The Encampment Diaries – Resting On My Laurels

26/02/2023

Resting On My Laurels

This month has been one of those ups and downsies, so many downsies, but a few upsies too. Having burned through some books, managing to write out 70 pages of a new script, and twiddling thumbs on a script contest I entered back in September.

My friend announced the release date of her book a few weeks back and we both knew that as soon as that occurs, everything really becomes focused on it (It’s a great book, Diary Of Murders, out August 23rd, Sarah Cook, great writer), so Friday night we meet up after some intense weeks of writing, life-handling-bad-stuff and just fighting through things, using one-another’s up days to help in the bad, and got considerably drunk. Cut to waking up to a DING on my phone, a little heavy in head, at 9am on Saturday.

Some years back I entered Encampment into a contest and made it to the first rung. Not a surprise, it’s a fucking good script (I’m big-headed only in one place and that’s that I have 2-3 great scripts, one of which I managed to write only between December and January this past winter), and I found out whilst in Bergen, with friends. It was a beautiful e-mail to receive and immediately turn around to my ridiculously talented pals and celebrate together. It never went further in contest, alas, and things just slowed down on Encampment. Which is why eventually these diaries began.

This time around, I entered a production company’s contest whose desired screenplay elements seemed tailor-made to take Encampment. Small cast, limited locations, big ideas, capable to tell more within small budget. Encampment was always something that could be made for a small amount but have maximum impact. It’s set beyond the end of civilisation. It’s set outside of all life. It’s a few people in a small encampment in the desert wastelands. Tick, tick, bloody tick!

The e-mail was just one of those everyone probably got, but it’s a nice buoying of hope, belief and creation. A quarter-final confirmation of your work. It’ll go deeper. Someone may, thus, read it and champion it. Given my deep intents for this year, something of which I’m scared to take the major steps but really, really need to in March, this might just help me take the push like talking to my friend Sarah and reading her work has now helped her announce her own book’s release (Again, August 23rd, save the date, the thing rules). March I’ll find out if I made it beyond the first intake. March I’ll find out if I have the spine and head-strength to dive into an unstoppable concept. March will show in a big way what 2023 is going to play out like, the remains of the year past now gone, is it walking on air, or climbing up from the pit just pushed down?

Gulp!

Still, I got more laurels for my art!

The Encampment Diaries – A Year-Or-So Onwards

A Year-Or-So Onwards

31/01/2023

I haven’t come back round here for a while have I?

Dealing with things took a long time, then managed to curve away, and then come back again, like waves upon the shore, as recently as this past weekend I’ve found myself still succumbing to the gravitational force of the bed, the singular haven to avoid all things, only to exacerbate the noises in the head in place of the world at large.

But, beyond that, this past year was one for getting back out there. Which I did. Two more trips to Norway (Oslo and Bergen, including a film festival where I got to meet the producer of a short I co-wrote over lockdowns) and finding time to see the faces of friends in the big city, and some around the South-East. Returned to film quizzes, returned to karaoke venues, even ventured to many a theatre of late too.

And part of that is in the big push of the last year.

Between January and March 2022 I was commissioned to write a few drafts of a screenplay, I had to take the steps that have been a struggle during the lockdowns and their destructive imprisonment of the mind and the body and find the long-lost creative groove in such a way that wasn’t just for kicks, for practice, but actively for people who wanted to have the blueprints to a movie that they intended to produce. Compared to all other things, this was the big time. And I managed to deliver ahead of time, reports were they were happy with the direction of the project, and I was happy to be represented through the words on the page.

As yet there’s not been much movement on the project, but you don’t go into something expecting it to work out immediately, in fact for peace of mind one has to anticipate nothing beyond a finished screenplay at the end of the day, it is the cheapest thing to do in films, usually only a few people required at the most.

But the dam was opened, thank goodness.

I binged a lot of books, fiction and non, as I looked for further inspiration, and found myself drawn to the impact of live performance (Something that was sorely missing in the past 2 years) more than film. In that, I found myself starting a project in August that morphed quickly into a play that, hopefully, I’ll be able to see at least stage-read by the end of this coming year as I try and fine-tune and explore deeper what it is.

It felt good, to try something different and yet so naturally in the way I write, but I had many other ideas that were fermenting and decided by November to take heed of the years of emptiness and the sudden bout of creation. By December I had an outline for a body horror, by Christmas I had an Act 1 written. By 2022’s end I had a slow-building 50 pages. Soon after I was aflutter with more creativity again, going out in January to hang out with a friend every week, emboldening both our creative spirits, and also multiple visits to the theatre that has given me concepts and helped me understand what not to do as well. Two weeks back I discovered a script contest’s earliest (cheapest) entry deadline was coming up fast, but I could if I put my foot down turnaround the script and finesse it in time. The deadline is the day of publishing this post. I had 65 pages two weeks ago. I finished the screenplay on the 22nd of January. 116 pages. Speed-writing? Maybe. Vomit-drafting? Not at all.

I have major plans for every month now, to push myself out of the constant waves of anxiety, depression and crippling panic that seem to set in every few weeks, as soon as I seem to take the foot off the pedal, so hopefully will be able to offer more updates about more projects down the line, including whatever Encampment becomes as I struggle to seem to find any takers, readers, or visitors to the world.

2023.

Jesus fucking christ.

How’d we get here already?

And where the hell are we going with it?

The Encampment Diaries – High-Flying Man

High-Flying Man

25/11/2021

I went to Norway.

To Oslo.

For over 2 weeks.

A friend, my writing partner, gave me a place to exist in his world, and a population of friends to make. We spent the time watching films and TV, talking about life, and culture, and plotting stories. And things happened that were very necessary, breaking so much of my rigid pandemic cycle.

This will be a triggering entry.

After nearly 2 years non-stop the resident of the one place I’ve lived all my life, I had to escape, I had to break, I had to breathe. It was scary to go from 0 to 100 in terms of traveling across a city, a country, just to find sanctuary, but sometimes needs must. Other people seemed to have found ways to return to life, accepting the new normal or kinda forgetting it, but my broken anxious brain would never allow that, and the idea of getting out of dodge was tough. I spent all September and October going through all the worst possible outcomes just to make it, and thankfully besides a little last-minute hiccup on the way home, things worked out. I escaped. I embraced a dear friend. I spent time finding myself, an adult now in his 30s, for the first time in a LONG time.

Part of the experience was spending time with people open to the creative process, who love stories, structrue, cinema and TV, and how to craft characters and plots that can be interesting, rewarding and accepting of what works already, and what needs to be said about the world we live in, and the people living in it. With that, we had an evening where my partner and I got to hear a script we wrote in October read aloud for the first time (Read at all for the first time, we didn’t even proof it before, so one character was masturbating through an entire scene because we sometimes lay jokes in to see if the other notices as we write). I’ve only heard my words said aloud a few times, and never in such a warm, loving environment, we made an evening of it and everyone was happy to hang out and be together. To quote Jimmy Eat World’s The World You Love, I’m gonna call this home.

Being a 31-year-old, I was far and away the oldest person around, and yet I always feel so underdeveloped, emotionally and mentally. I lost out on so many opportunities, I never had the connections in my youth to push me from my personal prison and enter a world where peers would lean on me and I them as we grow, expand and explore the world, so to see people 21-27 so comfortable in their own skin, aware of how their world works and how to handle everything just threw me in a spiral of ‘what the fuck happened, and how did I never find a path to forge?’ Of course a key problem is that the entire world has continually crushed our generation from youth onwards, but people my age have fought through, just… not me.

I’ve had to really face up to things. I struggled for years getting paid for my talents, and when I finally did it ended up being a difficult situation that broke me. Trying to come back from that was nigh-on-impossible, since I still haven’t. I don’t come face-to-face with myself often, that’s what writing is for, to examine some of oneself through a funhouse mirror, but here I will be honest, and it’s gonna be weird for all of us, so bear with me.

I decided when to take my virginity, there was no sense of ‘destiny, fate’ or ‘fortuitive meetings’, I had something happen and took the moment. I decided when to pull myself out of society as things got worse, not when the lockdowns came, it was me in control of that. I decided when to take control of the art I make, not when it was best for the world or when anyone wanted it, all me. And, I almost decided when to take my life.

I’m asexual, I’ve tried but I find so much about the physical intimacy of that uncomfortable, it’s not what I love about humans. Within sex it becomes very instinctive, animalistic, even if you hold a conversation there’s a real sense of physical over emotional and intellectual connection, and I’ve never been comfortable with that. I need to feel good with people, where I can say something and they can say something and nothing is lost in some dazed or desired focus. The few times I’ve been in intimate situations like that, it’s never seemed right, not for me. I’m a thinker, a talker, a broken person best left afar from others physically but close emotionally.

In Oslo it was the first time I was with more than a few people since just before lockdown, and when I went to a mix of party and just pub thing, hanging out with some friends whilst the Corona cloud was wafting in, but in a public place where people I didn’t know were also having a good time.

This is the point where I need to accept something I kinda repressed and almost successfully pushed out of my mind, but in doing so have hurt myself and imprisoned my mind more. And it’s not easy.

The last time I was with a group of people, I went to the bar of the place, waited for a drink, and someone started talking to me. I thought ‘oh, weird, in London, people don’t talk’ but it felt like a good energy, maybe a connection?

Within a minute, she had sidled up to me, given me a little ‘hey’ eye contact (A thing I’m real bad at anyway), and then… put her hand down my trousers, and started touching me, rubbing me. It took a little time to get her away from me, then having to find a way to escape and not seem like I was in a bad way, I’m not good at things and I don’t want people to worry, but by the time I managed to get home, I just collapsed and laid in silence for a night, unable to sleep, unsure what happened, and why. It plagued me, and as the world collapsed I managed to focus on that instead, and kinda forgot it happened. Although every time I’d try to masturbate, I’d feel sick. In Oslo I finally felt ok to tell someone, it was hanging over me and I felt ashamed, disgusted, like I was at fault somehow, or it would make me seem lesser or hang over me, people might go ‘That’s Andrew, he was molested’.

I’ve had sex 2 times and been molested, but never kissed someone.

The world is a fucked up place.

I utilised my time away and got pretty high most days, sometimes it would make things calmer, nicer, happier, but there were times before I could speak my truth that I was surrounded by happy, healthy, comfortable people and felt othered, felt like being surrounded by people was triggering the memories of the night, it took me to dark places. One night I walked Oslo, I wanted to see the fjord, I love night walking, city walking, and seeing water is always my calming method. But I spent a good 20 minutes sitting by the water, wishing people would stop walking by so I could just jump in (10-15 minutes survival max at the temperature, I checked), then when I couldn’t, I sat on a bench and tried to cry. I’ve managed to cry once in the last few years, when a good friend died in May. I couldn’t cry, so I hit myself. I’ve taken to hitting myself again, something I would do to stop feeling bad inside, I feel bad outside.

I made it back and struggled for a while, but found my way back, still othered but when I finally told my writing partner, he didn’t make a big deal, he accepted it and loved me and kindly looked after me in a peer-to-peer friend-to-friend kind way. It is a part of my life, but it is not who I am. And I think I can accept that.

Back in London again, and preparing to change my routines, break back out into the world, see friends again, record comedy, write drama, I’m 3 chapters into Encampment as a novel, as I devour book after book reading-wise (I’ve ordered Infinite Jest, so that’s 2022’s plan), but I don’t know what’s next for me. Will I start being an adult? Will the world find more ways to destroy us? Can love exist outside of physical intimacy? Some people seem confused when I tell them what I am, and it feels so broken, everyone apparently has to love sex, and that’s just weird. Some of us want connection beyond connection, not just the physical, but we’ll find out where we are and who we are as we go on. I just wish I wasn’t so alone on this side of the North Sea.

The Encampment Diaries – Loss Is A Lot

Loss Is A Lot

18/10/2021

This has been a tough season.

I was going to write this in May, and in June, and in July, August, September… It’s been never-ending.

In the middle of May I lost a friend. He had finally made good on his promise of returning home, to rest into his final days by his family’s side. I’d known him a decade from the week he passed. He had talked to folk and said his goodbyes all year. I was not one he called. I felt so heartbroken not to at least have a sense of closure, of acceptance. It’s a scar that probably now will not heal.

Two weeks later another friend passed.

Two weeks later another friend passed.

Two weeks later, a member of the family, fostered for the time being, was sent to their ‘forever home’.

A month later, ‘forever home’ became ‘actually we can’t deal with them, have this child back’.

I have lost a lot of what little faith in humanity I had remaining at the top of 2021.

To lose someone who prepared for the end and get ready to go out as best they can is one thing, two friends had that.

To lose someone who will, in that sadness of loss, find something permanent, a place of love and long-lasting family, is another thing, I was ok with this but hurt still,

One friend, however, had just announced a book deal, this summer was going to be their summer. And then, an accident, an ending.

I’m terrible at handling the end. When my first grandmother died, it was the same time as Princess Diana. Our internal grief was forcibly rejected and coerced into national grief. We had no way to remember our own pain because the world insisted we care about someone we never met.

When my first grandfather was on the way out, my mother popped in my room as I was making a film and just said ‘It’s unlikely he will leave the hospital’, closed the door, and left me alone with this information.

I was, I think, 16.

In my younger years, at a birthday party for myself or my brother, the details are lost to the endless emptiness, the extended family had a get-together, a rare time when my brother and I, and our two similar-age cousins would see one-another and kind-of get along (As the baby, I was usually ignored or thrown about). My mother and grandmother had a moment on the other side of the garden, everyone stopped and looked, and they went back in the house. One of the men turned to us kids. ‘You know your uncle Tom?’ We didn’t have an uncle Tom, we had an older cousin, though. ‘He was in a motorbike accident. He’s dead’

Party over.

I wouldn’t see my mother for a week or so. Her crying was heard, but she hid her grief. We don’t deal with death well.

I don’t deal with death well.

Write about what scares you, lock eyes with it, try to understand it.

This is what I did with Encampment. This was a film based on fear, anger, trauma from being exploited, someone acting good but doing bad, lying to someone who only had purity, goodness. Destruction of civility.

When I write about death, which is weirdly often, though, I don’t write in finality, I don’t write in the grief. I write it as the great wash, I tend to lean towards the hope of something more. I cannot cope with the inherent knowledge that there is no more. For one, it’s narratively inert to just end, but also…as much as I know there’s nothing beyond, it’s a sickening thought that I will never know these people again. I can hear them, I can see photos of them. When I see certain objects of activities in people I know what they’d think about them. But they are just echoes, nothing new, nothing more.

So many people have died, these past few years careless leaders have caused destruction unfathomable on any empathic level, those of us with that power are hurting beyond possibility, the numbness we desire now is unattainable, we just feel the screaming of humanity in the wake of monstrousness.

I wanna be numb. But also need to be numb with others. The isolation in the process of grief is an impossibility that has led to some dark nights of the soul. Thankfully it’s been during the summer so those nights are short.

But then there’s the people that spent half a year looking at taking in a child that has been through A LOT OF SHIT, they are aware of the challenges, and embrace the possibility. And a month later need to be rid of the child, to keep the life they’ve known before. The built up the hopes and love of a child only to throw them away like they were nothing.

Trust issues run deep within me. So many have done the same to me, but I guess I had the construct of family to hang on to, if not the deep resonance of what family is meant to be emotionally, intellectually.

To throw, however, someone who is too young and not had such structure into the void of life, there are some people who just are unacceptable. I’m glad, though, that since they’ve returned to this family for now, for a brief time, we’ve re-engaged our silly fun goofy connection, and making them smile, be it to distract or a genuine enjoyment of being funny, has brought some hope in this hopelessness.

Adults are monsters.

I’ve never felt like an adult.

Anyway, I’m looking into turning Encampment into a book, diary over.

The Encampment Diaries – ‘The Emptiness Is Too Much’

The Emptiness Is Too Much

21/04/2021

It’s been a while, to quote the band Staind and their only known artwork.

What’s been going on?

Nothing

I mean, nothing for this work. I’ve had no drive to make anything. I’ve tallied no further with editing, with drawing, with conceptualising in the last 6 and a half months. I’m a failure.

What has happened?

Well, in the summer I was asked by a friend to help with a short film script, so I took a week to compile that, then waited months for feedback, wrote a little more for a few days, waited months for feedback, and helped him push it to an ending. Then that project got a little development funding, so now I’m a professional writer of scripts. I wrote something and have been paid for that work, professional. Whether it goes beyond development is still up in the air, funding is still being hunted down for, but it’s out of my hands, out of the country I’m currently held hostage in, and out of my wheelhouse as I don’t understand humanity, the connection of art to commerce and the ways to make things happen. I just study people, emotions, connections, and how one thing can lead to another, and try making realistic things simultaneously engaging and exciting for the potential reader/viewer. It’s all I really know. I can’t go out and work a customer-facing job because I cannot comprehend the people in that environment. I can’t go and be some sort of loud yelling producer because I don’t know how to form relationships and be in any way good to spend any time with. I’m a sub human at this point. I’m beyond broken, as the world tries to open up (way too early) I’m not sure I can go back out there. I don’t know how it’ll be to sit with someone for a time.

Last week friends of my parents came for a stop by in the garden, on the rare sunny but cold day in a miserable year, and they stayed for maybe twenty-five minutes before rushing off. Nobody was ready to deal with people again, even ones they’ve known for longer than I’ve been alive.

For me it’s now over 13 months since I locked eyes with a friend. And although maybe once or twice a week I may get to speak to someone for like an hour, and mostly recorded for podcasting purposes, there’s a lack of time to really connect anymore. I’m only being used to dump everyone else’s baggage onto. I’m stuck in this place where I am drowning in everyone’s problems, strangling on my own, and man… I wish I had a place I could feel like I could feel anything without anyone around to judge me, or make me judge myself from their perspective. My mind is fucked.

I haven’t written anything beyond that script in the last 9 months. I’ve opened a word doc this week and beaten out some of my big feature ideas with intent to write short film versions of them, some collection of 5-6 stories between 10 and 35 pages long to just put things there, see if they warrant expansion, if I can compress them, and to push myself to create again.

Instead of that, I have spent the months ingesting all the content. So much TV, I finally did The Wire. Eh. And The Americans. Eh. I watched all of Ballers – Rubbish but not as disappointing as the other two shows listed. And also seen a lot of the films I should have seen by now that I hadn’t seen. Guess what? The films I liked before are still the ones I like, and the films you’re meant to see? Homework. Offered nothing to nourish the soul, just a lot of technical decisions. I can imagine an old uni lecture wanking over things for ages whilst the group wonder what’s better about, say, Rashomon than The Rock.

The Rock, by the way, still so much fun.

Let’s just watch The Rock right now.

And repeat every line like Sean said it. I’ve been doing a lot of Connery lately. Not when he died, only the last month or so. And it’s fun. Roll the ‘r’s as well as doing the shhh thing and you’ll nail the accent.

What next?

Fuck knows.

The Encampment Diaries – *Exasperated Sigh*

*Exasperated Sigh*

05/10/2020

So last month I did half the script in editing recorded dialogue together. My various voice tracks laid over one-another and retimed, so now I’m talking to myself in various voices. I did something. It doesn’t sound great, of course, because… well, I’m not exactly Alan Tudyk over here, but it was something.

But there’s this element of finding the reason to get off the floor and play around anymore. I’m spending my days sat on the floor of the living room, listening to TV or movies or podcasts as my face is towards the video game I’m playing. It’s something to distract and to stop my mind from hurting or my hands from scratching or my body from aching or my voice from screaming.

It’s rare to get me up from the closes to Earth’s gravitational pull as I can get, to stand is to combat the drag, and one needs a reason to fight. We have no reasons, it’s all… nothing.

I’ve been thinking about art lately. A friend kindly recorded a small role last year, and I’m wondering, could I find some funds and ask her to draw the characters that are just out of my depth, I cannot craft a visual representation of my written, rich protagonists and antagonists. I’m a writer, not a director, and it’s utterly obvious throughout.

I took various photos of the sky this month, as we had clear blue, heavy thunder, red morning and orange evening haze, things that maybe need to come up at parts of the film.

I miss the outdoors. I miss people. I’m alone and so lonely these days, spending some hours on skype with friends, watching film or TV, it’s not working for me.

I need to reach out, to touch, to feel. I’m losing sense of humanity and the concept of people. I look at social media and just see words on screen. Like I’m looking at simulated representations of my friends.

This is not good.

I am not good.

The Encampment Diaries – All Falling Apart

All Falling Apart

04/08/2020

 

I mean…

Nothing can go right, right?

 

It’s been weeks since I last opened up any project related to Encampment. Or thought about it, or mentioned it to someone. It’s impossible to want to create in this world. Usually the impetus was to escape, to make a better world, but boy when the world keeps shovelling so much utter shit into your inbox even thinking about a better place becomes a task the fractured, unending brain of a lockdown locked out human could never begin to try.

 

Ingesting films, tv shows, podcasts, music, writing, just trying to find what others do, make, create, to inspire or distract is all I have been doing but that becomes a numbing expedition after a while, everything in moderation means it all requires a break between. When there’s no where to put the punctuation mark then every part of life becomes the kind of confusing run-on sentence that multiple youtube ads would demand you change through the use of something like ‘Grammerly’ which appears to be an aid to those that don’t care to actually give writing a try, rather demand someone else, or worse some computing system, tell them how to write better than what’s in their heart, their head, their fingers, so ultimately it all becomes a blur that matters not and when even the small things that are there to give you boosts in the dark can’t make things matter then what else matters?

 

I’d like to say that during August things will leap up, and maybe I’ll finish the voice editing on each scene, before of course looking to sound effects, then drawings and ultimately music, but I cannot. The weather doesn’t help, sitting in rooms when the sun turns the world to over 25 degrees means computer screens get hotter and the whole atmosphere stops being conducive to thinking, working, surviving. But then, that’s just one excuse. There’s more a sense of being a sole figure trying to do something so self-indulgent purely because there’s no way to convince other humans to join the creation and help make it. If there were more people involved I’d have the energy, the drive, to bring this to fruition, and possibly have a lot more fun, everything’s better with others, but being so very isolated in this world, in a medium about building together, co-operation, feels so broken.

 

I feel so broken.

 

Nothing is right, nobody ever cares, and I do not know how to make anything matter, which means why even push to make anything if it doesn’t matter? Every ounce of strength in this world should be towards forwarding good, and hope, and love, and making the world and life better for everyone. But not for me. That’s where one must draw the line, making something for yourself and nobody else, why bother? Who could care?

 

Not I, I guess.

The Encampment Diaries – June? No.

June? No.

30/06/2020

I don’t know if anyone is aware but the year 2020 A.D. is kinda a shit show. It’s sorta fucked in every conceivable way. Having worked backwards on a calendar I have realised it has now been over 100 days of locking down.Even with the brief flirtation with stepping out the front door to grab shopping from a family member’s car, this is over double any other at-home-no-trips-outside experience of my life, and whilst I’m not in any unique position, the mental decomposition is one that is both frightening and breaking. We’re all in this situation to some degree, yes. We’re all in this scary horror human existence where nothing makes sense and everything’s getting worse. But trying to find reasons to get out of bed, to type, to perform, to be creative whilst never leaving 4 walls is tough.

Not impossible, thankfully, as in the past few months I’ve managed to start work on one script, work on a few outlines and show bibles, and prep/plot and draft out a short with some friends. That’s, at the very least, something. But then there’s the foreboding situation of the film that’s sitting in pieces on a hard drive. I’ve yet to push my ability in art to a place I’m happy with, I’m scared to touch the assets already existing, and the dread of ‘what’s the point’ looms large.

 

What is the point? To complete a creative endeavour, alone? Film is meant to be a communal creative experience. One person becomes two, four, twenty, fifty, one hundred people with their minds and hearts putting in ideas and thoughts and fingerprints to evolve a concept into a beautiful reality that at once can explore and enhance humanity. Art as a singular experience is wank. To share, to explore, is the point. And sitting at home, wanking, is not what I ever want to be doing, certainly not for over 100 days. I must push to do more. But others, I wish, would strive to include more. I’m alone. I’m lonely. I’m beyond broken, and I wonder if this should ever end, is this irreversible?

The Encampment Diaries – This Is 30

05/05/2020

This Is 30

 

Well shit fuck balls cock wank, here it is.

 

Midnight striking on my birthday, the end of my third decade alive and… I didn’t achieve either key goal.

I wanted to finish a film by now. Haven’t made much headway.

I wanted to have a new script ready to perform a live reading for my birthday party, didn’t finish it.

And I’m not having a party because……… Pandemic.

 

Absolute awfulness, a failed waste of space year, where things went from bad to worse, where hope depleted, where ideas flittered away, where being able to do anything became actually impossible if not downright illegal.

What the hell are we doing? I don’t know.

But it’s all shit.

31 is the new 30.

The Encampment Diaries – Lockdown

03/04/2020

Lockdown

 

I intended to do an anniversary post, on the 13th of March, a look back, despite the ensuing threat of COVID-19, and my previous post, but ultimately things just… Well…

It’s hard to feel compelled to get out of bed, to sit down, and to focus. Always has been. Any distraction from illness, from depression, from the life that is unable to be lived, has been the only way to survive each and every day. And now, when it’s taken to its fullest extreme, with the whole world experiencing the Andrew Jones style of life, well, it’s been more a game of balancing spinning plates of friends’ mental and physical health, and being there for others rather than ever giving myself a time to be me.

 

I’ve sat at a screen every day, sometimes distracting myself, sometimes distracting others, and sometimes finding that juice to write, or draw, or play a little something in a creative world, but holy shit is it so hard right now.

I’m here listening to Nirvana and with Adobe Audition open, a whole slew of audio files needing editing into scenes, into pieces to turn into animated segments later, the part I still feel so broken about my artistic abilities about that, man, I don’t think I can do this.

But then I know I have to. Because only I can. Nobody else ever will, ever cares, ever inputs. So it’s just one lone loner on a laptop, trying to be themselves, trying to free themselves, in a world where freedom is only artificial, virtual.

 

And then I look to the future, now ever more uncertain, will this go anywhere? Will we ever go anywhere again? What is creating? Writing? Cinema? Drama? People, do they give a shit? Do they just want to escape, or do they not want creation, over real life ‘characters’? I’ll never understand the masses, they who leap to something for a day or two, then the next thing, brief distractions that don’t satisfy more than an immediate itch, don’t dwell on thought, feeling, just pure empty hollow moments for the moment. Is making something more worth it? Will folk ever care for things beyond the brief flash of an idea?

 

I’m not making anything for anyone except myself. And that idea sickens me. I’m far and away the opposite of a narcissist. I am compelled to create things not to make myself be seen as something, but because I love to find worlds, people, ideas that can be explored, lived in, experienced. The only one I don’t like to explore is the world we’re currently in. Unlike drama, there is no structure, no runtime, no understanding of tone or climax.