Peter Speyer's FilmLab Blog

Are writers the shyest people are on the planet? If so, what is to be done about that, if anything?

Jorge Luis Borges said that ‘oppression is the mother of metaphor’. He was also paralysingly  shy,  an ‘illness’  he decided he had to overcome. He was also blind.

The eyes have it. A number of times in my life I saw others’ eyes looking at me with my own vision embedded in them. It was in those moments that I knew my writing was going to be produced in some form and that I didn’t have to say too much for that to happen.

The ’sizzle’ wasn’t even in necessarily in the projects, although there must have been some of that. It was in me, how I felt about myself, how I organised and presented myself, the decision I had taken ahead of time about who I was, why I had written what I had written and my right to be there.

So, is being a writer and being able to engage their vision to my vision an oxymoron? Pradoxically, yes. It is not in our nature. But our culture demands that we grow into that.

They say ‘don’t play nature with our culture.” We say ‘don’t play culture with our nature.

A very brilliant and talented friend of mine has packed in the fim business because she can’t stand this aspect of it. She is very sensitive and feels pretty wounded by things.

How can we be both sensitive, open and  tough all at the same time? We are obliged to make protective carapaces for ourselves which we can shed when we are busy making things.

We are also obliged to be true to ourselves, as this, paradoxically, is what they actually want when we turn up for meetings. They are fascinated by where we go to get what we need to make things in which they wish to invest.

As Oscar Wilde would say: be yourself, everyone else is already taken.

We were looking for the dolphin we met when we first arrived, staring off the jetty every day. It had been an ecstatic moment of connection, the creature semingly performing for us alone, a private encounter with a deep bit of our collective past, a species like a dog from millions of years ago now an inhabitant of the sea. And now we wanted that moment again, calling every time we walked on the jetty to our dolphin to appear, begging it to resurface just for us.

Last night, with the light on the water, a surprise that made me think immediately of Darwin and then of the labsters: a pelican, obviously a close relation of the swan, paddling with huge strength, fixated on catching and swallowing fish, using every muscle in it’s neck to dive underwater and snatch it’s prey. Mesmerising.

We were searching for one thing and found another, equally rivetting and tantalising at the same moment. The coincidence of finding it in more or less exactly the same place as the dolphin was a surprise, too good to be true.

Usually, new ideas rear up at us unexpectedly, often annoyingly while we are searching for something else. The question is how to treat these visitations: discard them, use them or save them.

One thing that is important is the consolation they offer. As writers and makers of things, we need bags of consolation. The risks we take put us under stress and we need to train ourselves to pay attention to the surprises. Looking for the thing you are after is often guaranteed to chase it away. But it is reassuring to know that something else will always be waiting. The frustration of working and waiting needs a reward.

Apart from active play, sleep is the only other solace and now surpsingly, a guarantee of solving problems and producing new ideas. Empirical tests conducted by psychologist prove this.

But the sea, as they say, is also the unconscious, which is where we go when we sleep. We are obliged to pay attention to all of this as we shape our writing,  creative processes and our careers.

Cats search and search before finally finding a place to settle, turning and turning in order to claim the space they’ve decided is best for them. Dogs somtimes do this but most often plonk down where they are and get on with it.

The art of writing is glueing your bottom to the seat of your chair. I believe Ernest Hemingway said that. But what happens after this most difficult of tasks is achieved?

What is the forward process? Is progress a fox-trot, two steps forward and one back? A waltz with a sideways step? Or raising hell jumping up and down in the mosh-pit?

Mistakes progress science, society and art. A hypothesis is tested which fails or succeeds and is therefore proven false or true. It is slow, deliberate, unavoidable but each step needs to be planned to be a forward one. No-one is hurt because it is so considered.

A revolutionary leap forward is dangerous and has unpredictable consequences, often leaving casualties. Act, react and the hybrid born from this argument and fight is brand new and real progress. But what cost this dialectic?

Every creative act is a risk. To ourselves. Our projects. Our collaborators. We need to make mistakes. We also need to leap forward. Most importantly, we need to survive it all. Nothing worthwhile comes out of safety-only, I believe.

Glueing you seat to the chair, whether collectively or individually, has consequences, whether you are a cat or a dog. How each of us sits is germane to us as individuals.

The significant thing to reflect on and understand is who you are, what you prefer and what helps you most.

Paradoxically though, this will probably change for every project, for each stage of it, every new day and all the different moments in your making of it.

Just before flying to Australia, I came across a duck sitting on her eggs in a small lake close to where I live. As I passed, she lifted her wing and body and then shifted her eggs, turned them over. I glimpsed the things that were most precious to her, that she was protecting in every way possible and I felt privileged to have been let into this moment.

As writers, we need to harbour what we are incubating, place them in a dark place to which only we have access. And then we need to sit on them, warm them and turn them. They are our secrets. The rest of the world might affect, even damage what we are bringing into the light if they see or even touch incorrectly our most precious things. These private and personal conversations are between ourselves and ourselves; or between ourselves an those that we trust will know how to handle these fragile goods. When they are ready to go out into the world, a whole new network of conversations can gradually begin to be carefully introduced until the world at large joins in what will hopefully be a very big public conversation. BUt this is not one huge leap, it is a series considered moves which will only make grow that which we have nurtured so carefully.

Lies evolved us as human beings. The ability to see something different to that which is presented to us as ‘the real’ can save us when we find oursleves in bad times. We can imagine something quite different, tell ourselves stories with different endings to those seemingly prescribed.

As writers, we also need to do this in order to find a metaphor or metaphors to tell our stories. As story tellers, we tell lies in order to get to the truth. And we orchestrate them in the most inspired way we can. The best stories are those that artfully take us away from our world to those fabricated others.

Secrets and lies also speak to our own creative personae. Is this film about you personally? Are you in there somewhere? This appears to be your life you’re recounting? These are questions we are asked. Well, we answer, both, neither some of each. It is our secret and our lie.

Film is pictures first, moving or still, then words. But the significant images need to vibrate with with what is personally truthful to the film makers and the film. They cross over, one to the other.
The labsters have found and made two and three dimensional images in the visual deas workshop which are filling up with impressively resonant ‘truths’. Excellent work, guys! You will make your producers very happy.

Yeah, as claimed elsewhere, I danced on the table after the discussion about the lab and the excellent labbers – that from someone who was thinks he was not inebriated, so remembers it all clearly.

Fortunately, all was noted down and next week is set-up for the pleasure of the harder, faster, deeper effect whcih was promised. A day’s grace and preparation.

Another great walk on the local beach tomorrow and then we are all back in again. Looking forward.

Day 4: Finally on. Full-on. The intensity of work and play from all bodes well for everyone’s project. Excavating scaffolding is visible from all teams as they dig deep for their unique and distinct films. Good luck, everyone, as the maestro says. I feel very optimistic for everyone.

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