...(th)Crossroads.....

"(th)'at I got the croosroad blues this mornin Lord
babe, I'm sinkin down"


I remember this feeling before.

Five years ago. October 31st, 2005. Halloween night in Seville, Spain.

I wandered out of the Flamenco bar around 1 a.m. clicking my worn and taped Converse along the cobblestone streets through the maze-like alleyways of a Moorish quarter. Silence and shadows ever so slightly permeated by occasional flashes of light and burst of Catalan. Out on the open promenade I stumbled along River Guadalquivir where swarms of young students, American and Andalusian alike sang and danced. Chants and laughter were echoed along small bonfires and parked cars, a radio of one of them blaring out R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion. My eyes gazed at the surreal visions around me, Michael Stipe soundtrack'ing a near perfect ending to months of living out of a bag all across the continent, growing up a relative ten years from when I left NYC and ending right where it had started in Spain. I'd be catching a flight back to the the U.S., to Newark Int'l Aiport  if I could just find my way through the crowd and to the airport in time...

In Heathrow for a changeover flight the exhaustion of the experience was finally kicking in. I sat amongst the already out Christmas trees that November 1st and to keep my eyes awake I hungrily ate a Cadbury bar and scribbled in my journal. I was on the last page of it and was uncertain how to end it, how to summarize such an outer and inner journey. I'd like to believe that whatever rambling phrases or dirty limericks I put down were just right, sitting along with smudges of chocolate and dirt. I realize it wasn't just pressure to summarize that had me anxious and filled with writer's block... It was that I was at the crossroads. I knew that once I touched down the next morning I'd have no money, no certain home, job or future. It would also be winter in NYC and while none of this was unfamiliar territory even at 22, I was also now completely different person from the kid who had gotten on the plane months before. I saw things different and wanted a new plan...

The Europe journal is one of the few I've kept since I started writing, also housing a few cards, mementos and nicknacks that have also survived the last very long five years. I've been going through it recently, deciphering handwriting, paragraphs and drugged out notes I'd long forgotten. I've also been going through whatever old photos I still have, and checking my reflection more and more. I'm not looking at the physical changes, scars and lines, build, thinning hair or triple decker luggage under the eyes... I'm looking at the soul behind the eyes. I don't see "me" there anymore...

It's funny how much the story of Things, as well as producing and trying to get it off the ground, has become a metaphor for the current state of my life. The same guttural voices that pulled me out of a dark, dark time and compelled me to pound away at a keyboard now find themselves reemerging. Trying to find answers and meaning in my life and the roads I've traveled, the relationships I've made and lost, trying to just feel something by stretching myself across the abyss to see if I can bring myself back. That's the story of the main character Violet, the story of me. I've spent the last few months putting together an amazing team of actors and crew, no and old, that anyone would be lucky to have a chance to work with. I've been hitting the pavement through emails and meetings and phone calls and Skyping(yes, and I hate it) and begging and fundraising and schmoozing... 

Time is ticking away and all the eggs are not in the basket. I've got at least a month more and a few more tricks, hail Mary passes and doors I haven't approached. All is far from lost and over.. but here's the honest truth...

 As hard as I'm fighting and as much as I believe in what I'm doing there' the constant nagging fear that I don't have it in my heart anymore. Call it a lack of innocence, being a bit burned out or just not having the same devil may care juice that being eighteen brings, I'm just not sure I know how to win or even fight this particular challenge. I don't think I've ever felt, regardless of scope of a previous obstacles in my life here or abroad, that things were so completely out of my hands. I'm at a place in my life and "career" that as hard as I work and much as I do or creatively push... I can't go any further unless someone vouches for me or helps me through the door. I need an invitation to the Prom and I haven't quite found that mentor or encouraging hand. To have talent is so important. To have ball is what helps get the talent recognize or put to good use. To have money, connections and clout... well you don't need balls or talent if you have that sometimes. To have all three or a combination.... that's the key now to do things the way I want to do them. I don't want to short sell the amazing people or the story by just getting it done. I want to do it right. I want to do it great.

So, I push along, leading the way as I always have because it's part of who I am. Fighting or putting myself in situations to see how far I'll go achieve what I'm not supposed to even dare to do is embedded in every strand of my DNA. I don't know exactly where it comes from, what distant Viking relative or town drunk, but it's there. And as always I'll figure out what I don't know as I go along, leverage the risks on hard work and unbearable personal sacrifices, take whatever leads or opportunities that present or open to themselves to me and do above and beyond with them, but I worry it's not enough this time... 

I find myself debating what it means for me and the future and how I go about it and other things. At a certain point you put down the worn coat, pull of the shredded travelin' shoes and you retire the bloodied boxing gloves. You long to pull out the sword and slay the dragon and be a martyr for principles that quickly lose sight of their original intentions. I guess you kinda grow up.... and that's the biggest crossroad of them all as I find myself quickly growing up this year and as I cross the threshold with this project, with the next chapter. "Giving Up" is also not something I've ever been good at and I don't equate "giving up" with "growing up". I do know that reconciling my new changes with whatever happens next is going to be something I am going to have to be honest about and negotiate. This film and how it plays out, the experience, much like those Cadbury stained journal pages, is the perfect summation of this journey to the next crossroads of my life. 

And what exactly did those pages say? 

I sat down at the airport bar and ordered a Scotch and began chatting up Ida, a 26 year old Danish girl on holiday. Our conversation quickly turned to my current dilemma. She decided to play a free word association game with me she learned from a friend. I write down a word. She writes down a word. I write down a word and so on until we put them together in some order. This is what the last pages say:

"Wandering. Soul.If.You.Knew.So.Cool.To.Be.Love."

I don't know what's going to happen with everything as I push on... But I can only hope for half as good a summation as that....

Sweet dreams, All. More later. Don't forget to vote.

D.