Clarity

This month my goal is to write and direct my first rough five minute short to submit as part of my application for a commision to produce my first dramatic digital short. It's a competition for the British Film Council and there is a possibility of a £12,000 budget up for grabs but I won't hold my breath. I'll just consider it an exercise in creativity as I'm probably too off-beat and too "foreign" to get my paws on any arts council funding. I'd probably have better luck selling gimp masks on eBay.

Last night Jackson came with me to do some lighting tests at Manchester Airport so I wouldn't look like the Puerto Rican wing of Al Quaeda canvassing the area with my video camera. The tunnels and the lighting in certain areas are particularly atmospheric, great for sci-fi themes and quite inspiring, it would be easy to produce a decent looking short film with a very low budget at this location but security restrictions mean that you can't really linger very long and you certainly couldn't bring tons of lighting equipment or boom microphones. Every shot would have to be carefully thought out and choreographed beforehand.

I've been thinking about the space in which dreams and reality overlap, as usual of course but I would have to condense this into a five to seven minute short and I have to get it done pronto as I plan to submit two proposals, one for a drama which I have not yet concieved and one for a documentary about the children of Guantanomo, a subject which suprisingly seldom gets press:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minors_detained_in_the_global_war_on_terror

I'm writing a full length fictionalized drama based on the Camp Iguana detainees and some of the research I am doing for this will be the basis for my work.

I guess I'd better get cracking now. I've had some difficulty with my concentration over the past couple of days so now I'm taking ProPlus caffeine tablets which seem to help but I have to take about four at a time to offset the Zonisamide. These along with Pepsi Max and Nescafe and I'm ready to go amigo!

 

Headspace

Although I'm certain it's a creative distraction rather than a clinical disorder I have the constant sensation of my head heating up. I feel as if I want to buy a giant helmut shaped ice pack and wear it whilst I write to alleviate the feeling that my head is in the defrost mode of a giant microwave oven. This is a diversion from my internal dialogue that I do not need when I am trying to write for long stretches at a time and it is very frustrating. I may need to go to the Writer's Hospital.

The first writers block exercise which I leave until I'm at the brink of desperation is to choose a lot of disconnected words from an unabridged dictionary. I spend about a half hour randomly opening pages choosing words I like, jotting them down and when I'm done I write a lot of random paragraphs and string them together to make a surreal short story. It's easier than choosing a theme when you're feeling depressed or uninspired and often it can get the ball rolling.

At the moment I'm away from home and I find that just a change of scenery can often be more inspiring, even though I'm just an hour down the road. I now have a list of different places in which I'm going to try to do some writing to see if I'm a bit more productive.

Most of my life I've had vivid dreams which I've been able to remember upon waking and which inspired me creatively but lately I find that I'm having these less often and need something more to ignite my creativity. 

I have turned to the British Cheese Board's "Cheese and Dreams" study which concluded that the amino acid tryptophan in cheese enhanced sleep and that stilton cheese in particular caused bizarre dreams in 85% of the women participants. I had previously considered a trip to Amsterdam to try magic mushrooms but as these are now outlawed I think I may have to settle for the mouldy cheese instead.

 

Lost Time

I seem to have a problem with lost time, not in the Whitley Strieber alien abduction sense but in the constructive usage thereof. 

I am not quite certain where this day has gone, I had grand creative plans for starting my new script and a short story but somehow between cleaning my kitchen, feeding the cat, checking my emails and surfing the web this time is gone. Certainly these activities could not have taken up six hours of the day so I resolve to make a diary detailing every activity I engage in that may be wasting my time.

My father, who is a very talented and creative person seldom spent much time on housework, organisation or any other practical matters and as a result lived in complete squalor but was a musical genius. Perhaps I should take a page out of his book and ignore all practicalities in life to concentrate on my art.

As long I the cat gets fed that's all that matters. 

The Secret

Anxiety and uncertainty have eaten away at me for a long time but now I have been introduced to a new concept in two different forms which is meant to radically change ones way of thinking and perhaps even realign the universe to work in your favour.

One is called "The Secret" and the other "positive affirmations." The theory is that if you change your thought patterns and attitudes to convince yourself that you are already on the road to success that you will find that miraculous changes in your life happen spontaneously. The theory is that any negative thoughts are actually the source of failure and bad luck and that anyone can change this through emanating more positive vibrations.

Lately I have had great difficulty with my appetite due to Zonisamide, the Japanese anti-epileptic mediation I am on. I think I may have to set an alarm clock to remind myself to eat so I can start emanating with these positive vibrations.

I'm feeling better already.