Children of The Universe: The Unknown Appointment

I'm in the process of editing a project that everyone involved, except me, has lost faith in. The thing is that I see clearly what is there – which doesn't mean that I know where the editing is going – or even that I have a clear picture of how to proceed with the editing -

What it means is that I can see the greatness in the performance, the footage – the emotional impact of what we have – and I have been given the great gift of seeing something profound in what we are doing, that no one else can see.

This was forcibly brought to my attention when I saw something that was shot later more conventionally and in a more polished and standard manner – it was Ok, and I could see clearly how the work was being approached – but it did not strike me as art. It did not make the performances beautiful and meaningful. And it stood out in great contrast to what we had done earlier. As I write this I realize that I have had this experience many times before. One example was 36 years ago when I did a series of spots for the Houston Police Department. I still have quoted to me the line in one of those spots, “In the race of life, we must sometimes Take the opportunity to make ourselves free.” There was a final spot that was absolutely standard. No one noticed it when the spots ran – the campaign was fabulously successful – and no one remembers it now. But the “controversial” spots endure.

Still, this can be horribly discouraging. But a quote out of Andrey Tarkovsky's book, Sculpting In Time, helps me – in fact, the whole book helps me - in it he quotes letters from people who absolutely hated his films, but also shares letters from those who were moved by his work:

“I've seen your film four times in the last week. And I didn't go simply to see it, but in order to spend just a few hours living a real life with real artists and real people .... Everything that torments me, everything I don't have and that I long for, that makes me indignant, or sick, or suffocates me, everything that gives me a feeling of light and warmth, and by which I live, and everything that destroys me – it's all there in your film, I see it as if in a mirror. For the first time ever a film has become something real for me, and that's why I go to see it, I want to get right inside it, so that I can really be alive.”

Last Saturday I had this experience:

I was in Placerville, California, U.S.A. to have dinner with my friend Jerry, who builds and restores cars, expensive cars. This is Jerry in the front office of his shop. You've seen his cars even if you haven't heard of him. We walked into the restaurant that is owned by a friend of his. A man was sitting at a large table, also a friend of the restaurant owner. Jerry spoke to the owner and introduced me to him. Then the man at the large table said something like, “you're sitting here.” as if he expected us and we were to sit there. We did. The man then left the table for a moment and I asked Jerry, “who is that?” thinking that he was a friend of Jerry's – the way he was so definite that we were to sit with him. Jerry did not know him. His name is Clark Emch. He is determining how governments are going to enter the 21^st century – get away from paper and move to digital records and files – some of which must be maintained forever. If you never hear the name Clark Emch again, people will still be living with his legacy generations from now. We talked about things that I am also deeply invloved in:

digitization - distributed intelligence - everything that I've been reading about and thinking about for the past few months - - Someone asked me recently (was it you?) if I have had the experience of meeting someone for the first time and feeling strongly that I already know them - really know them -- at the time I said, “no, not really” -- but the conversation between Clark and I was as if we just picked it up where we left off - that we've done this many times before - and ended as if we will pick it up again when there is some other important juncture -- I said to Jerry as we drove away, "I came to Placerville just to have that conversation." It did not feel like a chance encounter - more like an appointment -- Clark and I seemed to really know each other and we seemed to know what we were there to talk about. It was an important meeting for me.

How does Clark describe what he does? Like this:

“Much of what I do is educate people to see the solutions to everything that they do.”

This is really different from “giving” people solutions, or forcing solutions on them. Helping people see is really a form of art. The broader the scope of what is helped to see, the greater the scope of the art. Clark is doing very high art.

People don't always want to see. The higher the vision, sometimes, the less people want to see - The less they are able to see without great resistence. This is often the challenge of the artist. This is why I continue to edit what I am working on.

Today, I realized... everyday – do some work on this project that I'm talking about. The material is beautiful.. I realized, after looking at the later material, how beautiful the first work is. Now it's up to me to show that to the rest of the world.