From the mind of Paul Jones

I am sitting here wracking my brain, trying to think of some fun, witty or deep to write about, but my mind is tossed by a constant tempest and any safe harbor my mind finds, is quickly stirred again into frenzied sea. I can’t count how often I have an idea for a blog that never sees the light of day or is begun only to be bogged down by an excessive inclusion of detail and back-story. Often it is just an idea for a blog title that gets my mind thinking about writing, but lately… nothing has solidified into anything resembling a cohesive blog.

In some way, I think I need to exercise the demons of these ideas, so, they don’t continue to plague me. So, here will be my attempt at some micro-blogging– a blog title and a single paragraph of bloggering:

 I Enjoy Being Missed…

Occasionally, my world is viewed from a very negative perspective, and often I see the things around me as a litany of things that can, and possibly will, go wrong. Today is not one of those days. Everyday, when I leave my job, I have to take a short walk through a nature path to get to the parking lot where my truck is parked. I often enjoy this walk, as the path is lined with trees and a manicured garden which often causes me to walk a little slower than normal in order to take in the beauty of the man-polished nature. On this particular day, I was walking and noticed a couple walking toward me, so, I shifted to my right in order to allow them to pass comfortably. This was a very lucky happenstance, for as fate would have it, just as I shifted to my right, I heard a series of large splashes to my immediate left. I turned quickly to witness the source of the splashes, as a very large bird-turd splattered the sidewalk beside me creating a fourth splash. As I considered how my day may have begun, had I been the target of those droppings, I couldn’t help but think, how much I enjoyed being missed.

Ok, that wasn’t that bad, it may not have been a true “micro-blog” but, for someone like myself, who is usually prone to writing epic blogs, that was pretty micro.

It’s been more than six months since I’ve posted anything online. It is difficult to believe that, in the swirling changes happening over the last few months, I haven’t found at least a few moments to do a brain dump. I think I began a few blogs, but they were mostly based in some deep, theological wrestling and tended to be something that I couldn’t just bang out in 20 minutes.

At the moment, I am sitting in a room at the end of a long hallway of a large Hotel, keeping an eye on the cast of this next season of Nashville Star. They are all asleep, and I am killing time listening to a preview copy of my brother’s new record, Swallow the Sea, and feeling a need to create something. Over the last few years, my creative energy seems to direct out of writing, and what easier way to write than to dump something into the blogosphere.

The last six months have seen many changes in my life… like my attempt at a serious relationship, running out of money, learning to trust in God for my living, working in television production, making new friends, becoming an uncle again, witnessing suffering, attempting to experience and build community with my neighbors, watching God work in other’s lives around me, abandoning old personal issues and concepts… did I already mention learning to trust God, yeah, that has been a big one.

For someone who wants to know the details, learning to live life one day at a time has been a real challenge. But luckily, I haven’t had to do it on my own. Having my girlfriend, Kim, in my life has helped me take a new perspective on many things that I thought had been set in stone. In a way, she has helped me tap into the Paul of my youth, the one with dreams and a spirit of adventure… the one that loved laughing and found energy by being with other people. Helping me also to rediscover a God who is living and operative… who loves me and desires good things for me– a concept that experientially died in me long ago, when I chose to embrace theology and doctrine over a life of faith in love.

Right now, I am sitting in a chair, staring down a long hallway, waiting for signs of life. A housekeeper is making her rounds, and the cast is beginning to stir. I don’t know what the day holds for me, perhaps some adventure, perhaps just some rest. I need to return to my job, so I’ll close my brain dump for now. Hopefully, I have arced the last six months and future bloggings will come with more regularity.

Here’s to hoping

Well, today is the day… it’s been one year. I can’t believe that I left the life of a well-paid software developer to step out and chase a dream. A year ago, I had the plan to take a three month hiatus from work, write some screenplays and make my first short film. Over those months I had many false starts and complete failures which helped teach me what it really takes to make films professionally and it has been one heck of a journey… lasting nine months longer than planned.

I still haven’t made my first film and have have a trail of unfinished scripts and undeveloped stories that litter the path I have traveled over the last year, but I am so much closer to my dream than I have ever been at any time in my life. “Hurry up and wait,” is what that they said in the Army– a motto frequently relived on nearly every set I’ve been on over the last year. If you want to pursue a life in visual storytelling, it is something you have to be in for the long-haul, something I am having to consider as I recognize the first anniversary of my “creative hiatus,” and look forward at the future.

I have been living mostly on savings I set aside for my hiatus, but that money is now on it’s last leg and soon I will join the ranks of starving artist… now I am forced to ask myself if I am in it for the long haul. I can go back to software development and get paid lots of money for something that sucks the life and joy out of me, or I can take a risk and chase my dream into the dark places. At the moment, my mind is not made up, and the coming days will be filled with weighty considerations.

While I stew on my future, I am preparing to spend Thanksgiving with a bunch of friends that I have known less than a year, they irony is they all have some filmmaking connection to me. As I begin to consider the possibility of stepping, even temporarily, out of my pursuit of a film career, I am saddened. In nearly fifteen years I have not had such a sense of community and the indications of genuine friendship than I do now with the small circle of friends that I have developed over the last year.

I guess this only makes sense, as I have come to believe sincerely that that greatest asset in filmmaking is not what you have, but who you know. Developing friendships and building relationships are somethings that are at the core of this form of art. By it’s nature, it is collaborative and requires the participation of many people that you have to trust in.

I don’t have any idea what the next year holds for me, whether I will chase my dream or abandon it– I don’t think that really matters to me. What has been the greatest pleasure over the last year, has been meeting so many wonderful people, all with their own dreams and ambitions. While I would love to dive deeper into filmmaking I look forward more to the collaborations and relationship-building that are such an important part of the process.

However, I still struggle with my faith and how is meshes with a career in an industry that is filled with Godlessness and self-glory. Regardless of what I “think” about it all, I keep being led by circumstances an opportunities back into the film path. This has caused me to consider how such a career can permit me to “do all to the glory of God,” and I am continually brought back to the focus on relationships in this industry and how little the final film product has to do with it.

At the moment, I simply look to the Lord to open or close doors according to His will. My part in the whole thing is to be a person within whom God is working and speaking. There are many people who believe that the best way to proclaim the gospel is with words and teachings, I personally think that the best way (for me) to preach the gospel, is by living. If we segregate the world into believers and unbelievers we prevent the world from meeting God… God-by-proxy, as I recently described it to a friend.

What better way is there to “do all to the glory of God,” then to represent Him in every corner of life. Why confine the gospel to certain places, methods and situations? I don’t want to compromise who and what I am; I think this is one reason that I want to make my own films and tell my own stories. But until I am doing that, I need to be God-by-proxy while carrying lights, hauling equipment, running the camera and building relationships by genuinely caring about people.

No one can tell me what this next year holds for me, but I look forward to it, partially due to the uncertainty. This thought causes me to remember a quote from Watchman Nee:

If God leads you to walk a way that you know, it will not benefit you as much as if He would lead you to take the way that you do not know. This forces you to have hundreds and thousands of conversations with Him, resulting in a journey that is an everlasting memorial between you and Him.

I look forward to the conversations while on this journey.

November has been a very strange time for me over the last few years, it wasn’t until just now, that I realized how many major events occurred in the month of November over that last five years. I hope this year, it holds something good.

Maybe this November will simply be the first November in a long while that nothing significant happens– after the last five years, even that would be a welcomed change. Perhaps this is the month where all the lessons I have learned over the last five years helps me set sail on a new adventure. If so, I am looking forward to that… four sheets to the wind!

Tonight, I had one of those experiences that probably everyone has had at one time or another, where you are sitting in your car wanting to go inside, but there is something on the radio that has your attention fully in its grip. This often happens when I listen to NPR–some interesting story that I just need to hear the conclusion to. This time, it was NPR, but it wasn’t some journalistic story or a interesting interview, this time it was an essay. The story was interesting, about a young man who shirked a normal life to care for his mentally challenged brother. As the author narrated his story, and I was quickly caught up into his tale of personal sacrifice and of smelly adventures with a pet armadillo.

The plot thickened when the brother met a good woman, one who was able to overlook, and even appreciate, the arrangement in a chaotic appartment. Eventually romance blossomed and a marriage separated the brothers, while surrogates were hired to look in on and clean up after the less able brother. This arrangement seemed to work, until the arrest of that brother. After the arrest, doctors suggested that the limited oversight was not adequate and that it was in everyone’s best interest to have him placed in a home.

I cannot convey to you adequately the emotional resonance the essay evoked as it dealt with such a difficult personal decision. I was not only gripped by the story, I was being emotionally moved. I could feel the pain and sense of betrayal that hung in the air as a man with a busy life explained to his rather-simple brother what the doctors suggested. I felt a brother’s sense of responsibility as he rationalized away the desire to take his brother in to his own home as he provoked anguish from his sibling. “I’d rather die, than to be cooped up in some home with a bunch of mumbling half-wits,” he would explain. The greatest pain, to be forced to separate from his beloved pet armadillo.

As all good stories do, this reached a fever pitch at the end of the second act, when a call in the middle of the night brought news of his the sudden death of a needy brother. Running naked through traffic with his armadillo, the brother is hit and partially impaled, bleeding to death before the ambulance could arrive.

Listening, I wiped streams of salty tears from my cheeks–my heart sank. Tears continued to fall as the brother told of having to identify the body at the hospital before racing off to the scene of his brother’s death. I anticipated what was next, as the brother searched the area franticly until he uncovered, beneath a sheet of discarded plywood, his brother’s badly injured armadillo. He raced to the only vet in town, in the middle of the night, in attempts to save the life of his dead brother’s best friend. He prodded the man from his bed with aggressive pounding at his door. He may have failed his brother, but he was certainly going to do everything he could in that moment to save armored rodent’s life, a living tangible link his brother.

I thought to myself, this is heart breaking, how could someone live with such a tragedy, under the condemnation of abandonment? As I subjectively processed the story, the announcer read the title and the author, and then said something that really affected me, “this was a work of fiction.” I almost felt cheated, how could I allow myself to feel so personally for a fictional story? How could I feel such empathy for an invented character. Man, I felt like a wuss.

All of this happened while I was returning home after watching the new Wes Anderson film, the Darjeeling Limited. Before I left the house, I read an LA Times review of the movie, which seemed to pretty much explain the reviewers disdain for Wes Anderson’s movies. But the reviewer said something that returned to me as I contemplated my emotional reaction to the story of a mentally retarded man and his pet armadillo. The reviewer pondered the possibility that Anderson simply used his films as a way to work out his own issues. I think he meant that as a dig, but in the midst of contemplating art, it seemed extremely relevant.

Maybe a good part of the storyteller’s art is working through personal demons. I certainly think that is my draw to filmmaking–an attempt to tell stories the express my personal issues. Maybe that isn’t the heart of movie making in general, a great deal is to simply entertain. Perhaps that is why I like Wes Anderson’s movies; while they certainly entertain, they also explore deep personal issues of relationships and personal longing.

Over the last year, I have focused my energies in the direction of becoming a filmmaker. As I approach my one year anniversary, I look back on the last year and see a tremendous amount of progress. I still don’t have a personal project to show for my time and energy, but I have learned that actually filming the project is only part of the process. I have worked on a number of sets this year, some were enjoyable and others miserable, but every single one helped me see something–that I need to be making movies that tell my stories. I have yet to work on a film that I thought was worth making from a personal perspective. While simply working on projects offers me some excellent experience and knowledge, I also have discovered that my personal desire as a filmmaker is to tell real stories.

The stories that I want to tell are about humanity and struggle, about adventure and sacrifice. Ultimately I want to tell stories about redemption or man’s need or longing for it. I don’t want to tell redneck comedies or urban crime dramas. I don’t want to do horror or gore flicks. I have absolutely no interest in a film that fails to explore issues or has no themes. Maybe that means that I will never be a filmmaker who has films seen by millions, but I think that I am OK with that. Movies are works of fiction, a storyteller’s device to explore something and take others on an visual emotional journey with it, sometimes that journey is fun and at other times, dark and dangerous.

Maybe the stories aren’t true, but they often allow you to connect and explore emotions and ideas that are not only true, but relevant to life. I don’t know if Wes Anderson’s films are his personal therapy sessions, I suspect they probably are on some level, but that can’t possibly be a bad thing. Perhaps by realizing the therapeutic aspects, it will help me to spend more time writing and less time talking about writing. Certainly, that would be a good thing.

Last night, I raced out at the last minute to catch the final screening of the movie ‘Once’ at our local art house theater here in Nashville–the Belcourt. Man, some movies are just dripping with inspiration, this movie was the kind of film that causes me to leave the theater with the passion to get out there and tell stories. A short while before the film started, I bumped into my friend Stephen Lamb, who was at the same screening, and he mentioned he planned on going to see Katie Herzig with Steven Delopoulos, Sandra McCracken at the Basement. Several days before, I had placed a mental note in my head that Katie was playing that night, but like most things in my brain, the memory faded long before its usefulness had expired. Taking the reminder as a divine suggestion, I set my mind on enjoying a great evening of music.

Katie was headlining the night and went on sometime around 11PM. About three quarters of the way through her set, she announced that she was going to play her song Fools Gold, a tune from her album that will be featured next week on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. After the introduction, she explained that she had written the song with two other talented Nashville musicians, Kate York and Jeremy Lister and that Kate had planned to be at the show that night to sing the song with her, but that she stayed at home because of local tornado warnings.

It wasn’t but moments after this announcement that a slamming of a side door at the club announced to those nearby the onset of a storm. Soon, people began to peek outside as torrents of rain sprayed like heavy ocean waves crashing head first into the bow of a ship. Joining the waves were angry swirls of wind that tossed the tops of large trees in circular motions. I’m sure that there were some folks at the show who, after seeing the odd weather, began to think that Kate had made the correct choice by staying home. This notion would have been strengthened if, like me, they had been spying the small television on the opposite side of the club, near the bar, that displayed the scrolling weather alert and had a local weather guy pointing out flashing red areas on the radar heading directly toward Nashville. Some folks bailed from the show and other stepped out on the patio to observe Mother Nature and discuss random stories of tornadoes. I, on the other hand, returned my attention to Katie and enjoyed the rest of her set–after all the club was named The Basement, and isn’t the basement the safest place to be in a tornado?

The storm never produced a tornado in Nashville, and like the Big Bad Wolf at the door a brick constructed domicile, it turned out to be just a whole lot of huffing and puffing. One of those huffs of puffs happened to blow a chair off my front porch into my yard, upset some trash cans and littered the streets with leaves and branches. I returned home to a dog who was a little edgy, but otherwise in good spirits, despite her dislike for strange noises and cracks of thunder. I sat down on the couch and watched a show on the History Channel about some pending planetary doom via stored methane in the oceans and I faded off to sleep in an upright position. Sometime during the night, I awoke with a crick in my neck and shuffled off to bed.

I woke this morning with the expectation of cooler weather–it seems that storms often precede a cold front and I have been eagerly awaiting the final arrival of Fall weather. I popped out of bed fairly early this morning and after checking emails and reading some Myspace messages, clipped my dog to her leash and headed out for our morning ritual. The storm had brought everything I had hoped. The air was fresh and clean and the sun had begun to shine as it climbed higher into the bight blue sky. The air was crisp and cool, just the way I love it.

After walking back into the house, I quickly realized how stale and stuffy it was inside, in comparison with the fresh air outside. That was a situation that needed to be rectified–so, for the first time since I have owned my house, I moved from room to room lifting the blinds, throwing the open the latches and raising the windows. As I type, my house is wide open, the sunlight is pouring in and a fresh cool breeze is displacing the stale air. This is good stuff.

I don’t understand why I don’t do this more often… but I have a clue. As I started the process of opening my windows, I began to feel some anxiety. There is something about opening the blinds and giving the world a view into your life that makes someone, like myself, uneasy. Being open in this way causes me to lose some control. As people walk past my home, they might look in at me sitting on my couch typing on my computer. Even worse, the men working next door might hear me having conversations with my dog, as I expound on the reasons why she should not be barking at the small birds in the bushes or my neighbor Napoleon, across the street, as he heads out for his morning walk in the neighborhood to pick up trash.

It seems so much easier to keep the windows and the blinds closed–to keep the world at arms length and to control what others see and hear. Perhaps by hiding from them, I grant myself permission to ignore my problems and indulge my eccentricities. But certainly, it is much better to throw open the windows and displace the stale air. Open windows not only bring the newness in, but can remind you that there is a world out there that isn’t defined by four walls, a world of new experiences that is expansive and yearning to be explored. As I sit here this morning, I can’t help but feel a calling to escape what is familiar and set out on a journey of adventure and discovery, something I can’t have, tethered to this couch, to this computer, to this house–stepping out into a world that is beyond my control, where I am vulnerable and at risk in the hands of uncertainty.

There is something almost Abrahamic about the feeling I have at this moment–called by Jehovah into a life of uncertainly, resting only in one fact, that Jehovah is the I AM. Leaving the comfort of the land of my birth, being called into a new lands full of unknown enemies and unimagined dangers, a place where I cannot rely on myself and cannot control my circumstances. I can’t predict how long this feeling will last or how long it will be before I button myself back into my four walls and breathe stale air again, but for this moment, I stand wide open.

I consider myself fairly astute politically. I have voted since the age of 18 and I have been a part of two political campaigns in my lifetime–but today, politics is just plain crazy. Before I was old enough to vote, back in high school, I considered myself a Democrat. By the time I registered to vote, at the age of 18, I had swung back to my family tradition as a Republican. I think I did that mostly because I consider myself patriotic, and Democrats seemed very unpatriotic to me. There were several years in high school, when I was the only student who was standing for the daily pledge of allegiance. I think it was my sense of patriotism, that caused me, at the age of 18, to join the Army. Only a month after graduation, I shipped off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma to learn how to become a soldier. Much of my sense of patriotism was inspired by Ronald Reagan — yup, I am a Reagan Youth.

It was barely a year after I joined the military, that I was headed to Saudi Arabia for the very beginning of Desert Storm– nine months later, and a firsthand participant in the horrors of war, I returned home a very different person, with some very different takes on politics and government. My time overseas caused me to hate bureaucracy, something I saw our government rife with. When I had finished my enlistment in 1992, I left the Army and returned to civilian life. By 1992, the country had seemingly swung liberal as Clinton had already begun what would become an eight year reign. After witnessing firsthand the impacts of bureaucracy in and on the U.S. military, I had a great deal of distaste for politics in general– but that was before I discovered Rush Limbaugh. Under the tutelage of Limbaugh’s three hour daily show, I began to understand the mechanics of politics and it suddenly became more interesting to me.  Eager to understand politics more thoroughly, I became a Political Science major in college.

In the early to mid 90’s, I was coming on board to conservative politics at a very exciting time, the apex of Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract With America’ which resulted in the sweeping of both houses of congress and becoming the majority party in the House of Representatives for the first time in over forty years. At the time, there was such hope for change. Finally, a conservative voice in America; certainly, I thought, there will now be sweeping change. What history ended up showing us, was that Republicans are no better at wielding power than were their colleagues on the other side of the aisle. In-party fighting, political corruption and abuse of power seemed to be everywhere. Eventually, Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, lost control of power and retired his seat in congress rather than be demoted and probably fired from leadership. What happened to the promise of change? The changes of the Contract with America seemed somehow a pale glow to

Since the revolution in 1994, the government has become more bloated, intrusive and ineffectual as ever before in our country’s history. After eight years of Clinton politics and nearly as many of Bush warmongering, I think people are tired of business-as-usual politics and really desire some change. I think, for many Americans, that change might be manifested in nominating the first female or black candidate. At this point, some people are so burnt out on government that they just want anything but more Bush and I am with them on that.

Some years back, probably sometime after 9/11 I reconsidered my political position. What do I really believe about the role of Government? What kind of person do I want representing our nation. While the names may have changed over the years, my philosophy hasn’t I want a principled person in the White House, someone who believes something, someone who has something governing them, someone with integrity. I am not an issue-based voter. I don’t care what someone believes about this-or-that so much as I want to know what motivates them. Are they Clintonesque, in that they put there finger in the air before issuing policy decisions or do they stand firmly on some foundational principles. If those principles are solid and reasonable, I might find a reason to support them. It is for these reasons that I have sometimes supported fringe candidates like Perot and Forbes for President. It is also why I campaigned for Dole and initially supported W.

One thing I have learned about my philosophy, is that the principles that someone stands on need to be looked at carefully. While W. is a very principled person, he seems to follow principle over reason. Our quagmire in Iraq is mostly due to his pig-headed principles. At some point you have to be able to look at something objectively and leave room to change your mind– not because it is politically expedient, but because it is the right thing to do. W. should have realized that invading Iraq was the wrong thing to do, and instead of “staying the course,” he should have been working on a plan to extricate America from Iraq. Yes, we would have to deal with the fall-out, but I think having a divided Iraq and causing civil wars will eventually play it self out, it would also force the rest of the world to be involved. But that doesn’t protect of energy interest in the region does it? Should have thought about that before invading shouldn’t you have?

Anyway, that is not my point. Sometime before the last election I began to realign myself politically. I found that I am rather a purist when it comes to government and that I believe in less government and greater personal freedom. Eventually, I found that my personal beliefs aligned much more closely with the Libertarian movement and not the neoconservative Republican one. While my card still says Republican, I am still a Libertarian at heart… and the last six years of voting history supports that. But, while I consider myself a Libertarian philosophically, I really have a problem with the party… mostly because it is filled with pot-heads and conspiracy theorists that serve to erode the credibility of the party. For this reason, I don’t think that the Party will ever field a reasonable presidential candidate.

So, I tell you all of that, so I can say this: the 2008 presidential race is a mess. I don’t think I have ever been so tossed about by candidates. I think that my mind is in the same place as most Americans when it comes to what I want in a presidential candidate and a government in general… CHANGE. I want someone who is going to change things, to work on righting the wrongs and making our government more fiscally responsible. I want someone who is going to keep our noses out of other countries businesses and halt our attempts at nation-building. I want someone who will work across the aisle to do what is best for our country and not what is politically expedient. I thought I had that candidate of John McCain.

Being a former Arizonan, I am aware of McCain’s cowboy mentality. He seems to be a man determined to do what is right, not what is political. He bucks the system and works bipartisanly to pass bills that help America. I think he understands the need for a strong and well-equipped military, but would not be the kind of leader that wields military power recklessly. As soon as McCain announced, I joined his campaign. What followed was a big disappointment. Instead of emails that detailed issues and solutions, I started receiving regular pep-rally emails that simply begged for money. I wanted substance and all I got was politics. I fear now that McCain is going the way of Bob Dole– over handled and way too “on message” to be to separate himself from the host of other Republicans doing the same thing.

Disconcerted with the direction of the McCain campaign, I sought out to search for someone who was really looking at radical changes to government. As I dove into the major candidates, I found very little in fresh new ideas for change and that bothered me. I then stumbled on Newt Gingrich’s blog and started reading about his ideas in Transformational Government. His ideas peeked my interest and I checked to see if he had any aspirations at a bid for 2008. It seems that he was carefully considering it, but was waiting until after Labor Day to decide. Ultimately, he said it would depend heavily on whether of not Fred Thomson threw his hat into the ring– which he has.

At some point in the middle of this, I was talking to my brother and he asked me if I had heard about this guy who really seemed to have some grassroots support. He couldn’t remember his name… Ron something or something Ron… a guy with two first names. A quick search on the Internet introduced me to Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas, doctor by trade and former Libertarian presidential candidate (1988). I read his profile on Wikipedia and said hmmm. Then I promptly forgot about him and went back to reading Newt’s book ‘The Art of Transformation’ and sending email questions to John McCain. Becoming quickly dissatisfied with McCain, I was also looking at Fred Thompson.

Everything changed for me two weeks ago when I stumbled on the documentary ‘America: Freedom to Fascism,’ which made me start thinking fundamentally about our government and it’s intrusion into our lives. I had never given the Federal Reserve or its control over our economy any thought. This thought caused me to dig a little deeper and do some more research. This research lead me directly into the Ron Paul camp. I spent quite a few hours watching Ron Paul coverage at FreeMe.tv and my mind is spinning, there are tons of reasons why I am ready to jump feet first into the Ron Paul campaign, but there are many reservations.

The first major issue, is that no one over the age of 25 seems to know who Ron Paul is. His movement is significantly Internet based and encompasses not only children below the voting age, but people from other countries. I watched a funny Ron Paul supporter video that ended with the declaration that they supported Ron Paul and they weren’t even American–how crazy is that? Sadly, it isn’t the candidate that I have problems with, it is his supporters. The majority of his public supporters are “issue-based voters”… something I really detest.

I am not an issue supporter. I will not vote for a candidate because of a position on any specific issue, something that I am afraid that Paul will get labeled with. People will frame him as an extremist candidate who wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade and eliminate the Federal Reserve, IRS, Board of Education and pull us out of the control of the UN. These are things that are part of his expressed desire, but there is a reason for it, that go far beyond the issues themselves. Ron Paul is a strict constitutionalist, and all of his ideas stem from the overreach of government beyond their constitutional limits. I am definitely in line with his ideas, but I think that the grassroots nature of his campaign prevents his image from being managed. I think there is almost no way to prevent him from being portrayed as a cracked pot.

Ron Paul is for overturning Roe vs. Wade, something that can be twisted and turned to opponents favor, but while he advocates the overturn, he doesn’t stand for the elimination of abortion, he believes that is a State’s right to decide if it supports or not… what he is against is the Federal support of abortions. As a man who personally delivered over 4,000 babies, he is an advocate for the unborn. I am all for a federal repeal of Roe vs. Wade as long as people have the right to decide for themselves by influencing their state governments to reflect the will of the people or that of Sate law. Decoupling us from the federal teat and allowing us to govern ourselves more locally.

It is so easy for us to simply go for what is popular or trendy, I think that the democrats will probably choose their candidate based on what is trendy… probably going for Hillary of Barack because of their gender or skin color. What candidate is a candidate of change? Everyone is talking about change, but who actually has radical ideas that will move our country forward, improve our liberties and allow us the greatest opportunity for personal advancement. Many of the democratic candidates have ideas about reform that require more government. Health care and retirement… increasing the entitlements of our country and leading us into deeper and deeper debt.

If you have no idea who Ron Paul is, I encourage you to Google him and research his ideas for yourself. I think he is the most reasonable and practical candidate out there. Sure there are plenty of good men and women out there who are seeking to lead our country, but how deep are their fundamentals? How much new government would their policies create? How much do you know about these people really? It is way to easy to rest on celebrity, to go for a candidate that makes us feel good about ourselves, but will choices based on that rationality move us forward? I can’t say I have come to a conclusion yet, the good thing is that I have some time to research the issues more. My question to you is, is your candidate causing you to explore issues, or does their rhetoric simply lull you to sleep, convincing you that everything will be OK when they get to office. I personally lean toward the candidates that cause me to ask the most serious questions and lead me to understand the depth of my ignorance.

I have spent the last few months trying to crack the nut of filmmaking. One thing I’ve learned about making movies over the last year, is that it takes connections and lots of favors–unless you happen to have wheelbarrows full of money. My focus over the last six months or so, was to expand my network of contacts in the Nashville area to include a large number of people who work in film and video production. At first, the going was slow. I joined groups and organizations, explored web groups and even tried networking on Myspace–all of which yielded very little.

When I left my full time job in November, I planned to spend three months working on personal film projects, none of which ever got off the ground–I just didn’t know enough people in town. Instead, I just bought more equipment and looked for opportunities to use it. With the exception of shooting a few local music shows, nothing was happening. Several false starts occurred but each project fell flat.

Enter the 48 hour film project. I had wanted to do a 48 hour film since last year but, once again, didn’t know enough people to build my own team. I posted on line and asked around trying to find a team to join. I even inspired a friend to put together a team and failed to join her team, instead waiting to join a group who had experience. At the last minute I received an email looking for someone with a camera and sound equipment. I joined the team and made my first film in Nashville.

My team had a writer/director who was an absolute nightmare– she quit the project three times within 14 hours. Our movie wasn’t all the great, but I worked with some great people, all of whom were passionate about making films… finally, the network was growing. After the 48 hour film project, I finally realized that my network was larger than I thought. Many filmmaking conversations were had in a short period of time, and some project plans set in motion.

On the heels of 48HFP, I joined the crew of a indie film shooting in Nashville. All of my time over the last week of shooting was night shoots, to which I dove in feet first. I was able to exploit previous experience on other sets to help out as a Lighting Tech (also known as an Electrician in film circles). I really enjoyed working with lighting and actually felt as though I did a good job. It helped that I was working with at least one experienced Gaffer who I gleaned even more knowledge from. I felt I was on a roll.

I started thinking about filmmaking seriously. I started meeting with other filmmakers, producers and actors. Projects began to bloom and plans started being made; then I found an ad on Craigslist looking for some PAs for a feature length indie production in town. Feeling confident that I could add more value than just a PA, I asked if they needed any grips or even a gaffer. As it turned out, they most certainly needed a gaffer and they budgeted a deferred salary for me on the film.

I got very excited and started digging in more technically to the position of a gaffer. Up until then, I thought of a gaffer as a “lighting guy,” but what I discovered, is that in Hollywood circles, a Gaffer is a pretty key guy… and is usually expected to provide the lights for the shoot. He would also be expected to make the light do whatever the DP (director of photography) wanted; like make the set look like early dawn or change the mood of the scene with colors and shadows… it is actually a pretty complicated office to hold.

Concerned that they might be expecting me to have more knowledge and equipment then I actually did, I emailed them letting them know, that I am more qualified as a Lighting Technician than a Gaffer per se. They immediately placed an ad on Craigslist looking for a Gaffer and I felt sort of slighted. Eventually they found a new gaffer and I was to become his assistant.

The shoot was going to be 18 to 20 days and it was looking to be my first complete feature length production that I was to work from beginning to end. I was excited, until I started getting the vibe that things weren’t all that put together. I asked the producer about any pre-production work that was going to be done, and I clearly got the impression that no location was going to be reviewed for lighting before shooting. This was complicated even further when it began to look like they had done no work at securing a grip truck or a lighting package before the shoot.

Even before we started shooting, I started worrying that I was joining a half-assed production. Later when I found out that they were shooting the movie on film and not digitally, I forced myself to think more positively–certainly no one would try to shoot a movie on film if they didn’t have the equipment they needed. I started worrying when I had to call the producer the night before to get a location and call time for the first day of shooting (the next morning).

When I reached the producer, I was told that crew call was an hour before talent so, I took the opportunity to ask if a grip truck and lighting would be there when I arrived–I desperately wanted to survey the equipment. The reaction began to frighten me. She said that she knew that we had a camera and film stock, but wasn’t sure about lights. She asked if she could look into it and get back with me.

My return call confirmed my fears, they had not rented a grip truck or lighting package and they were depending on some lights that the DP had to shoot with. Now if there is one thing that I have learned about movie making–to make a professional production, lighting is essential. Despite my fears, I drove an hour and a half outside of Nashville to get to the set. We waited for over an hour before the Director arrived. Shortly after, the DP an First AC (assistant cameraman) arrived and began unloading gear.

While it wasn’t my worst nightmare, I began to worry when I discovered that our lighting consisted of three 1K lights and a single PAR (which is a glorified floodlight). He did have some professional C-stands and a few flags, but he also arrived with some of the trappings of a Home Depot movie gear… stuff that works, but doesn’t stand up to the abuse that professional equipment takes every day.

I quickly learned that outside of the actors and the Director’s desire to shoot on film, everything else was a second thought. Our first location was pitiful, it looked nothing like it should have and no art direction was in place to even make the location look authentic. The actors were great, but the limited lighting kit meant tons of fiddling and having to settle with inferiorly lit scenes. There might have been enough light to get things exposed on film, but the required position of the lights caused some horrible shadows, something that I hope is hidden or out of focus in the final product.

Things seemed really bad at the end of the first day. We were already two scenes behind, but there was a promise that things would be sorted out by the second day. Day two came and things got worse. More struggles to get enough light, slow setups and people were starting to get grumpy on the set. I desperately wanted to get things done, but everything moved at a snails pace, and the Director seemed acutely absent most of the time. By mid day, there was a sense among most of the cast and crew that we were on a ship without a captain.

To make things worse, the Director began to tell some of the crew that he wanted to wrap early so he could catch the Tennessee football season opener at 7:00PM. I don’t think anyone had a problem with that until a rumor began circulating that he wanted to make that time up by having an insanely early call time the next morning…no one was fine with that. The situation degraded further when under the pressure of getting all of the scenes done early he began to rush the actors and the shots.

The cast and crew began to feel uncomfortable. We were racing to get a bedroom lit for the next five scenes on the schedule, but as fate would have it, the sky turned dark and all of the lighting equipment outside needed to be pulled because of rain. 7:00 was closing in and no one knew what we were going to do. Then, dinner was called early while we waited for the rain to stop. Sometime during the chaos, our Director disappeared, and everyone began speculating that he had returned home to watch the Tennessee game.

Grumbling turned into outright complaining. The Assistant Director was having secret meetings with the Producer and the everyone was wondering aloud where our Director was. Eventually, the Producer walked in and took the rooms temperature about wrapping early. She explained that we would now be five scenes behind on our third shooting day if we wrapped. She walked away without making a decision.

The complaining erupted into bitching and now the lead actress was complaining that she thought she was going to be on a professional shoot, and that she had worked on student projects that had more leadership than our film. We all agreed with her. Eventually, she made the decision that we were waiting for. She said that she was done for the day and was going home. Well, without our lead, there was no more shooting for the day–it was a wrap.

I drove home with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. This film was in the toilet and I didn’t expect it to get past the week. The following day was Sunday and I had the desire to go to church since the schedule was going to prevent me from going for the next few weeks. I told the producer and the DP that I was going to be in after noon. I stayed for the Lord’s Table and took off after I took the bread and cup.

I called around looking for the location and started my one and a half hour drive to Mt. Pleasant, TN for the third day of shooting. I arrived on set as they were finishing up the last shot for that location. I wasn’t there long before I received some shocking news.–our lead actress had quit the film. Our first two days of shooting were now wasted. They had a replacement for her, but the character was no longer blond, she now had raven black hair… which wouldn’t seem like a big issue, except we were now on our way to a school to shoot some montage scenes from the character’s childhood… and all the young actresses were blond.

Everyone seemed to be completely un-shaken by the casting change. They were rolling ahead with the schedule as planned. This sparked much discussion among the crew. Let the bleeding commence. I arrived at the school ahead of the rest of the technical crew. I ended up following the wrong car to the wrong location. At the school it became crystal clear that no one was piloting the ship. There was absolutely no art direction for the scenes, no props and no forethought what-so-ever.

If it wasn’t my frustration with the way the shoot was being run that put me over the edge, it was the lack of appreciation for the kids and parents that showed up at the school and provided their own costumes for the shoot. The director never once publicly thanked anyone. Lack of planning continued as the sun set on an outdoor shoot for a playground scene. Complicating things was that the main character hadn’t had her makeup from the previous scene removed which provided just one more continuity error for the film.

I think at that point I was done. Three days of filming had sucked just about all of the life out of me. Idle time was spent complaining with the crew and second-guessing the director… something that should never happen on a set. I told the DP that night that Day four would be my last day.

Day four was just as bad, if not worse than any of the other days. The sound guys were quitting and half of the rest of crew was considering quiting. I really hope that they get it all sorted out. I feel bad for those folks who came from out of town, those who believed in the film enough to risk deferred compensation. I had planned to stick it out, but in the end, it was just requiring to much from me. It was hard for me to imagine that the film could get finished let alone make some money. It wasn’t worth the $20 per day it was costing me to drive to the set.

By the first day of shooting they were already out of money. They were shooting on film and were already out of money! In a way, it was a gift that the lead actress left. If they can get some money back from her, they might have some additional budget to get essentials like film development and props.

In the end, it reinforces my belief that you can’t get movies done without using people. If the movie gets made, I hope it sells and make a boat load of cash, not for my sake, but for all of the people who were used in the making of it. I hope that when I do my first feature, I can get half the number of people to believe in it and give me their time and energy, but I hope with this experience, I wouldn’t make the same freshmen mistakes.

In respect for the cast and crew, I am not naming the production and I still wish them all the best. I met and got to work with a lot of great people. Heck, the Director was a nice guy, just not much of a leader. I figure the worst that can come of it, is that someone’s uncle and grandma’ loose some money and a lot of other people gain some great movie making experiences… those that can’t be taught in a book and can best be learned by personally making the mistake itself. Hopefully, at the end of all of this, everyone is much better for it.

It was recently, in a conversation with my brother, that my ears laid hold of something profound. We were knee deep in a conversation about living life when he mentioned a friend and something that he found incredibly frustrating about him. The conversation had steered curiously to the way the some people live, or rather, don’t live life. In the midst of his descriptions of his friends activities and inactivities he uttered a phrase that landed smack dab in the middle of my psyche like a pallet of bricks. “He lives his life in his mind; he doesn’t actually do anything, he just sits around thinking about doing things.” His statement crashed heavily, as the pallet of bricks broke the bands that held their form and spilled out awkwardly in a pile. “Ouch!,” I thought, “This is going to take some time to clean up.

Over the few weeks since that conversation I have returned to my pile of bricks and attempted to sort them out. Having crashed so heavily, it was clear to me that my brother’s statement resonated in a very personal way with me; I found myself clearly reflected in his observation of a friend. A great deal of my time is spent thinking about life, and very little time actually living it in any real substantive way; this was flushed out a further this week when my brother directly challenged my manor of living. During our six and a half hour drive from Nashville to Dothan, AL to surprise our mom for her birthday, Matthew turned to me and said, “you think that you are a filmmaker, but you are really just some guy sitting alone on your couch in your living room, surfing on your computer and watching TV.” My psyche flinched, awaiting the crash of whatever heavy object this realization was determined to embody.

However, despite my expectation of some kind of weighty crash, this statement seems to have taken a different form–no longer something chaotic and obstructive, this realization seems to have taken the form of a spade, or possibly a plow head. I think that this has become a true epiphany and could possibly be resulting in a paradigm shift. For years I have bemoaned my state of existence, blaming it on other people or some sort of cosmic joke. Lately, I have been undergoing some major personal evaluations which have resulted in a series of life changing realizations and it is entirely possible that this one will join those ranks.

I never seemed to put together such a simple thought. For many years, I have sat around expecting things to happen in my life and it seems that nothing ever seems to happen; however, this is not entirely true. Things happen all the time, but rarely do those things live up to my imagination of them. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons that I have been so bad a having a relationship with someone… too much thinking. In nothing is my pattern of “too much thinking, not enough doing” more obvious that with filmmaking. I know a lot about filmmaking, I have loads of gear and have read plenty of books. I’ve studied it and spent countless hours thinking about it. However, thinking about things like that rarely result in anything. The most vivacious people are those who are out there doing stuff, not those inside thinking about doing stuff.

I have been looking at my recent past under this new lens and finding some really destructive patterns. I don’t think this is any more evident that in a recent interaction with my relatively new friend Kim. It is odd that our initial connection happened because she had read some of my blogs and thought that we were so incredible similar. In retrospect, that thought seems so incredibly odd since, in many ways, we are polar opposites in terms of our personality. Regardless of personality, we do share a bunch of things in common, one of which is filmmaking.

Kim and I have had many conversations about my desire to become a filmmaker, and it was almost two weeks ago that I was set up for one of my clearest examples of how I practice that art of “thinking, rather than doing.” In light of our many conversations about making films and telling stories, and fresh off our participating in Nashville’s 48 Hour Film Project (www.48.tv), Kim posed an opportunity to shoot a small documentary about an interesting local character that she knew. Over the duration of our conversation, I spent the whole time talking around the project. I explained all the things that we needed to and should do, I passed off the initial work and directed her to find a way to get the project rolling without me. At the moment, I thought I was being pragmatic, but in hindsight I realize that I was possibly blowing off a project because it didn’t fit my minds model of a documentary I would do.

No wonder it seems that things don’t seem to happen in my life; because when things do happen, I am quick to dismiss them if they don’t meet up to the standard that I have formulated in my imagination. The funny thing is, that I know that I am creatively at the best when I am working in collaboration with someone and an opportunity to do that was in my face and I baulked. While Kim is a dreamer, she is also a doer… I, on the other hand, am just purely a dreamer. How is it that I, with the desire and capability to become a filmmaker, seem to find my way out of work? It seems so simple, so I can’t help but wonder where I got this self-defeating mentality? Some period of life must have instilled me with it, but at the moment, I haven’t discovered it.

The more I think about this… thing, the more I see how pervasive it is in my so-called life. Way too many areas of my life are infected with it. I fail to build relationships because of it, and I am pretty sure that I can’t seem to find a direction in life because of it. I think that spade of this new epiphany has broken the dry and impacted soil in my mind and seems to be tilling up a whole bunch of things that I have been completely ignorant of. I certainly don’t want my legacy to be that of someone who never lived up to their potential or left behind a life unlived. I deeply desire to awaken to the light of a day when I spend less time thinking about things and more time actually doing them.

I have always prided myself on the products of my mind, but it is becoming more and more clear that I spend way too much time there. I believe I really do live some sort of imaginary life in my head–a life where I am much more exciting that I presently am, at least in practice. So, this week I got of my ass and got out there. I finished a few projects and joined a film crew for the last five days of their shoot. I need to change the way in which I think about things and begin to spend more time doing things. I am not quite sure I know how to do that yet, but one thing that I am sure of is that I no longer want to live the most colorful parts of my life in my mind. In essence, that IS filmmaking, taking the figments of someone’s imagination and making them visible to others. If I hope to do that with someone else’s imagination someday, why can’t I do it with my own imagination now–only for real?

It just hit me as I began to think back on my life. I started chasing back my history in association with film, trying to figure out what path lead me to where I am today–considering a life in filmmaking. It all started, in full, during the summer of 1982 when my family passed through Atlanta, GA on summer vacation. My aunt and uncle live in Atlanta and we stayed with them a few days, before continuing our annual trek to my Grandmother’s house in southern Alabama. In 1982, I was 12 years old, and near my peak as a dreamer, perfectly prepared to be bitten by the bug.

In order for you to understand just what the gravity of that summer involved, you need to know a little about my history, because there is probably much about it that few people can connect with today. I grew up in a strict Christian household. For most of my childhood my parents were members of a Fundamental Baptist church. Unless you have some connection with this particular breed of Christendom, you would have no reason to understand just how strict my household was, and by strict, I mean religious. My particular church was pretty extreme when it came to religious rules. Women did not wear pants, men wore suits and ties to church and nearly all worldly pleasures were anathema.

It seems that the Fundamental Baptists were really concerned with worldly living, and had hosts of rules for members that were sanctionable, meaning, if you were too worldly, you could lose your membership and be excommunicated. Granted, I never new anyone who was excommunicated for worldly living, but the fact that fire and brimstone was awaiting such a person, it wasn’t really an issue–at least not that people would make public. Part of this hyper-legalistic religion’s job was to make up rules about what was off limits, and I my parents took great effort to ensure our compliance. Among the prohibitions was nearly anything that the average person took pleasure in. Not only were we prohibited from the normal vices like smoking, drinking and gambling, but we could not listen to rock music, dance… or go to movies.

So, until the summer of 1982, I had never been to a movie theater… that was until our visit to my aunt and uncle’s in Atlanta. For those of you who where not around in 1982, there was a great deal of buzz about Steven Speilberg’s latest movie. My aunt and uncle were former Christian missionaries for a more liberal wing of the Baptist Church… Southern Baptist. It seems that the Southern Baptist had no problem with going to the movies and this somehow allowed them to prevail on my parents to allow us to go to see E. T. the Extra Terrestrial.

Sitting that summer in front of the big screen, eating popcorn and watching kids fly on bikes–I was mesmerized. The magic of the movies fit so well with my youthful imagination and I felt like I had been missing something all my life. It was at that theater in 1982 that I was bitten by the movie bug, something that has taken many forms throughout my life. Upon our return home my mom suffered some criticisim when my youngest brother leaked our movie going experience to others in the church, something we were warned not to do by my parents.

By the end of 1982, my parents began visiting other churches and by 1983 lifted the embargo on movies on their children once they turned 13– convenient, because I just happened to turn 13 that May… just in time for the release of Return of the Jedi which my dad took me to for my birthday. Actually, the bug bit me earlier in my life when I watched a TV show in the making of the Empire Strikes Back. I remember that, because I made my own stop-action animated movie at home sometime around 1980.

Since that time, I have seen many hundreds of movies in the theater and it has even been during several depressed periods of my life that I sought mental and emotional refuge in the theater. Many summer Saturdays spent hopping from screen to screen during all day movie fests. I’ve even been through dry periods, most notable in the early 2000’s when the magic of movies eluded me and studios produced some of the worst schlock since the 1970’s. For nearly 4 years I didn’t enter a theater and had no real desire to.
My history with film has been a rocky path filled with many twists and turns, but in 1998 I worked on my first film shoot in Atlanta and after learning the jobs of a dolly grip and jib arm operator, my love for filmmaking took on a whole new persona. Today I wrestle with how to pursue my passion and where to draw my boundaries. I want to tell stories for a living, but I have no idea how to go about that the right way.

As I laid sleeplessly in my bed early this morning, I chased the dream back in time. This is a dream that has haunted me for over 25 years. When I juxtapose the life of a filmmaker on that of a Christian, I still wrestle with some of the residue of my youth. Can such a worldly profession be something pleasing to God? I have spent years fighting it, wondering where God wants me in life. I worry that somehow I will choose a path in life that is not according to God’s good pleasure.

As these thoughts spun in my head, a verse from the Bible bubbled up from the midst of my confusion. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.” Such a verse is both comforting and confusing to me. At the moment, I can only trust that the verse was God’s speaking to me in the midst of my current wrestling. It reminds me that He has the ability to direct my path. If I trust in Him, I also trust in his leading. If God allows my path to head down a road that leads to a film career, I shouldn’t question and doubt it, I should just trust in Him.

If I trust in God and in His leading, I have no other choice than to believe that 25 years ago, while sitting in that theater under the glow of the big screen, that somehow God was directing my path. Whether that path leads to or away from a career in film, I do not know; what I do know, is that I trust not in my own understanding, but trust in the greatest Director of all, the One who is capable of directing my path.