Currently I'm in another hotel room -- this time, in sunny, beautiful sea-side Santa Barbara -- writing. There's another wedding tomorrow. When Darin and I married in October, we thought we were a bit outside the wedding season. Turns out everyone's getting married in October these days.
Nevertheless, I have to WRITE. Another seven or eight pages for writing class. And I absolutely, positively have to get it done, because I'm filming my production class project Monday afternoon and then I have Brooke's class Monday night. Then Tuesday I have writing class, Tuesday night I have to (surprise!) rehearse a scene for Nina's directing class that I didn't even know I was in until yesterday at 5:30 and then Wednesday the production class project is due. Edited.
Hahahahahahaha. Well, the editing suites are open 24 hours Mondays and Tuesdays. And I do edit super-fast. "That'll do. Print." I'm not a perfectionist director. If the people walk and talk and I get my point across, that's good enough for me. All I have to do is get a B in this course in order to stay in the master's program, and I think for a)doing the assignments, b)showing up every week, and c)participating I should get a B.
Some of the other students don't understand why we have to take this course, but I do --
(Well, I don't understand why I should have to take it -- I've done the production course thing, lessons learned, okay? But whenever I feel superior to the requirements of a situation, I always remember the Zen parable about the teacher who kept trying a teach a student who kept saying, "I know this already, I know this already." Finally the teacher pours the student a cup a tea and keeps pouring and pouring and the cup overflows and the teacher keeps pouring. The student says, "What are you doing? The cup is full!" and the teacher says, "You are like this cup. You can't accept anything I say because you are already full."
(I also remember the time in fifth grade when we got our math tests back and I was so smug because I knew I'd gotten the highest grade in the class...right up until I saw the paper and I'd gotten the lowest grade in the class. I try to keep my smugness and superiority to a minimum and learn things where I can.)
-- we have to take production because it shows us immediately that things we write on the page don't translate at all well to the screen. I don't care how brilliant you thought it was on the page -- it sounds totally different coming out of someone's mouth. A scene you thought was cute and to the point will become this gross, overblown monster and all you can think is, "Who WROTE this crap? Get me rewrite."
I'm not as on top of what Nina's directing class is doing for my writing, but I pay attention and try to learn as much as I can.
Darin is down here for the wedding, of course -- the bride and groom are Therese and Brent, mentioned here before, also known as the proud property of Her Majesty, 2-year-old Bunchkin. His plane arrived about an hour late last night and he was tired, but we drove up here to Santa Barbara almost immediately. We stopped at an In N Out Burger so he could learn that they really are the best burgers around. On the way up to Santa Barbara we had a deeper conversation than usual -- about what we're doing, what we want to do, the future.
And this is really embarrassing, but I started to cry. Not because what we were talking about upset me, but because I suddenly got overwhelmed with emotion that I'm with this man and we're together and when I face situations that overwhelm me I don't have to face them alone.