Before I Begin

On filmmaking and the wind (and a quote from David Lynch about we love the cinema)

Stephen Shore Perrine, Florida, November 11, 1977

There is a high wind warning and all our sheets need to be changed but the wind gets me outside first thing, and it is delicious and still inconsistent but strong, playing with our bells in the trees.

The wind has always been my favorite element, the thing I say I’ll miss the most when I die. (Next to kissing, next to swimming, which can be so much like kissing, and I love the memories of them both that play like a low hum through my body.) That despite it all I’ve liked the life I’ve had, even if I’d do it differently next time, even if I want my daughter to do hers differently this time, to know and love her body, to understand it makes a shape in the world, that she does not have to go begging and busking with a basket at her feet.

And if you believe in signs, mine is the wind. Airy, unsettled, creative. And there was a time I didn’t take stock in any of it, and then there was the time of making meaning, when I began to take stock in it. When I began to learn how to cook, and the days were hot and long, but I could never give up my love of garlic, or a simmering onion, and so I remained and remain, windblown and searching for ground.

And because I am in pre-production for a film, I wake up at 4:30 AM wondering how it will all work. Wondering about framing and colors. Wondering if the man wears green. And if he wears green what does the woman wear? And then my daughter begins singing at 5:17 AM. And I am still dreaming about a waitress, thinking about Mulholland Drive. How when I first started writing, my husband, before he was my husband, printed David Lynch’s script out for me to read, so I could see that the script was just a blueprint, it wasn’t some extraordinarily magical document, it was the beginning of the magic, and it was really quite simple.

And because it is my movie is a movie about the Mojave desert, I am dreaming about the mountains. And what does one exchange those big mountain ranges for if we can’t shoot under them as written? What does it look like if there are no mountains and just desert. And then - and then - I ask myself, what are you afraid of? And then I ask myself - What excites you? And then I ask myself, What could excite you even more?