I'm Really Stupid

I know it's been a while (over a year in fact) since I last posted here. I attribute this to the fact that I'm not the type of guy who thinks talking about his life on a daily basis on a blog is terribly intelligent...or interesting. I mean come on, who could have that exciting or interesting a life? Even bomb squads have their days off.

Anyway, I'll get to the meat of this post: I Hate Columbia College. Yes, hate it. I know that's a rather strong indictment and hate is a strong word, but I have strong feelings and I didn't want to project any ambiguity about the strength of my hateness for Columbia College.

Maybe hate is too strong a word. Looking back over my tenure at Columbia College I would have to say that I failed at what it was I was trying to accomplish. I wanted to make one really good short on 35mm that would solidify my reel and put me in a strong bottom position of making things happen when I moved out to LA.

Now, to those in the know...I know that even that, is a pipe dream. LA is a very strange and difficult place to get started in ANYTHING in the entertainment biz. Even if you have a connected relative, there's absolutely no guarantee of anything. 95% of the people who head out to make their claim in LA, never make it. They end up broke or marginalized or ignored or all three at once. I know the odds are stacked so far against me that's its depressing to even do the math, but you never know until you try anyway. Nobody's going to give you anything, you have to take it. I'm willing to to try, I've got nothing to lose, other than a place to live. I don't have a wife or children or even that many friends (which hurts me big time), but I decided a long time ago I was going to do this anyway.

The problem is, I'm stupid. Yes, I'll admit it. Stupid and judgmental. The reason I don't have many friends from college is that I was impatient and a perfectionist. I got tired of the big talk from people who no reason to talk big. The rampant ego's from people who had little or no talent really irked me. I mean, I knew I'd be able to deal with it in LA, just not at school when you're supposed to be learning and ego shouldn't be a factor at that point. It was that mindset that prevented me from making any amount of friends at Columbia. If I had just let it go, I'd probably have a much bigger social network. Lesson learned.

I spent the better part of 15 years studying the 'what' of the film industry rather than getting to meet and know the 'who'. There's an old saying, "Who you know gets you there, what you know keeps you know keeps you there." So I, stupidly, concentrated solely on learning
the 'what' of the film biz (style, technique, technical, art, business) on the assumption that once that was in place, I could concentrate on the who and the rest would fall into place.

Again, those in the know are going, "Wow, that was...really stupid." Because the key to the whole thing is learning both the who and the what at the same time, so that as you grow and learn, the 'who' are noticing and can provide you with opportunities if they feel like it. If you're learning the what and the who isn't noticing, you're screwed, because they don't know you, so they don't care what you know.

Getting to back to why I...disliked...Columbia College, is that from my perspective as someone who had already worked a little in the industry as a shooter, grip, gaffer, and line producer, Columbia College was really, really disorganized. They had incredibly archaic rules and fostered little to no creative development. They locked out major production assets to virtually every student, it was incredibly disheartening.

But again, it was my failure at not penetrating the structure of Columbia and not making enough friends that resulted in not attaining my goals there. My type A personality coupled with my natural inclination towards being a loner really zapped my potential there, and I don't really have anyone else but myself to blame.

Sad really, because now I'm in LA in an $850/month apartment, no job, no prospects, and next to no connections. The foreseeable future is going to be very difficult. But I won't give up. I've sacrificed too much to just give up and curl into the fetal position on the floor of my kitchen.

The never ending awakening

It's so strange how my body and mind refuse to go to bed at night. I sit here, clinging to the day, knowing full well that the paltry four hours of sleep I'll get will ruin me when I have to get up later, but for some weird reason, I just don't go to bed. Maybe it's because I feel I can't accomplish anything while I'm sleeping. I can't even remember my dreams anymore; that's another reason I don't go to bed. If you can't remember your dreams, why bother sleeping? I have melatonin but I don't take it, I'm afraid I'll get dependent on the stuff; that and I hate taking pills. Trying to fall asleep is so arduous for me, it takes forever. I lie there for what seems like decades, waiting to fall asleep, watching the hours march by, cursing my insomnia. I'd give anything to be able to fall asleep within ten minutes like normal people do.

End of the Semester

So, it's Thursday night/Friday morning. Three papers and two finals left. Why the hell am I cramming all this in at the last minute? Because I'm stupid that's why. The only consolation I have is that the second I get on the plane Saturday morning, I'll probably pass out. It doesn't look like I'm going to get any sleep until then, and I'm sure I'll have shaved off a large portion of the waning years of my life with the copious amounts of caffeine that I will have consumed.

Man, these papers are soporific. No wonder I have to down pot after pot of coffee just to get through them. Why do teachers insist we write these inane essay's that have already been written about a thousand times in other places? How can anyone have an original opinion on any of this shit? I mean, Christ, classical composers have been around for some 300 years, I doubt any college student is going to come up with anything reverent about Mozart or Beethoven that hasn't already been said. I feel like strangling myself with a rubber hose.

Oh well, I'll just have bang out some boring shit and hand it in. I can't believe I'm paying eight grand a semester to learn stuff that I could have learned by spending eight bucks in late fees at a library (shameless Good Will Hunting rip-off). Pbbbtttt!

I must be nuts

So, I get up on....what day is it right now? Saturday, 1:42am. So I get up on Thursday morning at around 11:30am. I've taken the day off from work so that I can do my 10 page producers report for Script Analysis and I proceed to fuck off till about 8pm when I seriously begin working on it. You know, with thinking.

Right around 10:30pm I actually start working on it. 50 distractions, 5 outbursts, 2 pleas to God and 8 rants against myself for being stupid later, I finnish the project. Now it's 9:00am and my Camera Seminar I class starts in 30 minutes. I toss everything in the backpack and head out. Comin' up on 22 hours of continuous wake and a pot of coffee surging through me and things aren't looking too bad. I almost get to the train platform and FUCK! I FORGOT MY WALLET! Now I gotta walk the half mile BACK to my place which takes 12 minutes, get my wallet and head BACK to the train. Oh goodie, now it's 9:25am and I see the FUCKING INBOUND TRAIN PULL AWAY FROM THE PLATFORM GODDAMNIT! Right around 9:55am I walk into class and realize during the commotion I forgot to eat anything in the last 7 hours and the pot of coffee is wearing off. Teacher rolls out information a thousand miles an hour till 11am when we break for 10 minutes. I run my ass over to the Dunkin Doughnuts up the street for a bagel breakfast sandwich and coffee that tastes like it's been strained through a sweat sock and then had road tar added to it.

Class ends and the sweat sock tar special only takes about half the sleep away. I'm now officially Bob DeNerio in drag. 8 cigarettes later Script Analysis begins. We have a guest speaker who's already a DP three years out of Columbia College and I think I'm older than he is. His lecture is good at first then he starts to repeat himself to the vacuous morons about the assignments he's given them (yes, the guest speaker gave us an assignment). Apparently, sequential letters as a labeling system confuses a lot of people. Suddenly I feel like a genius, but it quickly wears off when I remember Columbia had an open admissions policy until last year and the clueless dolts haven't dropped out yet. The sweat sock tar special has worn off and I begin to sink in my seat. Somehow I manage to pull through and class finishes.

Then I go to work. Yes, work. 30 hours now without sleep and I get to go work at the University Center patching holes in the superdorm walls put there by inane, misbegotten, punk-ass, spoiled brats of parents who obviously had a lobotomy when they conceived their child. Yay. Half-way through my shift (that ends at 11pm) and I don't think I'm going to make it. Two Starbucks cold vanilla and caramel coffee's later and I'm back to Deniro. Work ends and I go home expecting to die the moment I go through the door.

BUZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT! WRONG! Guess they put cocaine in Starbucks these days. So I watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for the first time, laugh my ass off (surprisingly, it's a pretty good movie), and then decide to write this. Ok, let's do the math. It's now 2:11am, Saturday morning. Let's see, add the four, carry the one, divide by pi and then multiply by the number of socks in my pseudo dresser/wire shelf serving as my dresser.....Holy shit - 38 hours and some 45 minutes I think. Maybe I'll go to bed.

Trade one for the other

Yay! The depression's finally gone into remission. A sunny and clear, 70 degree day in Autumn was just what I needed.

Now I'm bored. Doh!

Plus, now that I can get back to work, I'm being smothered by the sheer amount of classwork I have to complete over the next four days so I don't completely fry my once stunning grade point average. Case in point, it's 4:30am and I'm only on page three of a ten page report due in...four hours. Shit! What am I doing here?!

Back to work. Where's the coffee?

Wandering aimlessly, tired and sad

I can't stop listening to Thomas Newman. Why? I think because his penchant for emotional music latches onto my soul and makes it swim in the memories of my past. Many of those memories are wonderful; my life growing up, the friends I've had that have come and gone, the girls I've shared a lingering moment of happiness with, and the amazing adventures I've had. Unfortunately, there are more than a few memories that are bad and downright terrifying. Memories of sorrow, pain and heartache. Memories of death and other unpleasantries. I try to keep them in perspective, after all, I am still alive, but they come and haunt me in my dreams, especially when I'm feeling unproductive and "stuck". I try to remember the good times, and they come sure enough, but they have the most unpleasant characteristic of being incredibly fleeting. Whilst the bad memories have the knack for hanging out longer than the drunken frat boy at the party.

*sigh*

I know what's causing this. It's the damned weather. I suffer from SAD. Seasonal Affective Disorder. When the clock heads back an hour and the sun makes its retreat towards the southern hemisphere, the depression inevitably sinks in. I already have enough trouble sleeping as it is, but when winter sets in, I'm screwed. Like now for instance; I'm supposed to be in bed, it being 1:30 in the morning. I'm supposed to get up and work some more on my schoolwork, but my depression has kept me from doing almost anything this weekend. I have a ton of shit to do, and I did one assignment that took all of two minutes to do. All the others require a hefty bit of research and writing, neither of which I have the inspiration to do. I get so angry at myself for not doing it; that I'm supposed to summon my inner strength, gnash my teeth and lean into the grindstone, but the depression keeps telling me, "fuck it".

It's not laziness as I used to believe; I work hard. But there are times like these when my brain seems to be swimming in a soupy, lethargic mix, and I can do nothing but sit there and feel nothing and want nothing and do nothing. It seems endless, but I know it's not. I've gone through these before and they always go away eventually when my brain chemistry evens out, but the waiting is excruciating. Being a depressed perfectionist does not bode well for the spirit. When I come out of these, I usually accomplish something amazing; and the high of achieving something so great wipes out the memory of the dark, shadowy-blue that enveloped my world not so long ago. Until it happens again. Then I relive all my failures all over again.

I love this world. It's indescribably beautiful and terrifying all at once. The sunrise and sunsets, the view from atop a mountain, birds singing in the quiet morning air, Thomas Newman's music drifting through the wind in my mind, the smell of coffee and bacon on a Sunday morning, the sultry and soothing sounds of a woman's voice in my ear during an embrace, the endless ocean; all of these bring joy to my soul, as they do most. But I'm troubled by war, tyranny, poverty, hunger, disease, despair, death, and destruction. I want to reach out with a righteous arm and wipe it all from the face of the earth, leaving nothing but an endless stretch of hope. But I know that hope is born out of these horrible things, that our sacrifice and will to refuse to be beaten down carries us forward. We gain the strength to endure the loss of those taken from us so pointlessly. Ugh, but sometimes it fells like I'm being crushed under it all and I'm not doing enough to make right what has been made wrong. I take solace from personal experience that I'm supposed to endure all of this, that happiness is a wistful and elusive thing, especially to those who have such lofty goals. So I sigh, take a melatonin, go to bed alone and hope that I have a pleasing dream. Tomorrow's gonna come no matter what I do, so I might as well get ready. I just wish my brain would cooperate.

From out of nowhere...

Wow, August of last year huh? Well, why not make an update with some ramblings?

Everything that can be said about life, love, happiness, is all subject to interpretation. While all these subjects carry the same similarities across a broad range of emotions, when it comes to the absolute personal intimacies, it is always different. People always interpret their feelings in a way that no one else can ever truly understand. That is what confuses people and causes them to act in such a way that would seem contrary to the displayed and recognizable feelings that people are able to identify with on the surface. Underneath is always a different story, always. We cannot describe in words, only feel. Expression of those feelings, is what gives our soul definition. Even though we may recognize on the surface the expression of those feelings in others, we cannot say we truly understand those feelings inside that person. That is why we almost always screw things up, trying to appease what we cannot feel.

Honestly…I have trouble recognizing my own feelings. Then again, don’t we all?

Although the things in life that we cannot identify in others that we can see within our selves, does not prohibit us from loving others and caring for them in a way that they nor oneself will ever truly understand. Maybe we were not meant to understand these things which puzzle us so, yet propel us forward in our endeavors. The lack of understanding of these things that drive us, and the unending search for the truth and meaning of these things that we wish to understand, bind the human race inextricably and can never be replaced. There will always be new things to understand, new feelings to discover, new love to be experienced. Yet when we loose our way, it is often so difficult to find our way back to the path of integrity and principle, that the life that once burned in us so intensely, fades to a dull reflection of our former selves and of those things that we cannot bring ourselves to feel are lost, sometimes forever. If it were not for the others in our life, be it our family or friends, our loved ones or our enemies, life would hold neither purpose nor luster. Nor would the path that we are destined to follow in our own lives ever become clear. Boundless energy, undying hope, and above all, faith, will keep us bounded to our souls and endless spirit, forever moving across a universe of creation and discover.

Cause for understanding is the cause that will enlighten our lives. Those who do not wish to understand, nor make an attempt at discovering why people do the things they do, will forever be lost in a one sided world; a piece of paper without an opposite side, an idea with no rebuttal.