? Does he really believe that the Right Wing is so stupid and he’s this wonderful professor who’s going to teach us all about right and wrong. Does our President live in the real world or some variation of an ivory tower?

And the BP sea of lies about everything being more or less fine. And the government agreeing. And the massive slide in housing because the government funding stopped. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. And did all those big banks really pay back the money we lent them or did they carry out another really cool move that looks like they paid it back and the government is just going along with it? Where does the lying stop and the truth begin?

It’s tiring. And who cares what I think anyway, except I wonder how many other people out there sense the same thing – people doing their jobs, getting tired, trying their best? Do they feel like I do – that they are just being lied to over and over and over again. And what does one do about it?

Because it’s so, so hard to untangle these lies. It takes so much energy. But it’s funny, come to think of it. It’s taken more energy than I thought just to sit down here on my ipad (not so great, after all – my ipad – but still more or less doing it’s job about half as well as I was told)…nonetheless on my ipad, on a bus, scouting locations in Manhattan and suddenly having more energy than I started with because maybe it feels like clearing out the cobwebs by saying what I feel is the truth. Is it the truth? Well, it’s the best I can do right now, this potpourri of concerns. And isn’t that the point too – getting as close to the truth as possible? Because one day the truth is going to come home to roost, isn’t it, no matter what the liars want us (and themselves) to believe?