What Are You Saving
Mar. 13th, 2011 03:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueRough week for news. With the earthquake in Japan (which I was on air for, captioning the Bloomberg live feed from their Japan office), various assaults on abortion rights and teacher pay, crazy rape normalizing at the New York Times, and members of Congress deciding to hold a panel to disingenuously investigate whether all Muslims in America are evil terrorists, it's a rough week for news. And people who read news. And people who work in offshoots of the news business. And, you know, everyone who lives with the consequences.
I was at a dinner tonight to fundraise for medical supplies* for volunteer doctors in Haiti, and Bishop Harris spoke briefly. She said that there are always disasters in the world, and in that context it's easy to get fatigued or feel powerless, but that as the richest people in the world and as children of God we have a responsibility to not see ourselves as powerless, and must keep helping people who get hurt even if more people get hurt later. To freeze and just feel depressed about things is a dodge, basically, because we are rich and healthy and alive if we stop helping things really are worse. She said it better and without using many more words.
Otherwise, had Fat Friday on Friday (since as described before we could not celebrate Fat Tuesday) and Ciro and I made stewed okra and Louisiana shrimp and red beans and rice and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. It was pretty successful in food terms, but somewhat excruciating in terms of dinner conversation because I wound up seated next to a friend of REL's I hadn't realized was invited whose chief guiding force in life is being pleasant. Which on the surface definitively seems like it wouldn't be abrasive, but which is in fact my natural enemy.** So I pretty much rushed through desert and went and stayed in my room for a few hours. And then watched Top Gear.
Had a meeting with Shuang (film editor) and am really excited about the way this version of the cut is going. It's not a finished product and is still in need of tweaks, but the potential is obvious. Shuang has this ability (and it's the reason I was so thrilled she agreed to edit this) to cut dialog scenes in a way that's light, naturalistic, and lyrical - just a really poetic touch that's a fusion of her skills as an editor and as a director. At the same time, she can do this Wim Wenders style of humor that seems to play it straight but is deeply silly. This script really requires both of those skills, and finding even one of them is lucky. Knowing someone who happens to be good at both of them and a friend is an embarrassment of riches. Anyway, this still means a lot of work for me, because it turns out she found my long critical essay from a month ago breaking down the first seven scenes of the film dissertation style very useful and so I really do have to do it for the rest of the script. Still, it's a good kind of work to do.
On the subject of editing, but in a different field, talking casually about taking on editing a few novels for Drollerie Press. Still just in the chatting phase, so I don't know whether anything will come of it, but it's flattering to be considered. I have a lot of respect for the press. Given that at the moment I spend most of my time working alone and/or shepherding long-running projects to completion with no guarantee of an audience at the end, it's easy for me to forget that there are a reasonable number of people who hold me in high regard for my past work as an author, editor, teacher, or filmmaker. All of that feels temporally far away from me right now, but it isn't really.
Bah, daylight savings. Doesn't save daylight for anyone I know, and switching times like this causes suicides and heart attacks. It should be abolished. I wish the people who complain about how inefficient pennies are would instead devote their energy to opposing daylight saving time.
* A huge amount of which is things like aspirin.
** When you place "nice" above "good" (and I like nice, remember) it is equivalent to looking down on me because I have education and critical faculty and can tell you why a television series has unsettling subtext. You are saying that stories and thinking don't matter and it's better to let people's rights be taken away than to frown at the person who did so. And the worst thing about it is that the pleasant person ignores what I'm saying and clearly thinks I'm a horrible mean person (although they'll only be passive aggressive about it and will pretend like it's a compliment), and to anyone sitting nearby it seems like I'm just getting upset about nothing because gee my conversational partner seems pleasant.
I was at a dinner tonight to fundraise for medical supplies* for volunteer doctors in Haiti, and Bishop Harris spoke briefly. She said that there are always disasters in the world, and in that context it's easy to get fatigued or feel powerless, but that as the richest people in the world and as children of God we have a responsibility to not see ourselves as powerless, and must keep helping people who get hurt even if more people get hurt later. To freeze and just feel depressed about things is a dodge, basically, because we are rich and healthy and alive if we stop helping things really are worse. She said it better and without using many more words.
Otherwise, had Fat Friday on Friday (since as described before we could not celebrate Fat Tuesday) and Ciro and I made stewed okra and Louisiana shrimp and red beans and rice and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. It was pretty successful in food terms, but somewhat excruciating in terms of dinner conversation because I wound up seated next to a friend of REL's I hadn't realized was invited whose chief guiding force in life is being pleasant. Which on the surface definitively seems like it wouldn't be abrasive, but which is in fact my natural enemy.** So I pretty much rushed through desert and went and stayed in my room for a few hours. And then watched Top Gear.
Had a meeting with Shuang (film editor) and am really excited about the way this version of the cut is going. It's not a finished product and is still in need of tweaks, but the potential is obvious. Shuang has this ability (and it's the reason I was so thrilled she agreed to edit this) to cut dialog scenes in a way that's light, naturalistic, and lyrical - just a really poetic touch that's a fusion of her skills as an editor and as a director. At the same time, she can do this Wim Wenders style of humor that seems to play it straight but is deeply silly. This script really requires both of those skills, and finding even one of them is lucky. Knowing someone who happens to be good at both of them and a friend is an embarrassment of riches. Anyway, this still means a lot of work for me, because it turns out she found my long critical essay from a month ago breaking down the first seven scenes of the film dissertation style very useful and so I really do have to do it for the rest of the script. Still, it's a good kind of work to do.
On the subject of editing, but in a different field, talking casually about taking on editing a few novels for Drollerie Press. Still just in the chatting phase, so I don't know whether anything will come of it, but it's flattering to be considered. I have a lot of respect for the press. Given that at the moment I spend most of my time working alone and/or shepherding long-running projects to completion with no guarantee of an audience at the end, it's easy for me to forget that there are a reasonable number of people who hold me in high regard for my past work as an author, editor, teacher, or filmmaker. All of that feels temporally far away from me right now, but it isn't really.
Bah, daylight savings. Doesn't save daylight for anyone I know, and switching times like this causes suicides and heart attacks. It should be abolished. I wish the people who complain about how inefficient pennies are would instead devote their energy to opposing daylight saving time.
* A huge amount of which is things like aspirin.
** When you place "nice" above "good" (and I like nice, remember) it is equivalent to looking down on me because I have education and critical faculty and can tell you why a television series has unsettling subtext. You are saying that stories and thinking don't matter and it's better to let people's rights be taken away than to frown at the person who did so. And the worst thing about it is that the pleasant person ignores what I'm saying and clearly thinks I'm a horrible mean person (although they'll only be passive aggressive about it and will pretend like it's a compliment), and to anyone sitting nearby it seems like I'm just getting upset about nothing because gee my conversational partner seems pleasant.
