Absolutely Not Your Monkey
Three years ago about this time I had recently returned from a trip to San Francisco with a crazy idea for a website for my photography, and, possibly, one of them blog things. Two years ago I was putting the finishing touches on the damn book. A year ago it was published, and also about that time I came across a little online movie-making challenge called Lady X.
One interesting thing that happened recently involved my meeting a guy named Steve Chicorel, who works with Roger Corman. He was in town looking for shoestring directors, and I heard from Corbett via Sandy that he was interested in talking with me. So I called up Dean and Mindcrime. Two hours later we were all sitting at Corbett’s place, called The Living Room, pitching ideas around with Steve, who took a copy of Clay Soldiers on DVD back with him to present to Roger, along with a little Terracotta soldier as a kind of gift. I have no idea what the result of all this will be, but it’s cool to know that Roger Corman actually watched our little film.
Other stuff’s been going on, of course. It just hasn’t been described here…yet. I thought I would have an answer to the question Just What Do I Want From This Site by now, but alas, no. I’m still wondering. But it’s ok; there’s no deadline, and the space is here if I want it.
The recent story on the possibility of raising the price of downloaded music caused me to recall a conversation I had with Enya and her rather large agent/bodyguard several years ago when I was at TVBS. She was just finished with an interview and I was…I forget what I was doing. Probably hanging around before or after a cameraman gig. Anyway
Me: Man, I wish I knew you were coming, I would have brought all of my CDs for you to sign.
Enya: Yeah, well…
Rather Large Agent/bodyguard: Uh, you mean “her” CD’s, don’t you?
Me: Uh, yeah, that was what I meant to say.
And there you go, a complicated issue summed up in a few short, vague sentences. And now back to our regularly scheduled radio silence.
This is Darrell Gallant and me giving a talk on Clay Soldiers at Urban Nomad III.
Sorry about the site being down for so long; I ran over my bandwidth allowance for last month and haven’t the guts to upgrade my provider service.
I’ve also been rethinking this whole blogging thing. I read through my archives and discovered that my entries used to be a lot more interesting than they are these days. It seems like my life was more interesting back then, in the giddy early days of the new century. My attitude was different as well, but something happened over the nearly three years since I began this account. Well, many things happened, but one of the things I think made a difference was adding comments and taking this thing too seriously. Seemingly innocent comments on here became a big deal.
It sucks when something happens to you and the first thing you think of is exactly how you’re going to blog it and what people will think. My friends cultivated a love/hate relationship with my blog, fer crying out loud. And all the time I was thinking about that, I wasn’t getting anything else done. Granted, most of this happens at work when I have nothing better to do, but it seems like my whole attitude has changed.
In short, I’m sick of caring about it. I’ve lost focus. I still need a little time to reconsider this site’s purpose. Originally it was just a place I could put up some photographs for people to see, but almost three years and over 150,000 visits later, it’s become something else, something that is taking more of my attention than it deserves. And the last three years haven’t been the most productive for me. Do the math.
So I need to strike out in another direction, somehow. I’ve taken down the comments, but I’ll keep this page up, for now until I figure this out. Whether that includes occasional blogging or not, I’m still not sure. Maybe I should get a new domain name nobody knows of and resume blogging without all of the nasty real-life consequences. Or maybe I should quit altogether. For all I know the best thing would be to forget the Internet, move to Istanbul and play my trumpet in the streets for crazy hat money.
