Home with Covid this week. Almost seems retro. Like most of life, it is surreal and odd, perhaps an illusion or dream a butterfly is having. Of course, this could be the Covid talking, deceiving, tricking. In any event, I am stuck at home, and so I am finally putting away the last of the Christmas decorations, catching up on shows I need to catch up on, writing projects, and the final edit of my latest short film, which is a combo short film that stands on its own and a proof of concept, meaning a short meant to indicate what a feature version of this would be like. Plus I have to do a new draft of a podcast episode that is set to record in the next month with an air date sometime in the fall. A scary tale of the North Woods.
I'm rambling, like a lost hiker in a strange forest.
And I like it.
Shows I am catching up on:
The Traitors, on Peacock. It's a reality show set in a Scottish castle where a bunch of terrible people, most of whom have been on other reality shows, perform various tasks for money, and have to contend with the fact that there are secret traitors in their midst, plotting their demise. It's sort of a glorified version of the game Mafia, which I have played with many a theatre class over the years. The show is hosted by Alan Cumming. It's really fun, the scenery is beautiful, and Alan Cumming is just the best. As a bonus, the castle is just north of Inverness, which we were lucky enough to visit last summer, and one of the great joys in life is seeing some place you've been to on tv.
True Detective: Night Country, on Max. This is a fucked up story about a bunch of fucked up people in a fucked up part of the world, which I am quite familiar with. Alaska, land of the Midnight Sun and Midnight Souls, lost people who either have had their entire culture and history violated by intruders, or the intruders and their progeny, who mostly live their to be as far away as possible from wherever they came from. I'm sure there are happy, well balanced people up there. I just didn't meet that many. Especialy way up north. It's where I found my father when I was 28. A huge, dangerous country. The show is chock full of the supernatural, alludes to things like the Dyatlov Pass Incident, Murder, and mythology. The writing is tight, the imagery creepy and beautiful, and I can't get enough.
The podcast episode is based on a short play I wrote a while back that has since morphed into a pilot I am currently working on. The pilot is totally different, but the podcast is basically the play mooshed into a radio play format. It's titled "Alma's Anomalies", and is about a pair of slackers, ill equipped in every possible sense of the word, who journey to the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior in the hopes of resurrecting a ghost. Sadly for them, they succeed. The story is set to air on Coffee Contrails. More info to come soon.
The short, Burning the Old Man, is based on my play of the same name. The play has been my most successful writing project to date, and has been produced all over the world, in NYC, Prague, Sao Paolo, and various other places. It even had a run a few years ago up in Boulder at CU, which was conveniently located for me. The short takes the soul of the play, boils it down to its essence, cooks it for a few months at a high heat, and now is ready to serve. It is the first film from McSquared Productions, my new film company I've formed with my great friend Tim McCracken. It features an original score by Bob D'Haene and Matt Vogel, who are fucking awesome. More info on that soon too.
So, my thought for the day, as I sit, housebound and wanting to get out, is this. I think we manage to keep our minds closed to most of what is going on, most of the time. We create our explanation of existence, which seem to be variations on either "the world is terrible" and "the world is fantastic", all the while ignoring events as they unfold in real time. (if such a thing as time exists. I'm going with our existence being real, for the sake of this blog entry) The world has all sorts of shit in it. good and bad and bold and beautiful. Music, nature, violence, sorrow, death, birth, and on and on. We bounce through it all, and I think we need to experience it all completely, with as few filters as we can manage. I realize sometimes we need to keep some of it out. But I think we keep too much out too often.
Now that I've written that down, it doesn't sound as deep as it did while I was laying in bed ruminating.
Ah well. Two songs today. Into Dust by Mazzie Star, which was featured in episode four of Night Country and which I first came across while dealing with my mother dying. It both comforts me in the loneliness and makes me want to cry yet again. The other is Hallelujah by D'Haene. It is featured in the short of Burning the Old Man. Enjoy.
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