Impossibly Fades Away — mnchrm vol. xlviii
Incoming Transmission–
Hello, travelers. Sorry for the radio silence over the past two weeks. I've been working on a short film I was excited about, and now this month is almost over. By the time this letter slides into your inbox, I'll be an hour away from home working on a TV show I am really not excited about. C'est la vie. Gotta make rent somehow, you know?
After coming off of this indie shoot I was so excited about, and getting ready for this union TV shoot I've been anxiously dreading, I've been thinking a lot about my lifestyle. It's been clear to me for a few years I don't want to spend my whole life working in film. I like working on set, but I don't get the same particular sort of thrill I think my peers do working on larger and larger productions. I don't really take pride in the scale or how demanding the job is. I like working with people I respect and trust, and working on a project I think will be good.
I've also sort of soured on the freelance lifestyle, now two years into it. I love the freedom it affords, but it's a double-edged sword. The best is coming off a big job, with time to work on projects I care about, not worrying if I'll hit my quota this month. I've gone through enough dry spells in the past 24 months, being forced to take any job that comes your way. I don't know, I think there's got to be a perfect freelance situation out there for me, working on projects I'm excited about or at least just being allowed to utilize the diverse set of skills I've built up over the years... but it's clear I haven't found it yet.
As time goes on, the academy lifestyle, or what I imagine of it, seems more and more appealing. I've been thinking about going back to school for some time to get a creative writing MFA. I don't think that'll be the breakthrough moment of my career or anything, but I do think I have a lot to learn and would benefit from that sort of structured environment to do so in. I love learning in general. I love the idea of being at a university and able to take more classes, audit things outside of my field, attend talks or just visit the library.
And as much as anything, I think I want to teach. I love giving younger screenwriters notes on their work, and have developed a fairly comprehensive theory on the practice, even if it's not my focus. I also love talking about creative writing, photography, lighting, and film production. I've got a neat set of tangentially-related skills at just the right level to be useful to students, even at the collegiate level.
Anyways, just been thinking more about alternative paths forward, since what I'm doing in my day job seems to be unsustainable. Perhaps it's the time to go back to get an MFA; or maybe I'll finally just learn to code.
I think I've got friends and subscribers on both side of the line. Any thoughts?
Last Sunday, the short film I was working on wanted to shoot at a cabin. Being that we live in Chicago, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, we drove two hours away to the director's ideal vision of a cabin on a farm. I couldn't tell if the farm was truly in operation; it seemed like the man in charge mostly relied on events like apple pickers, honey production, and visitors for star-gazing.
With only a few shots planned, we grabbed everything we wanted and more early in the day, and had intended to stay for a meteor shower that night, but near total cloud cover stopped that dream. Instead, the proprietor took us around the property on a tour in a WWII crew transport vehicle, one of several vintage military vehicles he collects. Our skeleton crew bounced along in back of the truck, mostly just trying not to fall out, as he showed us the beehives and ponds. He pointed out now-reclaimed native plant species which he'd reintroduced to the area. He said that less than one tenth of a percent of Illinois's prairies still existed, so this was his little project to put some back on the map.
I was mostly distracted, though. All I could think about was the soldiers who must've ridden in this, sat in the exact same spot. Just bouncing from town to town, trying not to fall out, maybe smoking, trying to forget what horrors they'd just seen or done, and remember those they hoped to return home to.
The truck broke down, as we rounded a pond. We watched muskrats swim and dive for prey as our guide attempted to find the right funnel for the gas tank. In his search, he found a shell casing, which now sits on my desk as I type this. We wandered up to the cattails and thistles that dotted the pond, each step of ours sending dozens of frogs into the water for shelter from the strange beasts we are. A few of our motley crew stopped to smoke. As the sun slipped over the horizon, truck sputtering a hundred feet down the dirt road, I couldn't help but consider the Dr. Seuss of it all.
This past week, my latest review came out. It's of Sara Stridsberg's novel VALERIE, recently translated to English from Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner. It's a fascinating book, full of a rich contrast that colors each page. It's a fictionalized story about a real life that disregards what few facts we know about the subject. It's a novel that rejects the form we've come to know in favor of experimentation and nuance.
Check out the review here, and the book here.
This weekend is the Chicago Air and Water Show, a two-day event with demonstrations and performances showcasing different boats and aircraft, as well as flying ability. The show usually ends with a performance by the US Navy's demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels.
I love it. It seems like the sort of event I should hate: an outward and open expression of propaganda, something with a pro-imperialist sentiment that glorifies the tools of death wielded by our military on a vast and terrifying scale. I know all these things, I know the funding comes from Boeing, I know it's nothing more than a dog and pony show to make you feel something, maybe admiration or respect, for our military.
And yet...
It's awe-inspiring, in the truest sense of the word. Watching it, that sense of awe and wonder completely supersedes and drowns out the rational objections I have.
My girlfriend and I tried to go yesterday, before getting rained out. So we went again today, to see a demonstration of the F-16, the F-22 (an image of which I took on my cellphone is the header to this email), and finally the finale by the Blue Angels.
It is almost impossible to describe the sense of wonder at the impossibility of seeing these machines up close. The power they possess, the incredible work that went into their construction, and of course the unimaginable skill of the pilot in the cockpit.
The week before the event, you can see some of the events practicing. These great knives shred the skies into ribbons above the city, and change the definition of loud. The sound is incredible, forever building, never crashing or crescendoing, just rising and rising in intensity until it impossibly fades away.
I used to live in an apartment building about as close as possible to the beach upon which the action is centered. I could see them out my window, drawing contrails in their wake, turns sharp and soft over the city skyline.
My favorite act is the F-22 demonstration. It's not the sound, or the speed; though of course it can be both loud and fast. Instead, it's the slowness, the control, the precision of the pilot like a surgeon. This huge blade of gunmetal seems to hang and glide over the lake without effort. I think about the incredible affect seeing this silhouette of this angel of death cut out against the sky. What the sight and sound means for anyone unfortunate enough to be considered an "enemy combatant". I shudder.
But each year I find myself at that beach, with hundreds of thousands of people, staring up at the sky at a device we can barely comprehend.
Here's an acoustic artist I've been obsessed with lately. Her name is https://www.ichikoaoba.com/. Her soft voice and gentle guitar playing is both haunting and resonant. Highly recommend giving her a listen.
Sorry these dispatches have been late, lately. Work or not, I'll get back on track with sending them out. Thanks for your patience and for sticking with me. Love and appreciate all of you!
For more before the next dispatch, follow me on Twitter. If you love this letter and want to do me a favor, consider sharing / forwarding / sending it to a friend.
Your faithful commander,
– I