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The 30-Day Sprint

Lately I haven't been writing here because I've been writing elsewhere. A friend of mine calls it "the 30-day sprint," a serious focus on career that tries to cram in as much work and as much opportunity as possible. It kinda sorta came about by accident: some events in the immediate future where it would be useful to have a completed City of Truth script ready at hand. Which is a little tricky, since as of the end of the year we were only through the first act. But now, after some 9-to-5 days, we're almost at the midpoint, and I'm only slightly exhausted.

Therein lies the whole problem with having a day job to pay the bills: it also sucks up time and energy and resolve. If one must also do things like laundry, where exactly does one find the time? And then, since I live in an apartment complex with laundry rooms, how does one find workable time? On Friday night, at a quarter to eleven, I tried to bring laundry to the only laundry room that is available late at night. Someone else has just put in their laundry ten minutes before. This left me to do mine Saturday morning, getting up at 6:00 in order to be sure everything was done before meeting Marc at 9:00. And then, of course, after we worked all day, there was still exercising to be done, and dishes to wash, and groceries to buy at 10:00 p.m.

But there is also another way I'm spending my time: visualizing. Picturing the outcome in my head, not in a general sense but very specifically. At various times I imagine the meeting with my future agent, I imagine signing the contract, I imagine depositing the check, I imagine spending the check. When I take walks around the neighborhood, I look at the houses and I pick this design element over here, this one over here, and I construct in my head exactly the sort of house I want, and where it should be. I imagine first table read with the actors, I see the first screenings in my head. Every bit of it is as specific and as concrete as I can make it. And if all this seems a little new agey, well, here's a story for you:

Several weeks ago we did some pick-up scenes for Outta Sync. (By the way, the website has been redesigned and looks terrific--you can also see the band's video there, just follow the link.) There was a scene the director wanted, just a quick shot of Sergei getting into a limousine. But in the ebb and flow of the day, we weren't able to make those particular arrangements. The director was disappointed, but figured we'd put it together later. Then we're standing in front of the producer's apartment, waiting for our director of photography to walk up, camera in hand, and just as she arrives, suddenly a limo pulls up. Someone who lived in the building was just coming back from a trip, and had taken a limo home. Our producer immediately pulled out some cash, stepped over to the driver, our DP put the camera to her shoulder, I was already in costume, and we shot it. One take, five minutes, done. Visualization: the director wanted the shot, and the world provided. If the limo had arrived two minutes earlier, we wouldn't have been there yet; two minutes later and we'd have already been inside. Picture a thing, see it clearly in your mind, and the world very often finds a way to make it happen. You cannot tell me that this isn't true.

A Musical Interlude

But last night, because Marc had an event at Sony to attend, I actually had a little bit of time free. A friend of mine told me about a musical series at the L.A. County Museum of Art called Sundays Live. These are one-hour concerts by national artists, completely free, of classical music. If one is, shall we say, temporarily financially challenged, this is a great way to get a little culture back into one's life. Last night it was the pianist Inna Faliks, a Ukrainian-born musician. She played pieces by Scarlatti, Rachmaninov and Schubert. I've never really heard anything by Scarlatti, but the two very short piano sonatas she played were delightful, and I'll have to pick up some of his work. The real topper was Schubert's C-Minor Sonata, which I also hadn't heard before. The most fun, though, was watching Ms. Faliks work. All the reviews I've seen focus on her expressiveness, and that's exactly what struck me as well. There were a few moments here and there when it seemed the music got a little bit ahead of her fingers, or a chord didn't quite resolve the way it was supposed to, but these were tiny technical details that I just didn't care about because the whole of her work was so wonderfully expressive. Her face is mobile and alive, and I found myself delighted just to watch her as she played, her features a window into her experience of the music she was playing which then informed and enriched my own experience of the music.

I see that in March there's going to be a performance of Dvorak--I think I'll definitely put that on my calendar. By which time, I hope to have seen one or two of my visualizations, my fully-imagined life to come, come fully to life.