day one in the can

It's 2:30 am. I've got to be up in a few hours. Tomorrow's going to be brutal, the longest shoot I've ever scheduled. Morning til night. We've got to keep focus and stay fed and not lose morale and get everything we intend. Today we shot band performance footage and Jimmy alone in his house. I tried to keep it as natural as possible. We barely adjusted any lights and didn't set any of our own. There's something about capturing the utterly real on film stock that I find beautiful.

The funny thing about my pre shoot nerves is that as soon as we start shooting they dissipate. The hard thing now isn't not being able to sleep from worrying; it's not being able to sleep because I'm too excited.

I'm enjoying writing here, but I'm still unclear about drawing a line between the personal and my work. Because my work is so personal. Everything I've made has a hidden joke or reference, and beyond that I invest myself within it all. Stable Song was directly lifted from nightmares I had as a child and probably about missing my parents who worked very hard for me to have a decent life at much sacrifice to themselves. The Decemberists video is an inside joke from start to finish; I could draw you a map of the ways everyone in it is connected. There are minor details that will end up in this piece that my subconscious suggested but I know why they're there. The funny thing though is that if it is essentially about missing someone, I came here to San Diego with feelings about how I'd missed people in the past and intimations I have about how I'll miss people in the future - as I'm in a state of transience and for many reasons like the nature of my work and personal history I feel I shouldn't be close to anyone. But I miss some people right now, which is totally unexpected and confusing but ultimately feels like the most comforting thing I know.