Same Question
Posted on 09 August 2010
What’s the point? Funny. More than a year ago “what’s the point?” was the little thought that got this miniscule website started. Why? I hadn’t even thought it through when I started – an after-thought – nothing more? What’s the point? But it now seems to be the bedrock on which everything here on this website sits, however tentatively, however unbalanced…
We finished shooting the film, Grassroots, yesterday. Thirty days shooting with an amazing Seattle crew who gave their all – and the actors – amazing actors from all over the country. Hard to process that a year ago I was sitting in my little apartment with a cat and a simple question. What’s the point – the script for Grassroots a mess at that point?
And now I find myself back there again. Grassroots finished (at least the shooting part.) I’m no longer a director telling people what to do, moving around the set like I know what I’m doing (I do kind of know what I’m doing as a director– like a good plumber, I like to say – directing is like plumbing – you better know how to lay pipe properly or you’re fucked.) But now that job is done – I’ve got to pack up my stuff and jump on an airplane tomorrow. (Probably a video in there somewhere – all those various videos here on the site in airplanes)
But…
What’s the point?
It better be more than just making a movie – because that’s done. And making a movie wasn’t the point a year ago with my cat on my apartment floor, so…
What’s the point?
Just to be breathing this morning, maybe – again in Café Vita on Pike Street. Great coffee. Wonderful people who brew it here. Kids my kids’ age. Tattoos. The wonderful Seattle sound on the sound system – eclectic, moody. And the gray skies again out the window. Some litter. Empty tables.
It rained yesterday a little bit while shooting. Rain. Rain. Seattle. And me headed back to bleached LA tomorrow. Somewhere in there is the point. Six billion of us. Six billion points…
…and the point of continuing here on this website I guess, maybe, just sharing (for those interested) a bit of the journey here from this one (of six billion) points on this still free space (unless Google and Verizon decide otherwise) drifting, dancing, writing on the wild frontier of the internet…
9 responses to Same Question
I’m happy the shooting is through and it was such a great experience. We are now looking forward to more posts here as well as to the finished product Grassroots.
Wishing you great times ahead!
Just move to Seattle Stephen. We’d love to have you!
Congrats on finishing Grassroots! I cannot wait to see your new film.
Amazing, isn’t it, the six billion points clashing constantly but almost never touching? How many people have touched you, even the ones who claim to know you? And with all that noise of points clashing — loneliness ripens, expands, the strangest and scariest of tumors…
You had written something on this site once, that perhaps being human is the point, and then the question: but being human alone? How come it is so rare, the magic of the points touching, truly touching, even if only briefly?
And then, beyond that, these lines by Hafiz:
Even after all this time
the Sun never says to the Earth:
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that –
it lights the whole sky.
I love those lines of poetry. What is love, though? What does it come from. Those lines imply it is beyond human. Interesting. Love somehow involves the sun. Makes sense, though. What is it that we are made up? What is this molecular structure, genes, etc? Why is love separated from these structures in the minds of so many? And if love exists beyond man (and woman), then maybe connecting with others isn’t the only way to feel loved, to be connected. And maybe there are other ways that we are connecting than the obvious ones. The thing falls apart, really, when we allow the depths of those lines of poetry to hit us. Cool….
I imagine love this way: Doors wide open out onto a summer field. Insistent sunbeams. The opium of tiny flowers. And the touch of lips — unpredictable like the first notes of music chosen by someone else.
Almost by definition, it seems to be ethereal. A fragment – illusory, stolen briefly before the multi-hued soap membrane bursts to deliver us back into the deafening static of the everyday…
Then there is the flip side: that of love being the most beautiful of paradoxes. Fragile, yes – incredibly fragile – yet capable of permanence like nothing else in this world. Can you think of something else that can be harmed so easily but that can also be strong (and stubborn) enough to outlive even death itself? The molecules, for one, are a funny thing. H2O can practically erode everything. While also being, literally, everything. What percent water were we again? Which means that what we are erodes us. Baffling, this world, isn’t it? And how about what we crave. Does it crave us?
When we love, we exist for something (or someone) other than ourselves. Which makes us like the sun. If it is true that we are made up of stardust, sundust, or any other ‘dust’ found up in those magical interstellar spaces – then being in love is, really, what brings us home…
I do think we touch.and that we can’t touch only one thing,because touch is a two way mirror,we are being touched in response.I’m happy for you, that you’ve finished another ‘step’, bleached or not.’return to the seattle stephen’ seems a good advice.
Miss Winterson wrote once…”we are an odd people : We make it as difficult as possible for our artists to work honestly while they are alive;either we refuse them money or we ruin them with money; either we flatter them with unhelpful praise or wound them with unhelpful blame,and when they are too old,or too dead, or too beyond dispute to hinder anymore, we canonise them,so that what was wild is tamed, what was objecting, becomes Authority…Wether art tunnels deep under consciousness or wether it causes out of its own invention,reciprocal inventions that we call then memory, I do not know. I do know that the process of art is a series of jolts,or perhaps I mean volts,for art is an extraordinary faithful transmitterep our recieiving equipment in good working order.” she too got some points here, don’t you think?
And I love this thought too (there’s that word love again). I’ve already quoted it to a few people — the plight of artists.
I’ve been so away from this website, working on the movie. Nice to be back again. I worried that people had stopped coming here…nice to see that hasn’t happened — nice to be taught by others as I ramble along whatever it is I’m rambling along….
I do think we touch.and that we can’t touch only one thing,because touch is a two way mirror,we are being touched in response.I’m happy for you, that you’ve finished another ‘step’, bleached or not.’return to the seattle stephen’ seems a good advice.
Miss Winterson wrote once…”we are an odd people : We make it as difficult as possible for our artists to work honestly while they are alive;either we refuse them money or we ruin them with money; either we flatter them with unhelpful praise or wound them with unhelpful blame,and when they are too old,or too dead, or too beyond dispute to hinder anymore, we canonise them,so that what was wild is tamed, what was objecting, becomes Authority…Wether art tunnels deep under consciousness or wether it causes out of its own invention,reciprocal inventions that we call then memory, I do not know. I do know that the process of art is a series of jolts,or perhaps I mean volts,for art is an extraordinary faithful transmitter.Our job is to keep our recieiving equipment in good working order.” she too got some points here, don’t you think?
Even nice
to see
this twice.