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somewhere over the rainbow (and other stories)

  Exactly two years ago I found myself flying through a corner of a rainbow, and landed in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the last film festival I traveled to, a brutal and sweet experience in the harshest of realities, trying to wrap my arms around the slipperiest industry and failing magnificently. Surrounded by fresh faces and eager eyes I ran from the rooms and into the street time and again, wandering off with the camera in my bag as a companion. I took pictures of a blind man that sang on the same corner every day, of wedding parades, of an old woman waiting to see the dentist.  Literally somewhere over the rainbow, I met the ugliest answers to questions I had been dragging my feet towards for years. Cramming the most delicious food into my mouth, joking at the nightly rooftop cocktail parties, grinning like the Cheshire Cat it was all coming to an end. Actually, it had ended before it even started though - and on the plane back to New York and finally Moscow the bone-crunching undertow
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that good tired


6AM on a Sunday, and I am lurching from the bed. The bags are all packed. Camera, lenses, freshly charged batteries and tripod sit in a neat row by the front door. They are waiting patiently for me to eat something, to splash water on my face until things connect. The phone rings, Alexander will be here soon. The baby is sleeping in such a perfect pose. N is curled around her, in the fuzziest pink blanket. I tiptoe back into the room, because I forgot my lucky shirt, the one I wear on flights. It hangs wrinkled and lopsided in the closet, but I put it on all the same.

We are quickly off the main road, and driving in some secret, forgotten corner of Moscow. There are dogs barking, a horse and rider moving slowly, looking back at us just once. The trees look strange here, like they are from Mars. The main road is close, a steady hum of traffic bleeds across so there is no way we can shoot any scenes with sound here, but take that invisible traffic noise away and we could be anywhere - some barren, lost corner of the world. That is one thing I need for Blackbetty - to turn a busy city into an empty one. 

Later, we are driving in an old business district. There are old bricks slathered with a hundred layers of paint. There are no straight lines here, just sagging, curving, bending walls that finger off into the distance. There are trolley cars on metal wheels, still running up and down the tracks that shine along the asphalt. There are filthy windows, reflecting nothing. There are steps to closed doors. A bus stop sits, empty and patient. We try to capture it all, hustling up and down the main road before the sidewalks fill with people, before cars are barreling up and down the roads.

And then we are done. Back at home, the bags are slung across my shoulders, the warm goodbye, the ritual of making a film with the same people often transforming into such an unspoken shorthand, a nod, a moment when you lean your head to one side and you have said everything. 

Upstairs I eat a second breakfast. The baby is smiling at me. She wants to steal my orange cap.  I sit and sigh and feel that good tired, that peaceful exhaustion after you accomplish something. 



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