Dream Projects

I'm on the threshold of graduating and the fear is rising - fear of losing access to great libraries, resources, databases, a purpose in life....fear of never finding a job or becoming a failure. But at the same time, something else is rising...project ideas. I'm  allowing myself to think about a time when I won't be doing homework every night, when in fact I may be crying in my coffee over being unemployed, but when I'll be less busy too. I'm making this fantasy list to remind myself and to prod myself and to make a record of where my imaginative life is at right now:

1. YA Book of Interminable Foreverness

It has a title even, but I don't want to jinx it. You guys, I feel 1000x closer to actually finishing this than I ever have before. A million false starts and I finally hit my groove and it's moving along and I had a dreamy little session at a coffeeshop on Saturday while AH took Simone to a birthday party and I felt so good, but also so bad - because it's about heartbreak and throwing myself back into that mindset where you can't sleep and life is worthless and it will never be good again and listening to Smog songs non-stop....but I really, really feel like it will be done before the end of the year, which sounds modest and small-goal but I mean it. 

2. Duham: The Movie

The possibility that we may leave this little town and the South for good is rearing up and while I'm excited, I've got that feeling too that I will never live somewhere near as complex and unique either. Or we'll end up living here forever and I'll bitterly resent it. One or the other. I have inherited 10 400 ft. rolls of 16 mm film and I have decided how I want to make movies now is to "crowdsource" the shooting - I am no cinematographer, and I want others to shoot for me, hand out the film and say "Go!" - and then collect and develop he results and edit it together with a collage soundtrack taken from the Southern Oral History Project and my own experiences (and others) walking around with binaural mics in their ears.  Editing is where it is at. I could edit my whole life away. 

3. Playground: The Movie

I have to spend a lot of time at playgrounds and actually - I hate them. As a parent that is, because in NA it feels like playgrounds are tucked away and ghetto-ized and god, dull. There is never a coffee stall or anything interesting around - just lots of nervous parents who dare not let their child play alone. I loved them when I was kid but strangely, I rarely remember my parents being present. It was about being alone and wild and falling through eagles perches and sitting up in rocket ship climbing structure - and the rocket ship got me thinking about design of playgrounds and then I saw a few amazing photos of 70's era playgrounds and guess what, no one has really made a definitive work tracing the design of playgrounds and wouldn't it be cool to see what 1950's era playgrounds vs. todays are like or NYC vs Rio? This is another I would crowd-source for filming. I couldn't hope to go all the cool places but I would like to try....this is such a pipedream project but it fills my head with happy little images and sounds. 

4. Teen Court: the audio doc

So every Tuesday here in town, teens who are up for misdemeanors face a jury - and a judge, and a lawyer - of their peers. Teens are trained to argue and judge cases and help their peers escape conventional sentencing. I think the possibilities for good audio and stories are strong strong strong - but I have to get over my fear of recording other people and being noticed. And asking permission. And being snoopy. 

5. Fundraising video for the school I volunteer at:

I was listening to a live performance of K'Naan's "Waving Flag" today and I am such a sucker for this song for some reason and suddenly I could see all the shots of my kids and the library and the classrooms and the awesome teachers and the good food and everything that makes the school so special and I knew I could make the best video of all time to wring tears and dollars out of peoples eyes. To be clear, I would use the chorus only, the verses are good but my kids don't live in a warzone, exactly. 

I have a million more (pipe)dreams, but these are the ones haunting me right now - would that I got 1/10th of what I dream of done. Secretly, I'm hoping this librarian business is my day job and I get to do a whole lot more than worry about cataloging schemes. Now that I got all of that out of my system, I guess I better do my homework...