Aesthetic Part One: Pre-production note and other observations about bad weather.

So my aesthetic writing piece was basically a metaphor for how I felt about my relationship with my girlfriend a few weeks ago. Felt like a good idea, but basically got progressively worse. I had a gut feeling that it wasn't going to last very long at times, and it just kinda crept up on me, killing me slowly by taking whatever sense of warmth and optimism out of me. What I forgot to include was how I eventually turned around, took off my shoes, rubbed my feet while sitting on the sidewalk far behind Assembly Hall, hopped back on the bike and roughed it home. I guess this all reveals a lot about my insecurities. I had the tendency to abuse myself with exercise when things weren't going right since high school, but the difference is now that I'm out of shape, it really does hurt. I sometimes have too many feelings for my safety and well-being.

And then it snowed last Tuesday. I should have thought how it would have been impossible to take principal photography out on the roads of the south farms anyways, but the whiteout and eight inches sealed the deal. So no bike piece unfortunately, or lots of other things. The snow days were bad for me. For one thing, I didn't get a single thing done save maybe a chapter of German lit. Otherwise, like the snowdays of my youth, I played in the snow, bundled up inside, played board games, and then had to unbury some cars out of the parking lot, which led to a major back ache on Thursday. I'm never using the two-foot long emergency folding spade from my trunk ever again. EVER. Unless I need to. Which means next Thursday before I go home. I digress, a lot. What the Snowwednesday took away from me was structured time to sit down and think of a new aesthetic piece or approach to my existing one. I have to do that now.

It was hard enough trying to get that memory on paper in the first place. Mainly because I couldn't think of a memory worth putting on paper and eventually on digital video. Maybe I didn't search hard enough. Yes, that was it. There's this tendency to block out everything that, in my mind, isn't exceptional. And in that regard, I have really high standards. I could always try the luddite approach and try capturing some experience I had during the course of my week. One emotion I could encapsulate is excitement, there's a lot to be excited about. One subject I consciously avoided was the snow. Although convenient, it's too convenient. I figure at least one of my classmates will do something about it, and avoiding this preserved some semblance of originality. Plus I'm loath to put my camera in jeopardy by virtue of cold weather or moisture. Strike that idea from the record.

I'm now sitting in class and having a hard time coming up with ideas. I think I'll just try the original approach but in a different way. I'm too confounded by the fact that I'm choosing a subject matter and a story based on my schedule or technical restraints. And I hate this. I don't want to be restrained in my quest for creative expression and I am, I'm letting myself become that way. It's also hard because in some ways, I want to be the subject and behind the camera. This is an impossibility that I cannot get over. This is my tendency to micromanage. I'm making this too hard. I'm trying this again.