When did Communism stop beating his wife?

Call it mania if that’s what it is. But also call it being in love, or yearning for deeper connections, or believing uncynically in people power. We call it mania, but before the DSM we might have called it inspiration, eccentricity, passion. I don’t want to give up the peaks of inspiration to avoid the inevitable valleys of depression. I tried that once, and the cure was worse than the disease. Better to learn how to walk, eyes open and back straight, through the ups and the downs. I’d rather harness my emotional tumult than snuff it out.

I’m not so sure about anything beneath this post. It’s been a while, you know? But that’s no reason not to give it another go. This time I’m going to try and speak a little more clearly. And more often. Probably to give it up after a few weeks/months/years/or actually I don’t give it up, and this time it clicks. Excellent! Certainly two years from now I will look at this and want to delete it.

Excellent!

More Rumi (appropriate for one who frequently is sleepless):

Don’t go to sleep one night.
What you most want will come to you then.
Warmed by a sun inside, you’ll see wonders.

Tonight, don’t put your head down.
Be tough, and strength will come.
That which adoration adores
appears at night. Those asleep
may miss it. One night Moses stayed awake
and asked, and saw a light in a tree.

Then he walked at night for ten years,
until finally he saw the whole tree
illuminated. Muhammed rode his horse
through the nightsky. The day is for work.
The night for love. Don’t let someone
bewitch you. Some people sleep at night.

But not lovers. They sit in the dark
and talk to God, who told David,
Those who sleep all night every night
and claim to be connected to us, they lie.

Lovers can’t sleep when they feel the privacy
of the beloved all around them. Someone
who’s thirsty may sleep for a little while,
but he or she will dream of water, a full jar
beside a creek, or the spiritual water you get
from another person. All night, listen
to the conversation. Stay up.
This moment is all there is.

Death will take it away soon enough.
You’ll be gone, and this earth will be left
without a sweetheart, nothing but weeds
growing inside thorns.

I’m through. Read the rest of this poem
in the dark tonight.
Do I have a head? And feet?

Shams, so loved by Tabrizians, I close my lips.
I wait for you to come and open them.

A verse out of a longer poem by Rumi that I enjoyed:

A holy one does sometimes fall,
but by that tribulation, he or she ascends,
escapes many illusions, escapes
conventional religion, escapes
being so bound to phenomena.

Hi-o. The first footage from our Mississippi trip is online! It’s a trailer, but not really a trailer. I prefer to think of it as a thesis. Perhaps it doesn’t nicely encapsulate the whole story in a way that will maximize initial box office returns, but I think it does express a lot of the stylistic choices I’ll be making in the final product.

Hey, I know! Why don’t you watch it for yourself? In HD, preferably:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b2UgWLMNVU

A two and a half hour interview. A number of assassination theories. He was full of history.

I bought him a coffee, and the real story of the day took place after we stopped filming.

We drove around Jackson. He took us to a statue of Medgar Evers, and I stood there and felt a sense of awe that is at the moment difficult to describe. He drove us to Medgar’s house, and we stood in his driveway, and Ed showed us where Medgar died. It was the second time of the day that I felt like crying. I feel like crying now.

He took us through the poor areas of town (which seemed like most areas of town). These are the same areas where the MFDP organized, where SNCC and COFO had their offices. The areas were poor then, but they weren’t dangerous. The rest of town, White Jackson, was dangerous for Civil Rights workers back then, but not these places. Now these places are dead. Ed drives us down a street and then turns around – we’re at a church where the MFDP organized, but driving any further would be dangerous. Not the same kind of danger – not the danger that led to the beatings that permanently messed up his jaw. Just dangerous.

Today was important. I’m glad this is how we started. We’re digitizing the footage right now – I can hear Ed talking in the corner of the room. I need to reflect, unpack it more, before I can extract any kind of greater meaning. My brain is tired, but other parts of me are refreshed.

Well, it’s finally happening. Tomorrow I’m going to Mississippi to shart shooting the documentary! Tomorrow me and Chris (the man with a camera) leave for Jackson, where we’ll be for three days talking to civil rights veterans and digging through archives. Then onward to Indianola, Shelby, and Ruleville in the Delta.

Here’s a little animation sample I made. Soon there will be much more!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdasaPsOG1E