My Life through Films, Part 2

We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say–and to feel–‘Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.”

– John Steinbeck

I think that’s why I resonated with movies so much when I was young. They made me feel like I wasn’t alone. A strange thought for a kid who came from a big family. But it’s harder to be seen in a crowd. And in our family, being seen was fleeting at best. Being heard was nearly impossible. With so many vying for to attention. there was only so much to go around.

Going to see movies became my refuge. My home away from home. I loved going by myself, too. That’s the other thing about a large family. Privacy and personal space are hard to come by. But alone in a theater, that’s my slice of peace. To this day, I love going to the cinema on my own.

And movies taught me things about life that people didn’t seem to talk about in the suburbs where I lived or in the Catholic elementary school I attended. For years, I spent many days of summer vacations going to the movies.

One summer in particular, when I was ten,  I was gifted a book of tickets to Saturday matinees at the nearest movieplex. Double features, no less. Of course, movies were always double features in those days. There was Willy Wonka paired with Pufnstuf (I had a massive crush on Jack WIld ever since Oliver); The Blue Bird and Heidi (both Shirley Temple reissues from the 1930’s), Pippi Longstocking and Pippi in the South Seas, And various Disney offerings, including The Aristocats.

But there was one movie that summer that I became particularly entranced by: “My SIde of the Mountain.” It was the story of Sam, a 12 year old who runs away from home to live a self-sufficient life in the wilderness, with a raccon and a hawk as his companions. I was totally hooked. I had always imagined myself something of a pioneer & adventurer, and my best friends were the family dogs, add to that the solitude of the wild–this was my idea of bliss come to life.

Some weeks later, in the autumn, on a particularly stormy day at home with my endlessly quarreling siblings, I decided enough was enough. It was time for me to strike out on my own to live the wilderness, which in my case was the Colorado Rockies.

So I emptied the rock samples out of an old back pack of my dad’s (he was a geologist), and packed up a sweater, a coat, a blanket and some food. I wrote what I considered to be a thoughtful note to my parents–something about wanting to live on my own like Thoreau. I casually wheeled off on my mom’s sturdy British 1959 Phillips (with handy child seat perfect for the pack)  as if going on a neighborhood jaunt, feeling very proud of my first foray into the unknown.

I used the ever present sight of the distant mountains as my compass and cycled west on side roads. Amazingly I managed to make it to the foothills by evening. I found a small stream next to a horse pasture and made camp–which basically meant laying out my blanket and putting on my coat.

Of course things never quite turn out like the movies. I had no matches, and no knowledge of how to build a fire, and it got cold and dark pretty quickly. For the most part, I spent a fitful night fearing I might freeze to death and putting on every bit of clothing I packed.  By dawn, it was clear that I was no Sam and this side of my mountain was really cold, and despite the lovely horses that kept watch over me, pretty darn lonely.

Needless to say, I had traumatized my poor parents, the police were out looking for me, and on my first day back to school two day later, discovered that my fellow students had been praying for my safe return. Yikes.

Looking back now, I treasure it as an innocent and amazing adventure, an adventure that wouldn’t have happened save for a matinee on a summer’s afternoon.

And the film still holds wise lessons for any child who might see it today, lessons that any one of us would find useful and practical even in our adult wilderness…

 

My Life Through Films – Part I

 

I’ve been away for a little bit. Like a caterpillar in a cocoon.  Morphing from the imago into an entirely new creature.  Not quite a butterfly – yet. But a metamorphosis is indeed in progress.  I haven’t officially changed my name yet, but even so, I undergone a radical change, or rather a radical refocusing. And, as the British would say, I’m dead chuffed about it. (p.s. chuffed is a good thing.)

In the last six weeks I have written a short film script and entered it into a competition. It was a sort of test for myself. Can I write a good film? Can I embrace life as a writer of movies. A screenwriter? You see, my friend, I have always adored film. I had convinced myself for decades that I didn’t really have a dream to do one thing.  But I always have had a dream — to work in films. I was just too afraid to attempt it. It always seemed larger than life dream to me, like films themselves. But the older I get, the more I grow to the challenge. The older I get, the more I want to take on the challenge. Maybe it’s because I know I now have less years before me than behind me. And I don’t want to waste anymore of that precious time wondering “what if?”

It’s no surprise to me that in my last post that a film clip emerged as a way to illustrate a feeling. Films have always be my touchstones. Some people remember the moments of life through favorite songs, I remember mine through films.

My father loved movies. When he was a boy during the Depression in Ohio, he loved two things passionately, reading anything he could get his hands on, and going to the picture shows on Saturday. They took place on Saturdays and would consist of layers of joy for him. First the newsreel, then the cartoon shorts, then the main feature, mostly Westerns with singing cowboys in white and bad guys in black–who never sang.  Simple straightforward tales of good vs. bad. The plots didn’t vary much. But to my dad that didn’t matter. It was the magic of those hours spent in the dark watching magic that never left him.

He passed that love of dark magic that was movies onto me. The first big movie I can remember was seeing “The Sound of Music” when I was 5 at the drive-in. We were a big family on a tight budget, and the drive-in was the only way six kids and my mom and dad could see a movie together. I still remember the excitement of hanging the metal speaker inside the window, and staring up at the immense screen in full technicolor.  It was glorious. It was magic.

When it came to movies, I became my dad’s main film companion whenever a new film would come to the Cinerama. If the drive-in was magic, the cinerama was heaven.  It was the age of 70mm and experimentation in scope. People were ditching movies in droves for television, so the film world was trying new formats to coax people back to the theater. Much like 3D is today, I expect. The cinerama was an new take on the grand movie houses of old. A single massive curved screen, stereophonic sound, red plush seats in graceful curved rows at such an angle that no one’s big head ever blocked your view. There was even a smoking lounge to one side. Those were treasured outings. My dad would use the excuse of taking my younger brother and I to go see the latest release, but he was the biggest most excited kid of all when the lights went down. And the films had to be larger than life to match the setting:  West Side Story, Around the World in 80 Days, 2001 A Space Odyssey. Every one of them opening up unknown worlds to my small suburban existence. Heaven.

More in the next post….

 

Blooming takes time

“What makes talent bloom? Ask what makes a tree blossom. They are the same. It is not unfathomable. It only takes concentration. Concentration of energies is what makes a tree flower. Not bigger, not faster, not taking up more space. Rather, less space. Density. Pressure in hard places. Often, in the dark. Relentlessly. Freely. For as long as it takes. Hold faith, a gestation can go long and for good reason, and nothing much shows above ground. But then, one day…” —Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhDi

…One day a small green shoot begins to appear just above the soil. Cautious, hopeful, curious.

That is how I feel today.

Cautiously questioning my intentions.  Hopeful of this new growth from the compost and soil of the decades past. Curious of this fresh start.

I like it.

Who’s in a name? Someone quite different when it changes. As I discover while blooming Emma.

A name is very personal thing. It is a powerful piece of who we are.

A name is applied to us, it identifies us, it is the sound we respond to.

Our name is an invocation of who we are; repeated it becomes a chant.

It is fundamental: it is not all of who we are and yet we are someone quite different when it changes.

So I am discovering, as I consciously change my name from Clara to Emma, from Soister to Bloom.

And as I breathe her to life, I am discovering that Emma Bloom has plenty of surprises in store for me.