Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Wake Me Up When September Begins...

Did you blink on January 1st?

If you did, you might be wondering where the last eight months have gone. The last time that I posted here on The Cinema 4 Pylon, on that very same inaugural day of the new year, I had been giving anyone that still cared some pre-climb instructions before I launched into a massive blog series chronicling my assault to the summit of my self-constructed Tower of Film.

But there was trouble almost from the start. I discovered that the department store which occupied the first two floors of the Tower was having a fire sale on various and sundry thingies, but it was almost impossible to deal with the salesmen. Some insisted on pushing only the wares of the previous decade, mired in their plaid-heavy, staid comfort and nuclear winter certainty, while others were more intent on showing me the brilliant, shining promise of a new tomorrow, with its eventual shag carpeting and orange furniture.  However, the sale wasn't a total loss. Since Jen and I were in dire need of kitchenware replenishment, I went hog-wild in the spatula section. (Not so strangely, it turns out none of the lot I purchased were ever actually used on food of any recognizable form).

On the third floor, I was caught in the massive crossfire brought about from the activities of roughly forty spies, most of them working for the same governmental system, but  all completely at odds in methods and tactics. No sooner had I formed a grudging allegiance with the two agents most apt to have spare go-go girls at the ready, the scene abruptly shifted, and the seemingly certain notion that my doom would be spelled out via ballistic penmanship left my mind. Suddenly, a drink was in my hand instead, and the original melee had slipped into a non-stop martini party. The drinks were fine, but far too much smoke and Aquanet and not nearly enough oxygen left me reeling. It threatened to get even worse when the scene slowly shifted once more, and the well-dressed evening crowd with whom I had been lounging was gradually replaced by odious hippies smiling far too broadly, who insisted on a shared experience of their own particular madness. As hippies have always served as a room-clearer for me, that was the definitive sign that it was time to renew my efforts up the tower.


Eventually, I fought and clawed my way up to 1970, and I thought it would be a smooth glide straight through the decade to follow, but as I was approaching an area where I had far more expertise, things went truly wonky. Sure, I had no trouble at all accepting that there was a swingin' cheerleader party on that seventh floor -- assisted by additional cadres of swingin' stewardesses and swingin' nurses -- but then the roving biker gangs showed up to ruin the fun. Raping and pillaging ensued, as things are wont to do where roving movie biker gangs are concerned. The problem was chiefly aesthetic on my part. While I could partially identify with their naive form of "freedom," I couldn't come to grips with their need to sporadically reinforce Nazi imagery. Also, their raping ways had to go. Luckily, roving, raping movie biker gangs are also wont to die off in droves, so my path was cleared in time for...

Now.

In the preceding eight months, I have been around, and I have been writing. I just have not been posting. On my laptop, there is a file folder with exactly 137 text files featuring the lost posts of the last year or so, let alone the past eight months. Some of them are complete; most are not. I could go back and complete them and retro-post them, but my intent behind writing the bulk of them is long vanished from my mind, and where I do recall the intent, I most likely cannot dredge up the same urgency that brought me to create them initially. Better to move forward...

Which is why we are now at this exact point. When reviewing the goals I set for myself early last year when I first conceived the Tower of Film project, and then comparing them to my actual achievements in that time, it is certainly clear that I have dug myself into a massive hole. But, when compared to the goals I set when I first moved here almost 5-1/2 years ago, it is even clearer that said hole has likely reached the earth's core.


Have I gotten over whatever was keeping me all but completely silent for these past months? Probably not, but believe me, I have never been shy about sharing the details. Simply filling in the hole and calling it a fresh start is not an option -- as I said, I've dug myself into it. I spent all my climbing energy on the damn Tower, and right now, I am taking a rest from it. For my own creative sanity (and for other reasons that will become plain as I gradually roll out what I have been up to in this time), the only answer is to start digging my way out the other side.

Welcome back, me. Here's the shovel. Oh, don't forget your scuba gear. The other side of the world comes out in the Indian Ocean...

3 comments:

Timinator said...

I was thinking of you just yesterday. I'm glad you're back!

Mark Otis said...

Bollywood, here we come!

Rik Tod Johnson said...

We would actually come out closer to Madagascar...

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