Turning Pro

Without this unstructuring, the creation of a new structure cannot proceed–since the bits and pieces are still tied together as meaning within unchallenged domains or concepts.

–John Boyd, Destruction and Creation

Thank you for calling Comcast. If you’d like to be placed on hold, press 1, 1, enter your phone number, then press 1, 2, 2, 1, 2. Once you are connected with your representative, please give them the phone number that you already entered, then verify the rest of your account information, so that they may instruct you to unplug your modem and plug it back in.

It’s fun to write stuff like that, to get it off your chest, to be a critic. Stupid, stupid cable companies. No one will argue with you. You may as well throw in a diatribe on traffic or the weather, and can you believe the gas prices lately? Anyone can say me too. But at some point, you have to decide who you are:

• Are you just going to be angry at them?
• Will you be the one who makes improvements within? Maybe engineer a modem that power cycles itself?
• Or do you see something at its core defunct and unsalvageable, and start looking where to plant the base charges?

It’s the difference between irrelevant, good, and great.

Last night, as I traded sleep to worry and think and fear, I decided unquestionably why I am here, and which one I am going to be. The anxiety came from finally understanding what was required of me: destruction. I know now, it’s prerequisite to the job.

• This post (or any of my writing)
• The way things are
• The way things ought
• That an idea has been thought of, or a problem already considered (especially if it is obvious)
• “We’re not hiring.”
• Your current emotional state
• The competence of others
• The competence of yourself
• Anything.

Givens are volatile things. It’s a good idea to be aware of them and how they got there, but only so you can avoid or dismantle them.

From a chapter of the same name in Emotional Intelligence:

And that is the problem: academic intelligence offers virtually no preparation for the turmoil–or opportunity–life’s vicissitudes bring. Yet even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige, or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on academic abilities, ignoring emotional intelligence, a set of traits–some might call it character–that also matters immensely for our personal destiny.

I think I am more self-aware than most, but that just means I get to have the biggest dumbshit mistakes explained to me when they fly by my radar. You can ask anyone who knew me when I was young: I was the dumbest smart kid on the planet. Ever since I realized and accepted that, I’ve tried to leverage raw intellect into common sense and emotional intelligence. I usually did this either by fucking up, or modeling the behavior of others, and then fucking up. Right now, my blog is really the only physical ledger of this, but if you could somehow stretch it back a couple decades to look at the whole process, you’d be baffled first, and falling off your chair laughing second.

That’s on purpose. I’m doing everything I can to accelerate the process, not “huddle under the blankets and stay warm.” If that means the process is more violent and unpredictable, that’s fine–it can only help me.

Chalk up hygiene and air-conditioning to the laundry list of “Things I take for granted.” There’s nothing quite like waking up at 5am, walking outside and having your shower immediately vetoed by the humidity of Shreveport. Then you realize it’s still dark, and there’s 14 hours to go. 12 on a perfect day, who knows on a bad one. We haven’t had one of those yet–of course we’re only on day 3–and I’m told things are running very smoothly so far. I have to be told this because I don’t really know the ebb and flow of principal photography–this is my first.

This puts me in the unique position of being blind to the fruits of our labor. Of course I can see the shots, hear the dialogue, everything. But there’s such a magnitude of work being put in, a lot of it that I don’t understand, to produce a finished product that I won’t see for several months. Because I’ve never been involved in film production, it’s difficult for me to see how all the elements will come together. It’s not “as it happens,” like with blogging or other media.

It’s the difference between tactics and grand strategy. You cannot afford to ignore either. Do the best photographers just “snap pictures,” or do they try to express a larger vision? Are you just trying to put words on a page, or are you telling a story? But they are interdependent, the menial supports the grand and vice versa. In movies, I can see how easy it might be to lose sight of either–you wouldn’t believe the ratio of man-hours to seconds of film until you witness it in person. It’s like watching people drag stones. They have their eyes on the summit, but they recognize the work it takes to get there.

I’ve worked lots of jobs with lots of people, but I’ve never really been in a position where I trust the people around me and their vision to really make something. In fact, I’ve never been around this many talented people period, the fact that we’re collaborating in an artistic effort–well, let’s just say that there’s no place I’d rather be, even if that place is wet, 95 degrees, and climbing.

Chaos is creativity’s alpha and omega. Ten pages of trash for one line of treasure. Some artists do better, and most never even find the one. Maybe they quit on page 9, maybe they don’t even try again.

Sometimes I wish I could just sit down and have the words just flow out of me. Some writers can do that. One fired synapse from thought to keystroke.

Me? It took me two fucking hours to write the above. That’s not typical, but it occurs when I’m not in my element. Probably why I’ve been having trouble blogging lately. Everything about my situation is the direct result of me purposefully taking myself OUT of my element.

Before I left Kansas City, I joked with my friends, “I can’t talk right now, I’m busy forgetting where I came from.” But that’s not too far off. I wasn’t where or who I wanted to be, so I decided to change. And despite the influx of experience, writing lately is a total grind, because I’m less certain of my words.

Now I realize: That knife’s edge is exactly where I want to be.

So a grind it is.