2018 in 9 photos

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1) from trip to yellowstone in october where we saw a lot of great stuff and I tried finally taking my camera off automatic and experimented with shutter speed and exposures. noteworthy b/c i was in throes of crowdfunding and there was some interior darkness starting to assemble that the majesty of the landscape was helpful in neutralizing. also: amazing place and how had we never been there before? already planning our return.

2) from trip to Humboldt County, CA where in addition to running Avenue of the Giants with friends we took the kids to Patrick's Point and walked them out to Wedding Rock where we'd been married 18 years previous. hall of mirrors that we will return to this May to run the same half-marathon

3) a still from Microaggressions, the 6 part webseries I wrote, funded (thanks RACC), and made this fall. currently in post production. was excellent to be back on set, was excellent to see it come alive thanks to the great cast/crew. was also excellent to work in diff format (ie webseries) and most especially to have such a quick turnaround time from conception to wrapping. very eager to share this. stay tuned. 

4) from our first full night alone in 7 years. we had drinks, saw Free Solo (A+) , heard some live music (Mel Brown Trio, A+), played pinball, slept in (ie past 6 a), read the sunday ny times in bed. It was a long overdue restorative and much too quick.

5) from camping trip to Jesse Honeyman State Park. a reminder to camp more and to turn off my phone and live more presently (though that sounds a little goofy and simplistic compared to the profundity of the sensation). also a reminder to clean my lens more.

6) in april got home to empty house and found the flex piping under upstairs sink split and for an hour or so 50K gallons of water were pouring through the house. repercussions still being felt/managed but suffice to say it was disruption and introduced imbalance that persists but one that may in the end be useful in terms of resetting things in a better place. 

7) from trip to Ecola State Park in June w/ family and mother in law wherein I was reminded to not try to control everything. (read: I desperately did not want to go on this trip but it turned out to be really fun)

8) after years of resistance to ever crowdfunding again I pulled trigger to raise some $ for Sister/Brother, in large part b/c having little success via other channels and this movie isn't gonna make itself. I wrote this positive affirmation at start of campaign and put it in my wallet and forgot about it. It's notable b/c to experience this go round of crowdfunding was to enter a dark and rocky place with little hope of positive end result. but by the end it worked out. (note: that sounds more quaint than the experience was, b/c the experience was horrible).

9) one hazard of prepping/making webseries and then 4 days later launching month-long crowdfunding for feature and in the middle of all that going on trip to yellowstone was that I stopped running for a couple months. This fact - in combo with all the bottomless negative sensations that crowdfunding activated - sent me into a tailspin of deep darkness. In November I made a deal with myself to run everyday for 1 to 4 miles. It was not sudden or automatic but this continued action helped me slowly return and gain a modicum of control over the chaos. this pic from Springwater Corridor in early december pretty much sums up the feeling.

memorial day trip

driving down the winding road alongside the Smith River on the 199, tiny towns subject to change and decay, unlike the rising landscape

maybe aging means existing alongside your former selves, not transcending them. the complication is in keeping the timelines in order, the thread of the narrative bloats with each year, bleeding into the watery present.

there's the theater in eureka where I was a projectionist 20 plus yrs ago, moving heavy film canisters to the projectionist table, threading films into projectors, watching the ends of movies over and over, checking focus and frame out the small window that overlooked each auditorium, aching as I looked forward to life in LA, toward becoming a filmmaker. all that aspiration and ambition pulsing with the knowledge that it was going to happen. no matter what.

there's the theater in Arcata where I watched rivers of double features starting 25 years ago, where I worked for a time, where M did too, where one early morning she and I sat out front on the raised corner of the loggia and she looked at me and said we both know last night didn't mean anything and a possible door closed before re-opening a short time later, arguably beyond my agency or hers.

In Ferndale (where I was an extra in a film 23 yrs ago and where another film was shot 16 yrs ago produced by the company I worked in the mailroom at in LA) here's a house where we stay with old friends - some not seen in decades - all of us older, greyer. All fundamentally the same and unmistakably altered.

and there's the trees, standing for ages before my great-grandparents were conceived laughing at my insights (oooh 20 years, come back and see us in 500 bud), standing through fog and wet, through sun and ache. still t/here.

my filmic trajectory has not lined up with what that projectionist anticipated but that is not a unique story I suppose. still my next film project stirs, slowly gathering form and heft.

and this is a thing borne of many unconnected things, of where I find myself, of reading some D Lynch interviews, of recalling M Haneke directed The Last Continent at 47, of rewatching Man on Wire, of my 45th birthday just days away, of the trip to past corridors where my old iterations stand on every corner : I have always found myself waiting for things - mentors, money, approval - needing those things to grant me the power to move forward. This new film is the embodiment of that, which is to say a character wrestles with all these competing strands of history and desire of time and oblivion - and by the simple act of continuing to step forward, she transcends it. And so for me the act of making this next film is the renunciation of that need, that reliance on approval. I'm tired of wanting to be liked, this grade-school ache to fit in that I've toted around for decades like a fat cement albatross. Time to cut that loose and to finally get busy.

And 100 years from now when this next movie and the next and the next have been born and lived and been long forgotten this tree in the fog will still stand, not really giving a crap about anyone's aches or iterations.