Love and Darkness and My Sidearm

I've been working on my third novel lately. It's loosely based on my time as a soldier in South Korea. When I started the book it was coming smooth and the inspiration was right there waiting for me as soon as I sat down in front of the keyboard.

Telling a story with such felicity is something I rarely experience.

I let the novel sit for awhile and now the writing is much more difficult. It was a good thing to walk away and come back though. Whenever the writing's going too easy the writing is no good. That's all there is to it.

Looking at it with new eyes I was able to cut out a bunch of needless and poorly executed bullshit.

I thought I could give up writing, but I can't.

Writing for me used to be an act of anger. I used my rage as fuel and thought of myself as some sort of bold and daring culture warrior. In reality I was a boring cliché. A single emotion as a foundation for a whole body of creative work doesn't take you very far. It's a dead end. To write well requires a level of vulnerability that was painful and difficult for me to come to terms with.

So I had to think about it, and work on videos to stay busy, and read writers I respect. Earnest Hemingway's Dispatches, given to me by my father-in-law Ken, helped a lot.

If you get a chance to pick up Niccolo Ammaniti's new book As God Commands, do it. He's one of my favorite living writers. Cormac McCarthy's Child of God will blow you away. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez opened my eyes. And Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is a brilliant novel length love letter to the act of reading.

Defending the Defenseless

I created this video for the 2010 YouTube and Pulitzer Center Project:Report video journalism contest. It follows a day in the life of Mary Lou Ward, an Animal Control Officer in Las Cruces, New Mexico:

This Machine Kills Fascists

I used to sing the song below in elementary school during assemblies. Every Friday was assembly singing day in the afternoon and one of the teachers who could play harmonica would stand in front of the whole school and we'd do There's A Hole In Your Bucket and America the Beautiful and this, which we belted out in full throated glory with the same enthusiasm we gave the rest.

Completely unaware that it was one of the most subversive protest songs of all time:

Frontier Psychiatrist

Prepare to have your mind blown:

Cheap Tune

I don't know a soul who's not been battered. I don't have a friend who feels at ease. I don't know a dream that's not been shattered, or driven to its knees. But it's alright. It's alright. We've lived so well so long.

So don't act like you're above me, just look at your shoes. I'll turn the light out now 'cause there's nothing more to say. And it's all been lost before so there's nothing to lose.

Still I wonder what's gone wrong. I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong.

With your cheap rewards, your blackmail, and your comical rage. Just remember you'll only be the boss so long as you pay my wage.

And I dreamed I was dying.

Logorama

I have no words. This is short animated satire by François Alaux and Herve De Crecy is simply brilliant:

Sarabande

My wife and I watched Barry Lyndon the other night. It's a fantastic movie and is highly recommended if you've never seen it.

This towering song by Bach ran through the entire movie at regular intervals. The genius was in the timing of the repetition:

Enter The Ninja

In the space of two weeks Die Antwoord has exploded across the interwebs. So far people either love them or hate them.

There's been an early backlash from the hipster indiegasm faction claiming they're just a bunch of art school kids co-opting a scene. From the research I've done that doesn't appear to be the case, and even if it is, I couldn't care less. It's good music.

It's fresh and hilarious, polished but raw, inexplicably catchy and unapologetically in-your-face. This is some next level shit:

O Superman

The first time I listened to Laurie Anderson's album, Big Science, my wife and I had just married. We eloped to a small one room store on the side of State Highway 1 in Searsport, Maine that sold homemade jam and lupine seeds.

The woman who owned the shop was in her 70s and we found her by looking up a list of Notary Publics and calling them down the line until we found one who answered the phone.

We didn't have any witnesses when we showed up so we had to hoof it down the highway about a mile to an antique store, where we bowled in and asked the first people we saw if they'd stand by while we said our vows.

Not too long after that my wife played Big Science while we were driving from Ellsworth to Bucksport. It's a bumpy, curvy, 40-mile-an-hour drive over frost heaved roads. The evergreen woods are thick and there are only a few houses along the way.

It was summertime and everything was perfect and gorgeous and the album slayed me with its eccentric beauty. We listened to it on repeat while we held hands and now when I hear this song I think of that time in Maine:

Obligatory Update

Been busy studying my craft.

I entered a contest for the Barcelona Film Festival over at Mofilm.com. From the slate of brands I chose Chevy. The goal was to make an ad for their compact Spark car that would appeal to a European audience.

It struck me as a pretty unique challenge.

I created an animated version of the car by taking a picture of it in profile and tracing out every single panel, light, window and wheel. I added geometry to the tracings and then choreographed the cars in patterns of ascending complexity using bezier paths to make a motion graphics piece.

The contest is currently in judging and I'm not quite sure if the rules bar posting your video to your professional portfolio elsewhere, so I'll link to it when I can.

I've also started working as First Assistant Director on an indie horror movie that's being filmed locally. There's a small budget and the script is tight and fast paced. Once we have it in the can I'll also be assisting with the special effects, editing, and compositing in post.

It has a lot of potential and I'm excited to be working on it.