Fathers and Sons

I'm rewatching the documentary Step Up to the Plate on Netflix.  It's about a father and son, Michel and Sebastien Bras.  Michel's passing on his namesake restaurant to Sebastien and planning on retiring. Oddly enough, it's somewhat familiar territory for my pilot about a family of chefs in San Francisco.  Watching this complicated relationship between father and son is riveting to me,  mainly because I lived my own complicated relationship with my father growing up.  And looking back at it, it was somewhat competitive.  Not in a conscious way.  But Dad and I were competing because he knew that I had more of a capacity for greatness than he did.  Interestingly, I decided not to say he thought I was smarter than he was because I didn't want to sound insulting.  But somehow I managed to be even more insulting by saying I had more of a "capacity for greatness."  (And language.)

There's this great scene where both chefs are trying to explain to their staff how they want service to go that evening.  And they are both contradicting each other.  I love it for its simplicity and laid-bare truth. Then right after they contradict each other, Sebastien has to go get something from the kitchen and Michel defends him in explaining how the wait staff should explain the dishes.  He says that they worked on the poetry of the descriptions together, so the staff shouldn't muck it up.  So in the span of 20 seconds, they go from bickering to the father protecting the son.  That sounds like a true father/son relationship to me.

The family later explains that when Michel built his restaurant (which eventually went from one to three Michelin stars), his wife worked with him in the kitchen initially and then became the hostess.  

The lesbian couple, Pilar and Cate will have the same relationship.  And that this was passed on from Danny (the patriarch) having the same relationship with his ex-wife, Mona.

Diego, the youngest, who is running the restaurant at the top of the pilot is not married.  And this is a point of contention between father and son.  Danny believes that he needs a balance, a partner to help him.  Someone he trusts more than anyone.

Danny and Mona's relationship fell apart when she told him she wanted a life beyond the restaurant.  Once she was no longer in the intimate sphere of his life at work, she became an outsider.  And that created room for him to find other people to be loyal to him.  He saw her need for a life outside of him to be an act of betrayal.

Alex, the oldest son, is divorced.  And he needs to either reconcile with his wife or find someone new.  But until then, his mother will step in.  It gets a bit Oedipal.  

I love this scene where Sebastien is composing a dish and his sous follows behind him with the next element and they have this dance where they follow each other putting the next element on.  It's unspoken and completely shows their relationship to each other of absolute trust.

There's this sequence at the end of the film where Michel is looking out into the field, at twilight (bordering on heavy handedness), questioning his decision to hand over the restaurant.  He laments over the way Sebastien and his guys handle the harvest.  You can see the pain in him that he's got to leave a part of himself behind.  And it's not about ego, but it is such a part of who he is.  It's his legacy, what his son will have to do one day when his son, Alban, inevitably takes over.  Alban is probably six or seven in this documentary.  But it is already clear that the next generation is being groomed, even though Sebastien tells his grandparents that his son will be allowed to make his own decisions.  The grandmother tells him that he needs to make sure he follows in Sebastien's footsteps.

Probably the most beautiful sequence (besides Michel in the field) is when Sebastien is working on this desert he has been working on for the entire documentary.  He tried it one way at the start of the film.  They go to Japan and he tries it with Japanese ingredients.  Then he comes back and is working on it again.  This time he has simplified it to its most basic elements.  But then you flash to his grandparents kitchen and you see the grandmother working with the same milk skin and some chocolate on a piece of bread.  Back in the kitchen, Michel asks Sebastien what he is working on.

"It's the story of my life."

He explains the components of the dish.   The blackberry preserves and the cheese are from his mother.  The chocolate and the milk skin are from his grandmother.  He needs something that brings the savory into it because that represents him.  He hasn't yet figured out the story of his life on this plate.

Then you cut to a demonstration he's giving and he's got three dishes that now tell the story of his life.  He has broken it out.  There's a slow baked onion that is hollowed out and filled with some sort of goat cheese mixed with a chive vinaigrette.  Then you have the milk skin fried up and curled up with some blackberry gelee.  And a bunch of flowers around it--those represent his father and his mother and his grandmother.  Then there's an egg filled with a white substance that is topped with shaved chocolate.

It's this coda at the end that tells the story of his life in such a poetic way.  And the end of the film is Michel and his wife cooking dinner with Alban, while Sebastien watches.  In that moment, he looks at his son with his father, but he also flashes back to himself when he was young.

That is the story of his life.

My father would have been 70 in two days.  My father gave me my love of food.  He gave me my curiosity and my boldness about it.  I will try anything.  I am adventurous.  I associate one's willingness to try new things with their intelligence, their upbringing and how cultured they are.  In other words, I am a harsh judge when it comes to people and food.  Just like my Dad.  I don't like to have a lot of judgment about people, but that is something I can't let go of.  It's hard for me to get real close to you if you have a limited relationship with food or if you aren't open to new things.  I think it really speaks to someone's character.  It's just food.  You can try it and spit it out.  But in my estimation, you can't not try it.  That says something about you and your relationship to the world.

My mother and I (who is the only person in my life who I reserve judgment over in her unwillingness to try anything new) are going to have dim sum in my father's honor for his birthday.  I might even eat chicken feet in his honor.  I think watching Step Up to the Plate has brought back so many memories of me and my Dad.  It's also the core of why I'm writing this pilot.  The father/son relationship drives me.  Every time I have a great food experience: if I cook something great, if I try a new restaurant, if I geek out about a food product--I want to share that with my Dad.  It's a part of me that I LOVE and that doesn't come from my mother.  It comes solely from him.  Both of my Grandmothers were incredible cooks, so it's nice that it's in the bloodline.  But my Mom hates cooking.  I love food.  

I made fried rice earlier.  It's a food that I sustained myself on when I was living in New York and a broke grad student.  It's a food that I've eaten all of my life.  My father's fried rice was the best.  He made it with char siu, chinese barbecued pork.  Green onions.  Egg.  I have made it myself many ways.  I had it with smoked bacon once in a restaurant and decided that would be a great substitute for the char siu.  I've done it without meat and substituted tofu.  I love to douse it with Tabasco when it's piping hot.   It gets steamy and vinegary.  I love that smell and taste.  Sometimes I'll do chili garlic sauce.  I made it today and I didn't have any meat or tofu.  I could have just done egg.  Then I saw that we had left over hot dogs.  I threw it in.  That would have been a very Dad choice.  He would have used Spam if he had it because he was from Hawaii.  And sliced up hot dogs seemed very Hawaiian to me as well.  I stirred it up and saw the hot dog get charred a bit.  I love that dish.  Even though I make it with brown rice now.  I'm not a fan of white rice unless I'm making it with leftover rice from a chinese takeout dinner.  Then it's economical and I'm repurposing.  Otherwise, it's brown rice for me.

I don't like going to grave sites to visit people.  I hate looking at tombstones because I find it pointless.  I'm visiting a site where a body is decaying or has completely disintegrated into the soil.  And my Dad was cremated, so there isn't anywhere to visit him.  My grandmother is buried at a cemetery, but I don't go that often.  I like to remember them through stories or through the food they cooked: my Grandmother's enchiladas, posole or tamales at Christmas time; or my Dad's fried rice, his tomato beef (or Beef Tomato, as he called it) or a fried egg on top of a steaming bowl of rice with soy sauce sprinkled on it for breakfast.  But the things that I eat that I remember my Dad for the most are the things he'd go out for: Del Taco hard shell tacos (only on Tuesdays when they're a steal), dim sum, pastrami sandwiches, pate, steaks, corned beef hash.  I love all food, like I love all people: high-end, low-end, rich, poor, of all ethnicities, flavors and persuasions.  That's how my Dad rolled and that's what he taught me.

There's going to be scenes where the family is cooking both inside and outside the restaurant.  Food is another character in this script--their relationship to it reflects their relationship with each other in all of its ambivalence and love for all of it.  This is a story of legacy and how a father knew that the only thing he could give his children was a love of food and that love would give them their values and a sense of who they were.

On a plate, he presented me with The Story of My Life.

My Netflix Queue

Here's what I'm saving for later:

• Portlandia - I didn't love Seasons One and Two.  I liked them for sure.  I thought it was clever.  I'm writing something with my best friend that we came up with because she started out a conversation with, "I was watching Portlandia the other night and thought of you..."  Then Season Three came on Netflix and I was hooked.  This was the last thing I binge watched.  But I'm not counting it as new because I started checking it out a while back.  Love Chloe Sevengy.  Love the nod to French New Wave.  Love, love, love.
• Derek - I love the bad hair and the sweater on the cover.  I love that it's a new Netflix show.  I hear they're supposed to be great, which is why I keep saving them on my queue.  I love that it's a less arch show supposedly than the other shows he has done.  It's a recent addition, which means that it has a snowball's change in hell of getting watched any time soon.
• Breaking Bad - I know!  It's over now.  I need to get beyond the three episodes I've watched.  It looks great.  I'm intrigued.  It's a bit dark for me.  But I keep waiting for a free month.  Or an illness.  I'm not really waiting for an illness.  I shouldn't have said that.  And I'm not waiting for a free month.  That would mean that I wouldn't have work or money or ideas coming in.  That's not a good thing.  So I'm not going to watch it any time soon?  Even though I should?  
• House of Cards - Everyone I know is raving!  I'm an asshole for not watching.  Yet another reason for self-loathing. It's smart.  It's created by Beau Willimon.  It has staff of playwrights.  But I feel again like I need to devote a binge watching session to it and there never seems to be enough time.
• Orange is the New Black - Same issue.  And I was told I'd like this more than House of Cards.  But I still can't forgive Jenji Kohan for the last few seasons of Weeds.  Although, I did skip around and graze binge watch (that's a new term I'm coining...to graze binge watch is to skip around a bunch of episodes just to get the gist or to catch up) the last season of Weeds.  It means you're half committed.  Is that like being semi-erect?  It's exactly like being semi-erect.
• Mad Men - Probably the travesty of all time, along with never watching The Wire.  That's on HBO Go, which is another drug of choice.  But this post would be five years long if I took time to talk about what I'm watching or not watching on HBO Go.  I could devote a whole post just on my love of HBO Go.  It's like a fever dream.   
• Back to Mad Men - I need to watch it.  I've never seen an episode.  I'm afraid I'm going to love it too much, stop bathing, shit myself and then feed off of my own arms because I'll be so glued to the screen.  One day...one day it will happen.  I have that to look forward to.
• David Chang: The Mind of a Chef - I keep this guy around because I love him.  I've binge watched him twice.  Is that like gang banging someone twice?  It's exactly like gang banging someone twice.  I love cooking and I love Asian revolutionaries.  Nuff said.
• Top of the Lake - I impulse purchased this one.  Although, it's not a purchase.  The service is already paid for.  But it has pedigree and it sounds interesting.  And I feel like I want to reject Elisabeth Moss twice since I'm not watching her on Mad Men.  I'm afraid to commit to Elisabeth Moss.  That's the real confession here. And clearly I have chosen sides because I'm watching Portlandia.
• Scandal - I can't get past the pilot, but everyone says it gets better.  And hey, it worked for me being gay.  So maybe Scandal Gets Better too.  That seems to be the word on the street.  Eventually I came out and things worked out on the other side.  I just need to give Scandal a shot.  For that reason, maybe it should move to the top of my queue.
• Drive - Is this the first movie on here?  I love Gosling and I hear great word of mouth.  And I don't want to think up a joke here because I've got too many things to get to on my queue.  Or on my list talking about what's on my queue.
• Freaks and Geeks - I've seen it.  I keep it around like the Bible.  It makes me feel safe and secure.  Because it existed that means there is hope in the world.
• Manhattan - Same as above.  But the movie version.  It's got style.  It's got panache and flair.  And those are things that should never be underrated.
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi - I have started it.  Because of the chef pilot I'm writing, people have been suggesting it to me.  I'll get to it.  Or it will sit on my queue, half eaten, for another few months.  Hope it doesn't get moldy.  Food joke!
• Luther - Peer pressure.  People say I should.  And Idris Elba is sexy.  I loved him on The Office.  I wonder if it's like that.  I seriously know nothing about this show.
• The House of Cards Trilogy (original BBC) - If I'm not watching the newer, longer, sexier more American star-studded version, do you think I'm going to make time for this.  Well, one thing I heard was that it's better.  But I feel like I need to binge watch these two together, which is another reason why it's taking me so long to watch either one.  Does size matter?  We'll see.
• A Place at the Table - I'm a sucker for documentaries.  And I'm a bigger sucker for food documentaries.  This will probably get watched before much else, along with Jiro Dreams of Sushi and my third binge watching session of David Chang: The Mind of a Chef.
• The Trip - I rented this at my local library once.  I watched a bit of it.  But as discussed, I love food and talking about food and humor.  So this might get watched on a binge eating/binge watching weekend.  Oh...that's a great theme.
• Jean Michele Basquiat/Basquiat - I'm pairing these both together because one is the documentary and one is the film with Geoffrey Wright that I saw a long time ago.  I'll probably watch both together because I love art as much as I love food.  And anything that talks about art, I'll watch.  And as I've already mentioned, documentaries place higher on my priority list because I don't have to think when I watch them.  I can enjoy them more than scripted shows because I like to poke holes in scripted shows.  It's part of my process.
• Hit & Miss - It's the Chloe Sevengy show where she places a transgender hit person.  A hit man with boobs.  It sounds like an outrageous idea, exactly the sort of thing I'd watch.  Yet I'm not watching.  I'm intrigued by boobs and balls.  I hope there are lots of those kinds of quality jokes in this show.
• The Art of the Steal - An art heist documentary.  Done.
• Political Animals -  I've already seen it, but I'm writing a soap and I liked how soapy and fun this was while also trying to be serious and political.  It has its bad moments, but it has Sigourney Weaver and it's really smart in places too.  This is when I'm bored and I want to watch something I've already seen and I don't want to invest in something new.  It's like going back to an old lover.
• America in Primetime - it's a learning tool.  A four part series on certain archetypes in TV.  I've watched them all at least once.  I've watched the one on the independent woman four or five times.
• Valentino: The Last Emperor -  I also love fashion documentaries in addition to food and art documentaries.  And this is one of the best because these two old queens know how to serve decrepit, bitter realness.
• The Conversation - Because I should see it.
• Beautiful Losers - I don't remember why it's on here.  But it expires tomorrow.  So I'll just let it die, like the butterfly on the cover.
• Big Night - Saw it years ago, writing a show about chefs...thought I'd use it for reference.  Haven't touched it.
• Terms of Endearment - I used it for research for a sketch I'm writing.  I watched it last night.
• The Long Goodbye - I'm writing something that involves Altman.  It's on my queue because it's a great film and I'll go back to it as I continue writing my play.
• 8 1/2 - I've watched parts of it.  I need to get back.  Mastrianni keeps staring at me.  I need to watch it.  It'll take away the bad taste in my mouth that was the film version of Nine.
• Step Up to the Plate - It's a documentary about a father who's trying to retire and surrender his restaurant to his son.  It's great.  I've watched it once.  It's for research.  I'll watch it again.  I could watch people talk about food for days.  I could even read the subtitles about them talking about food for days.  That's how much I love food.  And films and TV about food or about process.  I love hearing about process.  And I love family dynamics.  This has it all.  This is a recommendation to put on your queue because you probably wouldn't know about it other wise.  Then you can also let it sit there for a few months before you finally watch it..
• Punch Drunk Love - Because I started watching Magnolia again recently and I like P.T. Anderson and I never caught this film the first time around.  This is another of those "I should watch this" films that I might never get to. 
• Style Wars - a graffiti documentary for 1983.  I need to watch this!  I'm working on a musical project and this might be helpful as research.  Actually, speaking of queues...the musical project has been on my queue for years and this documentary might suffer the same fate.  But both will be great when I finally get to them.  I know it!
• Stolen - Another art heist documentary.  I'll probably choose one and get rid of the other because this queue is getting too long.  This list of what's on my queue is too long too!  I'm wrapping it up...soon.
• The Pitch - Watching Season Two now.  It's on my DVR queue.  Boring.  I realized that Season One was on here because it was a recommendation while I was putting other things on my queue.  The pilot is probably the best episode.  So treat it like it's an hour long documentary and just watch that.  Maybe it'll get you hooked.  But if it doesn't, this pilot is enough.
• Two in the Wave - It's a doc about Goddard and Truffaut.  Yeah...I know I need to make time.
• The Turning Point - I've never seen it!  And it's about dance...yet another thing I'm obsessed with after food and art and fashion.  It's on here because it was recommended once I saved Terms onto my queue.  And that's another thing: the queue is now called My List.  Is that because not enough people know what a queue is?  Get those dummies off of Netflix.  They don't deserve to be here.
• Young @ Heart - I saw the trailer for this film years ago.  I watched another documentary a year ago about senior citizens in a hip hop dance troupe.  Hopefully I won't be a senior citizen by the time I get to this.
• Just for Kicks - a documentary about sneakers.  Sure.  I'll watch it...just for kicks!  Ha! 

And...scene.

Documentary Corner: Mademoiselle C

As evidenced by what I've discussed here so far, I'm a big fan of documentaries.  Especially of fashion documentaries.  I've seen:

Unzipped
The September Issue
Valentino: The Last Emperor
The Tents
L'Amour Fou
In Vogue: The Editor's Eye
About Face
The Eye Has to Travel

There are probably others that I'm not thinking of right now.  But I love behind the scenes stories.  I love Project Runway and I have a bit of a fascination with Kell on Earth, which was only on for one season.  But that's for another entry.

As a kid, I loved fashion. I think I loved the spectacle and fantasy of it.  It was a real fantasy in the everyday kind of moment.  I didn't have access to fashion around me as a kid, so I read lots of fashion magazines and they transported me away.  My biggest sources of information and reading were fashion magazines and comic books.

PAUSE: There's something in the intersection of fashion magazines and comic books that I'll have to visit later.  But not a SUPERmodel.  

I also love big personalities and hyperbole.  So fashion is perfect for me in that regard.  I love any one who's a character.  These fashion people in the documentaries or the ones who were interviewed on TV had these larger than life personalities and always a catch phrase. I remember Andre Leon Talley, who I was obsessed with as a kid, said in Unzipped, "The comeback is major!"  Polly Mellen also said in that documentary, "This is saying 'yes' to me very distinctly."  That became by catchphrase in college, a fact I had forgotten but was reminded of when I came back for a wedding last April.  I watched Fashion Television, CNN's Style with Elsa Klensch, Videofashion, and just about anything else I could get my hands on.  House of Style!  I loved House of Style.

So now as an adult, I have met a group of people who shared my obsession. And whenever a fashion documentary comes out, we make a date of it and go together.  Last Sunday, I went to see Mademoiselle C, the documentary about Carine Roitfeld former French Vogue editor, with my friends Emily and Amanda.  As a documentary, it wasn't the most cohesive.  As a writer, I felt it could have used a story and it could have been more like The September Issue, which was really about the personalities involved in the shoots that were put together for the Vogue September Issue.  This was not as in depth.  The September Issue felt like an expose.  This felt more like a fly on the wall.  But who wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall when Carine Roitfeld is putting together her first issue of CR Fashion Book?

It had all the things I love about fashion documentaries.  It had great fashion, great personalities and people waxing poetic about how purposeful the fashion life is.  I ate it up.  And it was just a great cleansing gelato at the end of a long week.  Pretty people, smart talk, a bit of the esoteric...kind of sounds like theatre.

Woody Allen: A Documentary

I was thinking of Altman’s peers (at least those guys who had their own vision) and I thought of Woody.  I’m probably more of a Woody Allen person than a Robert Altman person, so I thought it was important to also see what was going on around Bob at the time.  And Woody is the only other person who has such a varied body of work.  Woody has directed more films and he has his own demons and quirks.  But I thought I’d watch this documentary.  Of course, it’s about three and a half hours in total.  So I’m in it for the long haul.  I’m rewatching it, so I might skip around.  So following will be my play by play.

Annie Hall

Probably one of my favorite movies ever.  And it happens to be streaming on HBO Go right now, so I might go back and watch it again just because it is so enjoyable and is such a touchstone for me on so many levels.  One of them being that my best friend’s mother gave me a book on Woody Allen with famous lines from his films probably when I was either in high school or in college.  It shaped me tremendously.  But watching the section on Annie Hall in this documentary reminded me what a departure this was for him.  Larry David describes this great buzz happening in New York at the time that the movie came out.  Woody was such an icon in the city even at that point that for him to make a film that is such a love letter to his city and to his relationship with Diane Keaton was impactful.  It really is that moment that Woody Allen became “Woody Allen.”  Sure, he was amazing before and gifted and talented and everyone knew it.  But now the legend begins.  A maturity creeps into his work where he finally accepts all of the great things he had suggested at before.  It was clear he was a well-read guy and a smart guy, but he cushioned that in with laughs so that you didn’t notice it.  But with an emotionally affecting story and such a personal one, there was no hiding.  It reminds me of other turning points in music.  I’m thinking of Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall.  He had this whole career with his brothers and now he was stepping out on his own.  We think of Thriller being the breakthrough.  But Off the Wall was the first step and acknowledgement of what he had.  The same can be said of one of my favorite pop albums ever, which is Like a Prayer.  You had Madonna, Like a Virgin and True Blue before it.  All successful.  All incredibly capable and danceable.  But when you added depth to everything she knew how to do, you had a masterpiece.  With Woody, you had Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper, Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex…, and Love and Death.  But until Annie Hall he was just funny and clever.  Now he added the personal and it took on something far greater.  He had to build the strength in order to start throwing boulders around.

The other thing about  Annie Hall was that he didn’t know what he had.  He had to trust himself and once he trusted himself, this wonderful masterpiece came out of him.  And everything followed.  It came forth with such precision and velocity because it had been waiting to come out.  It was long over due.  The same can be said of Off the Wall and Like a Prayer.  When I think of songs like “Rock with You” and “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” are so confident and rooted in something so deep and personal.  And total barn burners when it comes to dancing and attitude.  I can’t think of my life without songs like “Express Yourself”, “Keep It Together”, “Promise to Try” and “Like a Prayer.”  They sacrifice none of the enjoyment to bring depth and emotion.  And the same is said for Annie Hall. It was loaded with jokes and fun moments, but it was mature.  It was an adult making a film about adult things.  He had put the teenager to bed.

Manhattan

An instinct he had was to make Manhattan look different than Annie Hall.  How to do this?  Shoot it in black and white.  There’s something about consciously saying, “Here is what I do.  How do I make it different?  How do I keep it still interesting to me?”  In researching Bob, so much of what I’m hearing is about his visual style.  Even in the dictates for this commission, it is about duplicating or mimicking or translating the visual style of Bob’s work to the stage.  How does one do that?

Along with shooting the film in widescreen to give a grandness to the beauty of the black and white images—those incredibly romantic images—Woody also used music to great effect.  A lot has been said in Bob’s films about the choice of music.  Either “Suicide is Painless” from M*A*S*H or the use of Leonard Cohen’s music in McCabe and Mrs. Miller or using John William’s “It’s a Long Goodbye” in different ways as background music.  Even just the songs in Nashville, become such a part of the fabric of that film.  Another character, even.  So in Manhattan, to have those Gershwin songs that give a sense of nostalgia and a longing for a certain era, in a way created a mythology of the city that has never left.  It’s phenomenal. 

So it has me thinking about how I want to use music in my play.  

Purity

I am on a mini-juice cleanse.

What does that mean?  It means that I am drinking juices made with kale, spinach, cilantro, cucumber, celery, ginger and lemon.  And another made with spinach, pineapple, cilantro and celery.  It also means that I am probably going to be very cranky later.

But it's all apart of the detox that I have been undergoing over the past three years.  It's also symbolic.  As artists, we reinvent ourselves.  Or we should.  Everyone else can be static, but what's the point if you're an artist?  It's about evolving every day.  It's about experimentation.  It's about figuring out what works, adding it in and taking away the things you don't like.  Kind of like a Greens juice.

What's bitter?
What's sweet?
What's tart?
What's off putting?

Oh, yes. It's all a symbol for changes in life.  I've also been running a lot lately, sometimes twice a day. I was walking back from a run this morning and I ran into my friend Amanda who, when I told her I was also on a juice cleanse, said that I didn't need to lose weight.  Los Angeles: it is all about losing weight, isn't it?  And that was a very sweet thing for her to say. But it's not about losing weight, although as a metaphor there is a lot that I'm hanging onto that I don't need any more.

I have done three or four cleanses in the past few years and each time I do them it is only partially about the physical.  It really is about letting go of the dead skin, the fat and the weight of a life I'm not living any more.  I am taking the things out that I don't need any more.  It's like cleaning one's closet.  I'm freshening my closet.

All of these metaphors!

I gave up caffeine two and a half years ago because I didn't like the way my body felt.  I didn't like the up and down.  I didn't like depending on something to give me a reason to get up out of bed.  I felt like I was being forced out of bed by forces against my will.  It was like another force was making me live a certain life.  And I got rid of that.  So now I can be guided by my own body's natural impulses.  The caffeine, for me, was all about instinct.  I live more according to my instinct.  Although now I have a bit more of a sugar craving than I used to.  But sugar was never my drug.  I can manage that.  And when it's good, it's real good.  Like opium.  And I haven't needed to do that since I was nineteen.  I only did it once.

I am too heavy weight-ise these days.  Again, it's not vanity--not entirely.  It's always about vanity on some level, but it's about what I need and what I don't need.  I feel like I am on this journey to find my purest self.  And my purist self.

My tarot cards say I am on a spiritual path.  And that I need to see money as energy, not as corruption.  That's why I'm blocking it.

Fortunately, my spiritual path is on tandem with my creative path, which is why it's so enjoyable for me to explore.  I can explore my spirituality and my quest for deeper meaning through my creative work.  That is what has always driven me more than money for the sake of acquisition.

I'm not trying to paint myself as some sort of yogi.  I grew up watching the fashion shows on TV and I follow the current collections.  I know the designers.  I just went to a documentary about Carine Roitfeld last weekend.  She's the former editor in chief of French Vogue.  I love myself some material goods. I love the craftsmanship and I appreciate that the discussion around fashion is elite.  But the fashion world runs on democracy.  Fashion, like art, should be for the masses.  Its aspiration is what makes it such a fantasy, but really it is for everyone.  So even in my fascination with fashion, I geek out on the craftsmanship.

But that's why just making money hasn't worked for me.  I admit that I block it. I know that now.  The greed and the conspicious consumption are a turn off.  But money IS energy.  It's not just power.  But it's energy towards a pursuit.  And that is an idea I can get on board with.  Money not only opens doors, but it gives energy to the thing you want.  That's why artistic commissions are important.  That's also why getting paid big money in television is important.  It's an indication that you are creating something for the masses.  That's a lot of energy.  Hence, a lot of money.

Again, it comes back to purity.  What do I need?  What is essential to me?  Finding what is essential does not just mean paring down.  Making smaller.  It can be expansive.  It's essential to have peace.  It's essential to have kindness.  It's essential to love.  It's essential to give.  Those are all big things.  Peace, kindness, love and generosity should not be small endeavors.  They need to be huge.  And they're essential.

I'm probably getting off track.  But that's all right.  It just means I'm on track.  And just drinking green juices and water today.  Is that what happens when you strip everything else away?

I like it.

Where the Magic Happens

I am someone who seems to always be writing.  At least according to my Facebook and Twitter posts.  Whenever I see a friend out and about they always say, "So it sounds like you've been writing a lot lately."  I nod yes.  I have been writing a lot lately.  Lately being the past several years.  Before that I had a job and a boyfriend that were really demanding.  So I wrote, but I didn't write every day.

I used to hate it when professors of mine used to say, "To be a writer, you have to write every day.  You have to set a schedule.  You have to dedicate yourself to it."  I was always of the opinion that the muse would hit me when she hit me and then things would fall out.  Because I am stubborn, it's incredibly difficult for me to admit that my professors were right.  But when I was in grad school, I had friends who took this too seriously.  I had a friend who was on her Winter Break and was home in Seattle from 9 AM to 5 PM in her parents' home office, just sitting there.  Even if nothing came, she was committed.  She had to be there.  But in a way, it felt like she was waiting for the muses too.

I always felt like I needed to live.  "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death," goes the famous quote from Auntie Mame.  It's true.  You can't have anything interesting or substantial to write about if you're not living.  I was just watching the Public Speaking documentary that Martin Scorese did a couple of years ago about Fran Lebowitz, one of my favorite writers and personalities.  She said that it's the writer's work to hang around and talk, to do nothing.  That's how writing gets done by talking to other people.  It's the exchange of ideas.  And I tend to agree with that.  But Fran has been in a writer's block (or as she says it blockade for the past thirty or so years).

I exist somewhere in between the two.  I do think that the routine of sitting in front of the computer is good because that's where the work happens.  But if the work is not happening, then what the fuck are you doing?  Go see a play!  Go see a movie!  Go see friends!  Go blow somebody!  Do something that fills you with life and inspiration.  Go outside!  Go for a run!  The work will be there for you when you get back.  And it doesn't help to just hit your head against a wall.

I think the reason I get so much writing done is that I also get a lot of TV watching done.  I watch a lot of documentaries.  I love documentaries.  They put my brain on rest.  In a similar way, that's why I love reality TV, but that's another conversation.  Documentaries are just straight info.  It's not necessarily fictionalized, so I don't have to think about how I would do it better.  They give my brain a rest, but they are also thought-provoking sometimes.  I love fashion documentaries and I love art documentaries.  Documentaries are the thing that I'll watch over and over again.  Maybe it's because I love to hear people talk.

But the point I'm trying to make here is that I can get a lot of writing done because I shut that part of my brain off sometimes.  The baby-making part.  The creative part.  Watching something that's not a piece of scripted material allows me to just relax and enjoy.  When I watch a movie, it's either for research or it's something that I have been told I need to see.  And whether it's planned or not, I end up studying it--or taking it apart.

But the only things I really seem to get excited about are documentaries.  There's the Karine Rothfeld documentary, Mademoiselle C that's coming out soon.  She's the former Editor in Chief at French Vogue.  I love how over the top that world is.  I love how they talk about art and fashion (or fashion as art) in a way that's so elitist and rarified.  It's so full of optimism and hope because it exists in a world where money is not an issue.  So it starts out as something superficial, but it also says something deeper about what people desire.  It's entertaining and it gets me to think about things that I like to think about. That's the best form of art and/or entertainment for me.

But the magic happens because I am able to have a relationship to a piece of art: a painting, a sculpture, a film, a play, whatever.  Then that dialogue gets me thinking about my own work.  Sometimes it's a boring conversation that allows me to wander and then I think about what I could do better.  That happens a lot.  And I'm okay with that.  Any way for the art to happen, right?  Just as long as the wheels start turning and the fingers start tapping away on the keys.  Sometimes the muses descend on you and sometimes you need to set out on a mission to find them.