Recovering a Sense of Strength- Chapter 8

Julia Cameron’s eighth chapter has a good ring to it. Let’s get that strength.  YES let’s I say winning hand right away. I’m sick of getting almost shooting the moon. Time to shoot the moon. Here I come.

OPENINGS AND OTHER FALLS INTO DARK PLACES

I actually can thank a curator I who trained me to send out ten packets every time I got a rejection. I now get this adrenaline when I get rejected. It’s just comes. I’m ready to go.  Its odd when these feelings arise.  One’s Opening are one  of those places where you put a lot out and feel a bit over extended. It feels so awfully hard. No matter if you have red dots or not. There is a residual of exhaustion.  I was taught to  prepare something fun for the bit of depression afterward. I do that for  birthdays too now .   I’ve got some good stories.

After One opening I got food poisoned  and I was feeling pretty bad. I had to give a speech and right before I was to give the speech a woman  came up to me to tell me  “you’ve put on quite a bit of weight”. I just couldn’t get offended or it would have been another heave ho so  I said “thank you”. She was taken a back”. I gave a good speech after wards about this being the best time for artists because at last we can connect with  the world for free. I really do believe this. Not just in a silly way but seeing other art. Its a miracle isn’t it? I am grateful .

NOD TO JULIA MARGARET CAMERON

When Julia Margaret was in her twenties there was no photography per se. So she too started that art form because it started when she was fifty. So in that way its the same for me. I have in link again. She and I starting with new art forms. She at the beginning of photography and me at the beginning of digitography

Julia Cameron the writer. has a good quote in  chapter 8 . ” If I can’t shoot 35m “I”ll shoot 16m and if I can’t shoot 16m I’ll shoot video.” At the time that was a big come down.  Well I shot video and my stomach hurt making the choice between the best SD and HD I went SD because of the size of the HD camera and because I lost the ebay auction..

Julia Cameron writes that she lost the whole sound off a film and had to do the whole sound over as John Cassavetes had. Her film one many awards. Good thing because our sound is pretty horrible as well. I am holding on to the fact its the story. Just like a successful cafe is location location location a good film is story story story .  .

THE PEN PAYS MORE THAN THE BRUSH IN THE MAGS

I love reading Indie movie magazines. Some fool who wrote a letter and got his script sold for 250K. I am very thankful for this new art form because it sure takes a lot longer and is a lot more expensive selling fine art. Why you have to paint and paint and than you have to get the pieces over to the gallery that you had to photograph after you send slides one  expensive endeavor. Not for the faint at heart at all.

I was so excited to get the art  photographer of the last generation. Lee F.  I called him up. I even had the money to take my series of paintings for the LA gallery who had ordered these paintings (see archives) a Bergmont Station and all that. Lee F arrived. I couldn’t believe it.  He was grumpy. But I knew he was going to do a good job. He couldn’t  tell me when he was going to arrive but I managed to be there.  My space was now full of paintings. I had it pristine because it was going to be photographed. I couldn’t work in it. I didn’t live there. So he gave me an a half hour call and I would rush over and be there. Most of the time it worked.

He came in and looked and dropped names here and there and said that my studio was too short and he would have to do this and that and have to find  the lens that would work. I hoped he would. The next day  I was going to a class and as I go out the door he called and said he found the lens and I was to meet him at my studio. I told him I had a class I had to go to. He said well forget it. he wasn’t go to photograph my work.  And that was it. So “Lee F dropped me. It took me awhile to line up another photographer who was a bust the slides were late. I guess it probably didn’t matter in the end because I am not sure the gallery was real.

Then the gallery dropped me after seeing the slides (or not)  . Sometimes you just can’t do the right thing.  With all the money that goes out as a fine artist you just want to  sit down and cry. And here is some guy who takes a piece of paper and writes a good letter and sends it to I think 40 producers and gets a bunch of young producers who rush to their producers and say this is a hot idea and they get his script and say come on in and he does and he’s so happy that it happens for him. While I sit down near the railroad tracks. If you can’t beat them join them.

Here is an art form that you can make 250k for the cost of a ream and we hope its only the ream of paper.You can send this person 50 dollars and he will tell you who to send it to so you get your letter to this list that is hungry for your script. Its called the black book. I’m ready but I’m cheap. I’m going to send my letter to hungry people in the tv series that need other series, I think I will design a tee shirt and send it to them. or print it on the letter or envelope. There is this creative directory that changes every month and there are these people at the bottom in the producers section. I listened Hollywood north. (San Mateo community college). I’m going to send it to her and I’m going to send it to them. It cost nineteen dollars a month. Will I do it for a month. Will I send it to them?

The worst one yet is an Ivy league grad who had to be a hard porn editor for the play boy channel to make her movies for several years and made a movie about it and is now ??? That was a bit much. Not into that. I know someone who is  so I will pass this on. There are intern ships where you can intern with Disney writing scripts.

THE MOURNING- THE PILOT

I have been writing and writing I am exhausted. I finished the rough draft of New Mourning a pilot about Hospice -that went fast. I put myself with my migraines and the experience I’ve gone through as the nurse and my brother as the doctor. I don’t know if he is going to like it because I had to beef him up a bit. He probably doesn’t have a life-like that at all.

THE BEGINNING OF CRIMSON PEARL THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

I am now on to the graphic novel. The Crimson Pearl. I am stumped on that. Really. How do you draw a graphic novel. I pick up all the graphic novels and they look really bad. I’ve drawing my script. It’s a feature. I wrote what I saw. That’s why I am writing scripts. Because I see it. If  I had to write novels I would be in trouble I don’t know what I would do. But I can see what is supposed to be on the screen. That doesn’t mean I wrote everything it just means that I it’s easier than writing fiction.

ONE THOUSAND BUNS

I tried to go on an artist date. Ended up in China town buying Dim Sum pork buns having a stupid conversation about one thousand buns.  I kid you not. My family is coming over tomorrow to see my garden and I thought I would get some buns. China town in Oakland turns from desolate to bustling to darkness and sinister in seconds. Is comforting to me. I must have been Chinese in another life time. I don’t see myself. I guess they see another foreigner. I go into the various stores and see some place that reminds me of somewhere, bustling smelling of herbs  packed with people going somewhere earnestly.

I’m wondering how I got to be such a recluse. I seem to have some walls that some people can walk through and walls that others can’t. Did something happen to make me this way.

What guest did me in. All I remember is coming into the kitchen and seeing all the cherry tomatoes bouncing on the white kitchen floor and other items that are too fascinating to even write about here and locking my door and facing the train go past my door and I guess at some place I just need my spot to be a bit quiet.  So I can sort things out. But I like going out to very busy places so I can hear the very noisy charming cluttering voices and I don’t  know what they are saying.  Back to the poor dim sum sale person who kept telling     I should buy thousands it was a better deal. I just couldn’t do it. What was I going to do with thousands of buns this went on and on . She seemed so nice but I really didn’t think it was a possibility thousands of buns. Finally the Chinese American next to me said she says you get a free one if you buy them buy by  the “dozens”. “Oh” I said. So the Chinese American left and  I explained that I did want dozens. I had thought she was asking me if I wanted “thousands” and I didn’t want so many. I wanted “dozens”.  I would take two dozen please.  I bought two dozen pork buns.  We laughed.  I ate two and they were so sweet that I passed out right next to my house. I literally fell asleep. Really weird. I missed someone’s call?  Who  knows.