I was delighted to learn today that my good friend, Jason Craig, will see his latest film performance premiered this month in 17 cities nationwide (most in the Southeast). The film will also debut on November 6 at the Carmike 14 in Columbia, SC.
Jason plays “The Man” opposite Anna Chlumsky of My Girl fame.
While you’re here, check out more on My Sweet Misery!
Abandoned Tavern, Arcadia, VA
An historical marker nearby reads, “Here, on May 9, 1864, Sheridan was attacked by Wickham’s cavalry. Nearby, on May 22, 1864, Warren’s (Fifth) Corps, moving to the North Anna, fought Rosser’s cavalry.”
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“It would seem logic would dictate that these investigations be considered separate entities. However, I believe otherwise. I believe that these mysteries are…complementary verses of the same song. Now I cannot hear it yet, but I can feel it, and that’s enough for me.”
Agent Cooper to Major Briggs, Twin Peaks
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“And me…I think I finally understand what Neller was trying to say. It only happens if it doesn’t matter. It comes without effort.”
Zia, Wristcutters
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Sean: Thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting. Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me…fell into a deep peaceful sleep, and haven’t thought about you since. Do you know what occurred to me?
Will: No.
Sean: You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talkin’ about.
Will: Why thank you.
Sean: It’s all right. You’ve never been out of Boston.
Will: Nope.
Sean: So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. And I’d ask you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach, dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watched him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you, who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, ’cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. I look at you…I don’t see an intelligent, confident man…I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius, Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You’re an orphan, right?
[Will nods]
Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally…I don’t give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some fuckin’ book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I’m fascinated. I’m in. But you don’t want to do that, do you, sport? You’re terrified of what you might say…Your move, chief.
Good Will Hunting
—
“You weren’t wrong, Tom. You were just wrong about me.”
Summer, 500 Days of Summer
To the right of this page you will find a link to a new page entitled “Fun with Old Cameras.” As you’ve probably figured out by now, I have a rapidly growing collection of old box and folding cameras, which I prefer to actually put to use, rather than allowing them to gather dust and die a slow, deteriorating death. This page is dedicated to showing you some of the results, which I will post here from time to time (with an alert post about updates). Enjoy!
Looming, Limestone, SC
As some of you may know, I collect old cameras, particularly box and folding cameras, which hold some odd sort of sway over me for reasons I don’t fully understand. In any case, as I shop for these, I occasionally discover a spent roll of film inside the camera body, undeveloped, forgotten sometimes for more than 70 years.
I’ve blogged previously about Gene M., the gentleman who inspired me to take my own chances on rescuing these found images. Gene has been incredibly generous in answering my questions, and I am grateful for his assistance. I’m a complete novice at this, and he remains the master. Please check out his site.
On this round, I was working with four rolls of old film: 1) a roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan 120 from a Kodak #2 Cartridge Hawkeye (see above image and the “Fun with Old Film” page to the right for images); 2) an unidentified roll of 120 film (marked “B2-8″) found in another box camera; 3) a roll of Panchromatic 127 found in a Brownie Starmite; and 4) a roll of Plenachrome 127 found in a Brownie Reflex. Roll #2 was a disaster–entirely black and perhaps mildewed after processing. Roll #3 is badly damaged and may not be scannable. Roll #4 had no old images on it, but I shot the rest of that roll with images of Griffin and me that may be scannable.
See this space for updates as they occur.
In the summer of 2006, while I was engaged in trying to totally recreate my own novel, Song of Attica, intriguing advertisements for a quirky little film called Lovely By Surprise kept popping up in the periphery of my world. Having learned long ago to pay attention to things that are persistent like that, I finally took some time to watch the dozen or so clips from the film that were posted online as part of a Lincoln-Mercury advertising scheme. In spite of how icky that sounds at first (movies parading as car ads), the website and its embedded clips fascinated me.
The problem was that the full movie was almost impossible to find to see. It was making the rounds of various film festivals, still being tinkered with, and garnering rave reviews and awards, which only added to my desire to see it. (You can read more about this film, as well as various reviews, at its website.) But the wait was sometimes excruciating–kind of like the wait I’ve forced my agent to endure while I finish my own novel, I’m guessing. Or at least I hope he feels that way.
But I digress…Lovely By Surprise is now out on DVD (available thru Amazon, Best Buy, Netflix, etc.), and I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy. It’s a gorgeous, ingenious, and sometimes gut-wrenching tale about love, loss, and the ways in which cathartic creative pursuits force us to walk the precipice of insanity. And before you go assuming that this is Stranger Than Fiction (a great movie in its own right) all over again, forget about it, buster–this is not that story.
Carrie Preston stars, with Austin Pendleton. Soundtrack includes music from the incomparable Kelly De Martino, available separately on her album Radar.
The answer to the question I asked today:
As memory’s the final flame of life,
So they that must remain to remember
Build the present monuments to thy past.
If, thus, you’d have ordained to the future
A megalith to your good legacy,
Let it be carved of warm and gleaming smiles,
Heaved in crackling bursts of heavy laughter,
And consecrated with a burning love.
You can try it out, too: Ask the Oracle.
My excellent and enigmatic friend Jason Craig recently made available this short film about his travels with Flat Stanley, who was sent by Jason’s nephew to live with Jason for a while in 2004. The film also features Marybeth Gorman, one of my other favorite people in the world.
I am honored once again to be invited to exhibit two pieces for McKissick’s annual Spring for Art! fundraiser gala and exhibition. This year’s theme is “Wonder and Curiosity.” During the past year, I’ve experimented a fair bit with various toning techniques, and as part of that experimentation, I selected a handful of negatives from my 2007 Greece trip for sepia toning. Two of these will be exhibited and available for sale at the gala:
“…And Then Aphrodite Spoke” (Acrocorinth)
“Our Secret Sign” (Ithaca)
These are different works from those associated with the “…But One Man Alone” series and do not feature any of the text images you have seen in that series. Instead, these images are standard-framed, stand alone images. [The images presented here on this site are approximations produced in Photoshop. The images on exhibition at McKissick, however, are true sepia-toned, silver gelatin prints produced in a photochemical darkroom.]
The exhibited images will be on display from March 28 to May 9, 2009. Admission to the gallery is free.
For those wishing to participate in the Gala, it takes place on Friday, March 27, from 7:30 to 10:00pm. Tickets are $55/individual or $100/couple. Please call the Museum office at (803) 777-7251 to purchase tickets.
Each of the above images will be available for sale as part of the Gala. A portion of all proceeds will go directly to McKissick to support museum programs and community education.
“And there stood Nausicaa as he passed. Beside a column
that propped the sturdy roof she paused, endowed
by the gods with all her beauty, gazing at
Odysseus right before her eyes. Wonderstruck,
she hailed her guest with a winning flight of words:
‘Farewell, my friend! And when you are at home,
home in your own land, remember me at times.
Mainly to me you owe the gift of life.’
Odysseus rose to the moment deftly, gently:
‘Nausicaa, daughter of generous King Alcinous,
may Zeus the Thunderer, Hera’s husband, grant it so–
that I travel home and see the dawn of my return.
Even at home I’ll pray to you as a deathless goddess
all my days to come. You saved my life, dear girl.’”
–Homer’s Odyssey, Book 8
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“I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read in school and remembered as the story of a homecoming. But it is not the story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks, who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay but to set off again. The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile.”
–Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
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“Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.”
Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks
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“I was sitting alone on a park bench in the sunshine that day, thinking of a fourth play that was beginning to write itself in my mind. It gave itself a title, which was ‘Das Reich der Zwei’–’Nation of Two.’
It was going to be about the love my wife and I had for each other. It was going to show how a pair of lovers in a world gone mad could survive by being loyal only to a nation composed of themselves–a nation of two.”
–Howard Campbell, in Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night
