Rejection & Renewal

today is the 22 yr anniversary of the death of my son's namesake. he was driving back from his mother's funeral in Portland and fell asleep at the wheel 10 min from his house in McKinleyville, CA. (Margaret and I started dating shortly afterward and said if made it thru the hazards of being in a relationship in college and one day got married and one day had children, the boy would be named after him.) The last thing he said to me, in the foyer to our classroom on the 2nd floor of the Theater Arts Building, in a rush to get to Portland, the news of his mother's death fresh on his face was I'll be okay.

I got rejected for a job I wanted. granted still a day job (ie not filmmaking) but one that at least would intersect w/ my creative training and background. The sting was primarily ego-based but enough to mostly ruin the weekend. Late Sunday I started to think that maybe it was a gift, this not getting the thing I wanted, this transformative opportunity, this second chance to rise from the ashes and chart a course forward. That it was the pursuit of the job that was more important than the job itself (esp as relates to how I value my own self and voice).

It hasn't been confirmed but a rejection from a very selective film program I wanted desperately to attend is imminent. Getting in would have been a game-changer for my next movie Sister/Brother (which starts shooting this Spring).  When I got picked for the second round back in August, I had a few weeks to get the screenplay in shape and I did a line by line rehaul. In a sense that was the gift of advancing, not the perceived end goal. I am making the movie regardless.

Thursday I went to see the Pixies. In that weird sort of bookending that only music can seemingly do recalled seeing them 28 years earlier in Atlanta at the Roxy on October 15, 1989. Standing here in the recent present watching them made me think of the small tiny person I was then, a senior in high school, the broad deficiencies and wants that consumed me then. How I wish the me of now could go back in time, telling him not to put focus on such meaningless things. That made me think of the broad deficits and wants that consume me now. Is someone coming from 28 years in the future to tell me something similar? something like this:

Light can conceal as much as shadow can reveal. Things break one way, things break another. You'll be okay.

Today on my lunch break I ran up past the Duniway Park Lilac Garden, up Terwillger Blvd, on the path that circles the hospital where I had 2 brain surgeries, where my son had a fetal MRI when he was in utero to help them get a better look at the mass in his chest that was changing shape week to week, when we didn't know if he would live or die before he got to us, or shortly thereafter. The sun was out and the sky was blue. It was crisp and clear. My app told me when I finished the run but something inside me told me to keep going.

rejection

Another day, another rejection. This iteration from a film festival rejecting my feature film the black sea. So empty and meaningless on the one hand and so impossibly hard to take on the other. Backstory: I've been directing in earnest for about 5 years. Made several shorts and a feature and received exclusively rejection from festivals. This followed 7 years in Los Angeles during and after film school, peddling spec screenplays that never found takers so there is a history here, a pattern of NO. My natural internal response is to build a narrative made of equations, if this then thats, something to the order of my screenplay rejected = my screenplay sucks; my short film rejected = my short film must be terrible; my feature film rejected = my feature film was ill-advised and I should have hung it up years ago and now I'll just be left w/ the crushing financial debt of making the film as an endless reminder of my talentlessness. The longer I continue, the more calcified this narrative becomes, the more definitive, a self-serving poisonous loop reinforcing its own existence. The problem with these equations are the factors they omit - the particulars of the spec screenplay marketplace, the variables and machinery of film festivals, the artistic aim/intent of my projects fitting into some digestible, commercial construct - and the reduction of these complex omissions into a yes/no couplet that ties directly to my infantile need for approbation (which should not factor in to artmaking but which invariably is a drive for some, okay, for me.)

Let me re-iterate some basic points I've made before, primarily for my benefit:

1) I did not make 'the black sea' to find commercial success, I made it because I had to tell/expell the film. (note: I am not rejecting commercial success here b/c I'd love some)
2) Acceptance in a film festival is not the same as making a good film.
3) Rejection is a vital component of any artistic enterprise
4) Remember this lojong in perpetual, eternal white flashing loops:
Don't Expect Applause.
5) On to the next one.
6) when in doubt see 4 and 5
7) Film history is rife with films that were scorned/ignored at release but that time has been kind to. Is the value diminished? Better yet should the value be tethered to audience response/interaction at all?
8) the artist is fed her/his own equation across a lifetime, both in and out of artistic pursuit: hard work = reward. if this then that. if you pour yourself into your work, if you slave and scrimp and sacrifice and sweat then it will all be worth it. If you just write one more spec then that will be the one. If you make short films then that will lead to great things. If you just make a feature then you will be in a different place. If you work hard then it will pay off. I submit that this is still true (perhaps evidence of my mania) but the definition of 'pay off' has morphed and mutated over the years, into something like #9
9) the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the reward is the reward is the work
10) Don't Expect Applause.

patience, reward

the other morning margaret learned she won an oregon literary fellowship. the public announcement was to be that night at a reading featuring christopher hitchens. they comped us two tickets. in the sold out schnitzer auditorium margaret's name was announced - along with the other winners - and she stood in the warm glow of applause. we returned home to find in the mail a letter announcing the same news and a check for more money than we've seen in a long time for anything, certainly for creative endeavor.

we determined it's been at least a decade since she began writing in earnest. and what to show? a smattering of publications? a more substantial stack of refusals? the rewards are meager, few and far between. this fellowship felt like a long-forming reprieve, a tacit acknowledgment from the powers that be, a move up the ladder to the next level. sadly or happily, margaret realized this: we are so acclimated to rejection that our default state is to expect it, one presumes in fact, to invite it.

accepting and honoring what you deserve can run counter to one's internal mechanics. but margaret deserves it. for sure. at the same time there is a buddhist precept (i think, maybe it's from an old cowboy movie) that says: accept good news and bad news with the same emotion. this is what we are trying to do. Being grateful without being entitled. Altering the default setting to the one that engenders more scenarios like this, less piles of 'no thank you'. And yet at the same time committing to the work, not the response. The pursuit of applause is a hollow undertaking. It's delicious and satisfying but it's only garnish, not the meal.

also, it was a kick-ass start to 2010.

fits and starts

trailblazers lost last night - 2nd time in as many games - in what was most certainly a winnable game. (poor shooting and questionable officiating work are subjects for another time). there is something about watching an emerging team, a becoming, or - to borrow from their local marketing campaign - (up)rising. in any case, they have stumbled the past couple games. but then they are young. the youngest rotation in the nba. this could be an instance of manufacturing narrative where there is none but mm and i have both encountered similar stumbles creatively in the past couple days. i won't get into all the nitty-gritty of it but if you take the focus off the micro level and move to macro (in all cases, blazers included), the long-term, see the setbacks as instructive tools, part of the growth not an inhibitor to the growth, things seem much better, more possible...

...good news, instruction...

There is a saying that the teacher is always with us. The teacher is always showing us precisely where we are at and encouraging us to relax and open our hearts and minds, encouraging us to not speak and act in the same old stuck ways, encouraging us also not to repress or dissociate. So with this one who is scaring you or insulting you, do you retaliate as you have one hundred thousand times before, or do you start to get smart and do something different?

the above words (further instruction from pema c) were on my mind yesterday as i went home from work. the bus ride was quick. the stars were glowing pinpricks, my breath a blanket. i was feeling good about myself for putting the brakes on my pattern(ed) response to the AM rejection yesterday. then i walked in the door: mm handed me a letter from a grant board. it was the result of my application from november. i opened it. "...we regret to inform you...". Classic. And beautiful. what were the odds of two rejections in a span of 10 hours? well, probably they're not that crazy but the point is that w/o the effort there would be no rejection. we celebrated w/ champagne.


in related news, about an hour ago i got an email from the neurosurgeon who oversees my annual MRIs. and it was written in golden honey:

...fragments, increments...

i was rejected by email this morning from a creative venture that i was excited about. my excitement was two-fold: one to be involved w/ something that sounded right up my alley, and two, i was pretty sure i would get it (this of course has a sub-compartment of ego validation). i attemped to not get pulled into the currents of the rejection but only w/ minor success. dribbles of depression and anger kept arising. later i stood in the kitchen getting ready to leave for work and bigger waves washed ashore, waves encompassing history and things outside the present, outside the right now. Impressions, conclusions, arrivals all built on shadow and sand. Later still, at work, it continued to gnaw away. mm and i have been in the habit of celebrating our rejections in a formal manner, a vocal declaration of our intent, a salute to the effort not the result. I worked to move my awareness to this arena. Later, I came upon this passage from Pema C:

But the real core instruction is, whenever you're feeling uncomfortable, don't believe what you're saying to yourself. Right then is the time to not believe what you're saying to yourself.

And what we're saying to ourselves at those times are really old habits. We're reinforcing really old habits. That's what we do when we're uncomfortable. We don't leave it with just hooked or triggered. We seek to get the bubble back together— or whatever language you want to use— by talking to ourselves, in a way that really strengthens old habits. And they're usually very self-destructive habits.

celebration

mm and i have started a new sort of ceremony wherein when either of us receives some sort of creative blunting or rejection (be it for a grant, a publication, a contest)that we will celebrate. this is not merely to be ironic or to keep us from self-pity but also to in fact celebrate the fact that we're still trying to do what we want to do.

yesterday's celebration was a sort of benchmark in a way b/c we were both flummoxed and agitated by the rejection of mm's essay, not just her. Granted the essay involves the first wk of my diagnosis and how we handled it so i am probably over-protective since i'm in it. Also, it's taken from our memoir-in-progress and getting the essay published in a respected literary journal would be a boon so i have a stake in its success. All that aside though, it was the note they put on mm's rejection email, citing how impressed w/ the caliber of the writing, how stunning her 'scalpel-like insight's were to them but that ultimately they had to reject it b/c the essay was 'too familiar'. Familiar? Too freaking familiar?! Argh, my rage is rising as i type this out. Isn't every possible topic for an essay or a story familiar? It feels like a cop out. A dodge.

i mean, it's certainly their prerogative to reject whatever they want to reject. Of course. But to single out mm's insights and talents as particularly compelling and then reject them b/c of subject matter? What is she supposed to do w/ that information?

i am certainly biased in favor of mm's writing (and prone to both hyperbole and mythologizing) but these buffons are the Decca Records of the literary world. They will be sorry. They will rue the freaking day.

okay, i feel better now.
onward.

good news

yesterday marg learned that she is a finalist in the Wordstock Ten, meaning that her short fiction is going to be published in the anthology that will come next month in conjunction w/ the festival Wordstock to be held here in portland. been a long time since either of us had any substantive creative good news in a long time. some close calls here and there between us both but nothing this exciting.

way go go mm!

onward, onward, onward

marg just called me from home. 3 envelopes from the nicholl foundation. I had her open them: 3 rejections from Round One. depressing yes but further cementing the absolute random nature of (not having) sucess and how you define it. one of those scripts advanced pretty far in a previous yr, netting me an option (which sounds more exciting than it was, if I find myself w/ a surplus of time i'll recount) and one of the other scripts advanced far as well and got me enough attention to get some semi-respectable representation. Both of those scripts are unchanged and now summarily dismissed from the contest. The other one was the one I love most deeply, the most recent, in other words the one upon whom i had rested my hopes, the one i poured my post-tumored self into, the one that might be The One, the ladder up to the light, the hand from the clouds, the Celestial Nudge but no. Nothing. Silence.

It never gets easier, all these rejections, year after year, it just gets more familiar. As marg said (she a breadloaf finalist this yr, but ultimately a rejectant): why do we do this to ourselves? why are we not accountants?
well, neither of us has the stomach to do accounting but it does, on days like this, seem like a blissfully pain-free and oblivious undertaking comparatively speaking.