alone no more

is it better to be alone or with someone? that is the question. I met someone almost a year ago and neglected to mention it. It has been marvelous.

creativity

been a while since I wrote here anything...sort of being a recluse and a social freak. On the one hand I seek company on the other I seek solace. the Beauty of being in Maine, no interruptions. You can work here, think, that sort of thing.

so I finished my film Here there is no Why...and now completed my bonus which include extras, scenes from Paris, a party I went to in Paris on Halloween, which happened to be my birthday as well, october 29, then an interview with Blum, this time not translated as in the film, and an interview with my brother which came out fine, to clarify some points in the film, and then myself, complete with my character, which is not in the film.



some people love the film, find it beautiful etc... . There are some scenes there that are clearly photographic, but I could not go through all the narrative that way. Some scenes I wish I had a better camera than my little Panasonic and probably I should have used a tripod more often, even though it is against the rules of Dogme.dk . What are you going to do. You cannot please everyone...

My brother told me he felt confused by the film. his daughter Debbi felt he was more a director's cut and she wished it was cut in half (not going to do this)...and my friend Eleanor wants to rewrite the whole thing, show myself more and my humor and my character and so on...if I do this it would rewriting the film. She mentions Gordon Lish about tightening material. he was not much different than my teacher at the New School, Hayes Jacobs. But I am not writing a short story, I am doing a free form film. My friend Cathryn who helped throughout the film with feedback, all useful, loves the film the way it is. I have shown it at the Holocaust Human Rights Center to about 50 people. They all loved it. I do explain at the start what the film is about, a trip retracing my steps as a boy in World War II. Just that. Taking you along I leave you to be impressed by what I see, or not. Prisons turned into apartments, Mechelen in Belgium, refuge estates turned into prisons, Marneffe. The old monastry in Louvain still stands with many many rooms, but only a handful of monks there now. It is a retreat and a place of study for the university of Louvain.

so it goes....



I sent the film to the Strasbourg festival, I thought since it is about the city and I was born there they would take it, but they rejected it right off, not sure why. It is still sitting at Sundance and the Ann Arbor Festival...I had a film accepted there once, Eternal Hat, which then toured the country, which is what they do with a selection of film. So I know what it feels like to be accepted. This was back in the 70s.



I also know what it feels to be accepted in a national publication. I had two satirical pieces published there, one of them alonside a poem by John Updike, so I was in good company. The cover of that issue was about Mao Zegong. That really got into my head the very idea that he may be reading my satire on the community in Taos, which I called The Apocalypse is a Nice Place to Visit, but... ...

more....

summer reading

what is summer reading? I see references of books to read in the summer. Are these books that go easy with heat and humidity? How is it different from winter readings?