If I don’t get a piece of house falling on me or something, I will be out of this movie in time for Voodoo Fest, Halloween, and a few other things. Crew calls generally require a 12-hour turnaround for everyone. Just to let you know how hard we are working, the show went from a delightful 9AM crew call at week’s beginning to a late afternoon crew call by today. It’s only Wednesday. The days are starting to run together. I actually find that I can’t sleep more than 5 hours a night anymore. I finally look my age. I think I caught about 5 years working on this project.

But it, and the people associated with it, have been nothing except wonderful. I’m going to miss all of them, and I can’t wait until we do it again next year.

Where it’s been tough, I’ve seen it as a chance to toughen up and learn something. Where it’s been easy, I’ve been grateful for the work.

So now what? In the wake of the film, I will be trying to rest, regroup, deal with some medical issues that have come up during the filming, and refocus my efforts. Going to work every day, I am reminded of how very fortunate I am to have had so many interesting events, occurrences, and situations just fall into my lap this year. Rather than it being an egocentric experience, it has rather been a humbling experience that has rejoined me with an important check and balance: humility.

I used to do this thing whenever I felt anger towards people, a thing where I prayed for them to have everything I ever wanted to have for myself in life. This experience has brought me to a checkmate on that relief point, namely, “What if the person I’m saying a prayer for already HAS everything I’ve ever wanted for myself?” This is a question I’m hoping to get an answer to soon enough.

I’ll have many fascinating stories to share in due time. For now know that though I am distant and busy, I am thankful to the people in my life for giving me the chance to become myself.

That gift is greater than any I could ever buy.

Over the course of a single moon cycle, many changes sweep through the constants of our lives. Situations unravel, people change, lives move forward. The daily occurrences that populate our expectations become altered somehow. Through a series of whirlwinds and meteors, planetary turbulences and gravitational pulls, we begin to see things more clearly or, as is too often the case, our ideas become muddied and confused.

The way in which I communicate with the people in my life has been impacted by my devotion to a single project that impacts 14-16 hours of my day. In two weeks time, that project will be over and I’m still going to be here. I’ll probably come back to this blog, answer those emails, return those phone calls, and reconnect with people whom I have lost touch. In this period of time, these phases of the moon, some of the people in my life feel they are being sidelined or ignored. They think that their importance or relevance in my daily affairs has diminished or that I don’t think about their welfare. The phone stops ringing. People I run into in my free time talk to me differently, treat me in a way that is both disheartening and unbecoming. I begin to hear and see things taking place regarding those people over which I have no control, and the worst thing that can happen is for those people to think that I don’t care.

My problem is that I do care. I care far too much about the endeavors of those whom I champion. I place too much faith and earnestness in their daily exploits. In my free moments, I think too fondly of them and hope that they are okay, believing that they will call me and tell me when things are happening that I need to know. Out of some fear that they will be exposed to the clean light of day, as people far less in control of their destiny than they would like, they say nothing and do nothing. Phone calls go unreturned. I hear things from people “through the grapevine” and then I am forced to track down the source.

In the end, it’s usually never as bad as it sounds like it might be.

Until today.

I find that the simple courtesy of offering gratitude for what has been done for me is usually enough. But even then, the niceties that go false and unrequited lead to dissension and dismantling of what is within those which is good and strong. I hear the most implausible things from the mouths of people for whom I would do anything. People for whom I have used the words “I would take a bullet for him” instead turn out to be small-minded and unlike themselves.

Is it in these actions that I discover who my friends truly are?

I’m a semantics wolf, a person who uses language to state precisely my meanings. It is frequently in the way other people interpret that language that problems arise. If I tell someone, “It feels like it might rain outside,” nine people will have heard me say “It’s going to rain” and one person will have heard what I actually said. Sort of like when someone uses the words “____ has asked me to ______” is interpreted as “I am _______”.

Why am I telling you all of these things, some of you may ask?

It’s quite simple. To the people in my life who think that just because the phone isn’t ringing I don’t care or I’m not thinking of you, and specifically those from whom I have not personally heard in quite some time as a result of the work I am doing, please allow me to assure you: I am thinking of you and I do care about you. I think about you more moments of the day than you could ever imagine. I wonder what you’re doing, if you’re having fun, if you’re well, whether or not you’re sick or hurt or lost. I think about the good and bad times we’ve had. I wonder if you’re flourishing in your chosen path, if things are coming together as they should. I think about many things about you. When the time is right, I always call.

I would never let the thoughts in my head prevent me from picking up the phone and calling you to simply ask if you’re doing okay. I would never want to hear from someone other than you that things are going well or poorly, and when I hear terrible things about you from people other than you I become concerned.

Through every cycle of the moon, through every peak and valley, one thing is certain: no man is an island, entire of himself. When a man becomes that, there is no hope for the good things that make a person who they are.

It takes no guts to be an ungrateful asshole to the people in whom I place my trust. It takes enormous guts to be thankful to them for being willing to go out on a limb for me when nobody else would or could.

In this next moon cycle, we could all learn a thing or two about trust and gratitude for one another. Othewise, stuck in one place spinning our wheels is the best any of us can ever hope for, no matter how good someone tells us we are.

Let me know how that thing works out for you now that you’ve decided you’ve got a better idea. I weep for the person whom you’ve become and pray it’s only a moon phase that passes before you come back.

Thanks to Captain Psyko (aka Keith from TTIKTDA) for this highly suggestive photo of me during the CMJ Marathon last month thinking about what I’m about to do. Notice the instructional video as it catches my eye.

When I finally climb to the top of the hill on Monday, I’ll be standing atop the mound of the past looking down with curious anxiety. This year has been a mixed bag, filled with howling crescendos and gurgling flat chords that etched their own little symphonies into the songbook of my universe. In the words of the great philosophers and poets Frank Beard, Billy Gibbons, and Dusty Hill, “I been up, I been down, take my word, I been ’round” — though I feel that G,H, and B reach boldly at the crux of the matter when they profoundly follow this already deeply fundamental philosophical thought with the words, “I ain’t askin’ for much. I said, Lord take me downtown, I’m just lookin’ for some tush.”

But I am a slave to the job right now, and I’ve never been happier. That’s the drill, and so I’ll be spending my Monday watching a car driving down a road over and over again until it looks good. Or so I hear through the grapevine.

I’m going to catch up on laundry, sleep, and emails. Everyone have a beverage of your choice for me on Monday & please kindly excuse me while I kiss the sigh.