A YEAR AND A DAY

The river has been frozen for a good month but now the ice is melting. I think this is a great visual, a gesture towards the slow passage of time. It will be a perfect transition device for Whale, a film I have been shooting since E was seven. I thought we would shoot the final chapter last summer (in a hospital, of all places) but that plan evaporated. All the same, the ice is calling to me and I test the lenses, charge the batteries, pack the camera and tuck a tripod under my arm. The air is so cold outside that it bites at your face. As you get moving the feeling fades. There is just the work at hand, the low hanging sky, the snow drifts to step around. 

I shot some smokestacks last year for a different section of Whale where time somehow had to pass as well. The sky was crammed with blue and clouds, the air not as cold as today. I check on my phone, looking at them to see how they relate and understand I shot them exactly a year and a day ago. A wave of embarrassment runs up the back of my neck. Am I following some secret program? Am I like a clock, chiming on the hour? In the middle of the creative process, it is disarming to come to the understanding that your actions are so predictable, that you follow such a blind schedule.

The ice has presented itself. The trees are empty, scratching at that heavy sky. The shots are made carefully, as I count out the seconds then pack things up, and head home. 

Later, I do some tests with the new files, finding the colors hidden in them. They speak somehow, and that is all that matters. They drift slowly towards their destination, as we all do.