This is my *very first* interview as a writer-director, and 😮💨😮💨😮💨….
I really like the writer whose podcast this is, so when she asked me for an interview I jumped to do it. But then, I thought ‘Wait a minute… do I know how to do an interview?”
Well, it’s done now. In the end it was like just talking with a young friend.
Still, maybe I shoulda been more formal.
When my mother was on her earthly journey, she’d watch cooking shows back to back.
I was always a bit annoyed when I visited, wanting to change the channel from these toxically chipper people having nothing but fun cooking, not a hint of real life foibles in sight.
Well through out life, I’ve been taxed with taking care of myself. And being a bit of a foodie myself, the making of a dish would capture my attention from time to time.
These days I liken myself a very tasty cook, and it’s the chore I spend the most amount of time on.
So now, I willingly give cooking instruction videos in my feed a chance.
Which is how I found “Kay.”
Kay…. prepares the most exquisite meals… and characteristically does so through a darker lens than the vast majority of chefs you may encounter on social media. She is the Edgar Allen of bunch.
And most times seems genuinely taken with her process, not you.
Important because I want to think my own thoughts, and have my own experiences with what I’m watching. I don’t want to feel pressured to feel like the chef is a chum.
Her process is enough.
It’s already the best and highest bar for what it is.
Friday was my mother’s birthday. She would have been 82.
I’m still gutted and can’t breath properly when I think about her death.
But some days, I’m present to loving her more now than ever. Because I see her efforts as a mom, how she tried to raise these people who would be prepared for the world in certain ways, and always value, even protect one another as a tribe-band-siblings. And more and more, to her heart as a woman, her reach and passion for the world around her, in the absence of that trait, anywhere.
Then I’m gutted again, for the void of that. Seeing in the most profound way, how indispensable people truly are.
(A lesson I don’t think anyone truly gets, till a loved one who they are engaged with dies.)
But, I’ve been moving forward.
I moved out of New York. Went back to school. Been trying my hand at online dating off and on (the pits still).
Made my first short in years, in a directing class.
A simple assignment, 3 shots edited to sounds not from the shoot.
I felt like I had just gotten out of bed, pulled the cover back on my life.
Found the fire in the embers.
Another day, more racism. Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) is an Aboriginal farmer who’s family is being treated awfully by a local farmer (Ewen Leslie). But because this is Australia during the late-20’s, an Aboriginal man’s plight didn’t matter to the local law enforcement one bit; they just wanted to Aboriginals to know their place, accept […]
My life has changed. I lost my father in February. My mother 3 years ago, her mom last year.
I still live in the same place, have the same job, the same so-called “best friends,” a particular style as a writer-director.
And yet, none of this fits in quite the same way.
I’ve been trying to have the life I had, be the Tanyeno I was, live by the markers I placed. And yet, it’s suddenly not going so well. I’ve become annoyed at what I’ve built, completely disinterested in it, or disturbed at the half-bakedness of it all. My entire life looks like an unfinished project or like shoes I’ve outgrown I’ve been forcing myself to wear. And I wanna trash them.
That might sound unrealistic. Maybe kinda crazy, so I ignore it, other days I make plans.
One day though, on Twitter, this appeared on my feed:
That, in the middle of my feed. That.
I need a relationship with God Almighty, and Jesus Christ. I will lose some with this, because it’s ultra unpopular to say given the misguided Christians who are nothing like “their Christ.” But I want to know the Christ-God, and walk the talk.
Directing which was kind of a second fiddle-step-brother to writing, has now become more like a calling. Less like inspiration more like contact with my soul. That feels good.
So, this. Definitely.
Can you guess what draws my attention here? Love to give this a shot.
No idea.
These are my parents (best friends and married for 56 years before death did them part with hers).
I’d like to honor them with my choices.
All…
In college I considered myself something of an Afro Punk. I loved the style and spirit of punks, that ‘I AM GOING TO NAVIGATE THIS MY WAY AND DECIDE FOR MYSELF’ thing. The ‘Not going with society’s dictate on… [insert anything here].’
So I sought to befriend punks or any misfit bold enough to give society the proverbial flip.
I grew up within a family of critical thinkers and intellectuals, so I was raised with a habit of deconstructing it all. Didn’t find alot of that in my peers in the mid-west, where I moved as a teen. So by college, I was hungry for it. Punks were my perfect match every time.
So this is an ode to the continuation of that spirit…
…up on screen at the cinema.
But that was pretty interesting to me (video going viral).
The way this guy looks at, smiles at, and touches his bride is incredible. As is her smile in response, no?
What a find…
I don’t log onto Facebook very often, I kind of don’t like it anymore.
It feels like ‘everyday-man-as-celebrity’ Olympics.
Everyone seems like they are trying to create a show of how “great” their life is, instead of using it to connect in a deeper way (which social media can be used for). Instead of using it to peer into the moments of others we may not be able to keep up with in life, and engage about their progress?
We gaze upon ourselves and invite the gaze of others over to our universe of fabulosity.
Is it me?
Anyway feels alienating and doesn’t seem to create the bridges, the way Facebook intended. Least not for me. It is a thin connective tissue linking us to one another, giving the illusion, you’re connected. Leaves me a bit empty personally.
However, every once in a while, the page produces a spark. Something that stirs up something else in you.
This was that today:
“The things that we run from…we’re running from the truth… we’re running from the truth man…so the only way I became successful…was going toward the truth… as painful and brutal as it is… it changed me… “
How did it make you feel?
Archaic Sugar 
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