It's a well-know scientific phenomena that one can not measure or observe the qualities of something without affecting it. Well, I think it's a well-know principle and I don't know what to call it. It may be an outgrowth of the The Uncertainty Principle (Heisenberg) or it may be this principle in disguise. If you know the motion, you can't know the position and vice versa. Or something. It may only apply to the sub-atomic level but then what isn't? Sub-atomic, I mean, at the heart? I've been doing a lot of reading in the last year, but I haven't necessarily learned anything. Instead, I just have these random, half-remembered probably misinterpreted bits.

But writing a journal affects what you do. What you do and don't type, what you do so you can write that you did it, what you don't do so you won't have to admit it, what pictures you paste in the margins (scanning them, taking them, thinking about them for the journal), what you admit and say about what you eat and how you move through the day. It is a feedback loop. So, it's very strange to write a journal. Neuro-feedback, let's call it.

It may even be that when I take my blood pressure to record it in the journal that knowing I will record it actually affects the result.

Another scary thought that I had is that this journal may be my creative contribution. Not a record of the search for the great novel or non-fiction treatise or documentary film or series of photos. This may be it.

At the documentary film I saw tonight (No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyliis Lyon) I was thinking of the documentary I want to do (The Nancys: Growing up Female in the Fifties) and it seemed to take form. The film I saw used lots of reference footage and the film maker, there for Q&A, said some of it (like eleven seconds of the Village People which I didn't even really notice) was expensive to buy permission for using. I was thinking that I would use no outside reference footage. I would use only stills and home movies of the women interviewed to tell the story. I want to film the women in their own surroundings, homes they've made for themselves, doing jobs they love (or have settled for) and I want to juxtapose that interview with pictures of them as kids, with parents, with wedding pictures or commitment ceremonies or vacations or graduations. I want only these people's lives to stand for the times. You may ask, it would be logical to do so, whether all the women in the film will be named Nancy. The answer would be, in a word, no. In fact, while Nancy is a common name for the generation of women I have in mind and, in fact, I have several Nancys in mind, Linda would be just as common, probably more common. And, yes, I plan to try to tell my own growing up story. Maybe. Other names that the women are likely to have are Suzanne, Susan, Cheryl, Cindy, Beth, Peggy, Jane, Anne. Many of these women will have a middle name of Sue or Ann or Jean or something. These were the names of my contemporaries. In the end, maybe there won't be any Nancys in The Nancys but that's OK. You do remember Nancy Drew, don't you? But I won't refer to that directly especially if there are rights to be obtained. Hmm...I just thought of the Nancy Drew thing. I didn't read much Nancy Drew. If you want to know the truth, even Nancy Drew was too fluff a role model for me. No, I had to read about boys and men and dream that girls could have any adventure that they had.

Now, all I have to do is (1) learn to use the digital video camera and any requisite lighting and sound equipment; (2) learn to edit the film; (3) learn how to market the result; (4) in other words, learn everything about making a film about which I now know nothing; and (5) hope that filming the women (me?) doesn't change them but how can it not? OK...I hope that most of the change is for the better. As if. As if I'll ever actually make the movie. Ha.

 

 

 

 

 

Felt good physically but a little depressed emotionally.

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