Generation Gaps

So, I turned 20 last week, and how things have already begun to transform in my life.

My sister had a baby on the 9th--a day before my birthday. For some reason, I've felt very estranged from my family--particularly my dad, sisters, and stepmother. I'm rarely on the phone with them anymore, and it's a bit of a bummer. Looking at pictures of my nephew, I think that needs to change.


I decided to end an intimate relationship I had kept with a girl down here in California. I was very reluctant to let this girl, Nataley, go for now, but it felt necessary. Her dad died shortly before we met, and I should've expected no less for her to be at a crossroad in her own life. I was glad to be a source of comfort for her. But I feel too strongly for her to want to sustain a long-distance relationship. On top of that, I feel like I'm at a place in my life where I know where I'm going and I know what I want. Naturally, she is in the process of figuring that out for herself. And while I would be glad to have a future with her, it's been increasingly apparent over the last few months, that she needs to find herself. And I can't help her do that.

Strangely enough, a day or two within me ending that, an ex-girlfriend--Amber is her name--re-emerged in my life, quite unexpectedly. It's been nice to sort of reconcile things with her. Things ended badly last Spring, to say the least. Ever since, I've resented the hostility I showed toward her when she was living at my house. In retrospect, while neither of us were completely innocent, a lot of that relationship's meltdown had to do with my own insecurities. I had a constant need to measure myself up to the other men in her life, mostly when we weren't even dating. I had, in a sense, been asking her to apologize for incidents that were not only beyond my control, but became before and/or after our relationship. While I can't say for sure what will come of talking to her now, it's been pleasant just to move on from all those bad memories.


Beyond this, I've become something of an insomniac lately. Not only thanks to conversations that seem to last into the break of dawn, but I've been slaving away at writing outlines and all kinds of other bullshit, hoping that something sticks, and survives the incubation process.

Right now, I'm mostly focusing on the period piece. It's sort of a personal horror film for myself. Set in 1968, it deals with two guys who hope to escape the realities of being drafted into Vietnam by going to Canada. Intertwined is the story of a former World War II POW who lives a reclusive life, disillusioned by and unable to relate to the counterculture period going around the world. Both stories converge in the end when he decides to show these two draft dodgers the horrors of war himself. Think Takashi Miike's Audition combined with the Coen brothers' Fargo in terms of tone and structure. At least that's what I'm aspiring to.

While writing it, I've found that I'm sort of going on the journey with these characters myself. I'm writing this because I've had it in my head since senior year of high school, where I was dealing with some serious questions myself--Am I coward? being a primary example. As someone who once vocally and even pompously supported the Iraq War, why wasn't I signing up to enlist? Granted, I made a few trips to the recruitment office my junior year. I still never strongly considered fighting for the so-called convictions I had.

I've struggled writing this for the above reasons. I find myself trying to answer that central question, even to this day, where my personal and political views tend to conflict with one another at times. I'm often uncomfortable in my own skin, and in away, writing this is helping me sort out what I believe in, which is more important to me right now than figuring out how and when I'll ever try to actually get this film made.

I've received a lot of indirect help from my English Comprehension class. Pretty much since the class has started, we've been working on autobiographies, and then workshopping eachother's in class. Each week we spend three hours picking apart two students' work. Intentionally or not, this has been an interesting way of getting to know my classmates. There's no more than fifteen students in this particular class, so the personal attention helps as well. The teacher also provides a kind of bohemian atmosphere, which I suppose is expected at a San Francisco art school. These autobiographies, at times, read like confessionals. It's fascinating how much empathy I feel toward these other students whom I rarely talk to outside of class. In class, we pin-point the narrative archs in everybody's life story. The teacher gets us to the core story of everyone's life. It's very slice-of-life, and very inspiring.

In addition, I've been emersing myself in the 1960's counterculture. From reading interviews with major figures of the period, to watching documentaries on Bob Dylan, to hearing about the Summer of Love and the changes our country faced in the wake of JFK's assassination and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Whenever I do a little bit of research, I find that I'm kind of shaken up afterward. I find it interesting the parallels that period has to right now, and also the contrasts that living in the information age brings.

I've been studying some flicks from the period too,--The Graduate, Rosemary's Baby, Easy Rider, and Five Easy Pieces in particular--which is always enjoyable. The one I've most interested in is Bonnie & Clyde, a movie that, despite being a period piece, was really about the Baby Boomers. That's essentially what I'm trying to do in regard to my generation. That may be self-indulgent, or pretentious of me, but not if I succeed at it.


Anyway, I stayed up until about 7 am in the morning, and I probably should probably stop lounging in front of the computer now.

Until next time. . . .