I Worry I'm Too Late

This is a brilliant commercial (not an oxymoron)entitled "Fate" directed by David Fincher. I've had the idea for a similar story for quite some time. Not specifically about two football players, but showing the circumstance that lead people to a meeting and then departure. It would be a movie basically about that moment in which two lives meet. Or don't. This is not to say that I can't make this movie that I've got in my head. In under 2 1/2 minutes The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" does what it takes Magnolia 3 1/4 hours to do. There are no original stories.

But through my life I've had ideas and these ideas have been confirmed as good because I've seen them other places. Here in this commercial. A sweeping camera shot in Finding Neverland. And perhaps my greatest confirmation by Hitchcock himself as a woman screaming becomes a trainwhistle. Others.

It's always a thrilling and disheartening experience. Thrilling to be told these thoughts/ideas have worth. Disheartening because...they're only ideas. They live in my head and nowhere else. I used to think it would be horrible to be a composer and leave behind an unfinished symphony. I want everything from artists that ever were. Even their 8-year-old sketches. Who cares? I want to see how this artist worked through their talent. And how awful, I thought, to die with something still gestating.

I don't think this anymore. How wonderful to be able to simply create something, anything, that will affect, affirm people. I've said that my goal in life is to make one person sit forward in their seat because of something I've done. It's my highest compliment; I'd like to receive it.

I may have done that, who knows, but these ideas I reference above, they are larger. They aren't meant for the stage. So they won't be realized until I can make a leap.

I'm a patient person. It is a quality that allows me great freedom from stress and guilt, things that I see eat away at others. At the same time, I can sit still for far too long. This brand of patience I have does not inherently include drive. I look at Orson Welles' career and all that he had accomplished by the age of 24, or even Paul Thomas Anderson dropping out of school and using his tuition money to make his first film. I am not jealous of their success; I am jealous of their drive. Their ability to pursue something to the extent they may have nothing left at the end but what they create.

I've never been able to live there, the fringes. I don't think I'll start now. But I still wonder, am I too late? Have my best ideas passed? Is the well running dry? Are any further ideas at risk of being tame? At my church, Tracy is directing Proof this year. I finished reading it again this morning and one of its themes is how aging can affect creativity. The worry that the best ideas are past. This seems to be particularly true in mathematics. Einstein's best work was done in his 20's.

Film can be a different beast. Though I would say Scorsese and Spike Lee are becoming more tepid as their careers role on, Clint Eastwood in his late 70's is at perhaps the greatest artistic height of his life. At the same time, I watch his movies and I don't respond to them as much because they are made with an older aesthetic. Not as in elderly, but the language of the film hearkens back to the 70's and before. I appreciate that they allow for moments to develop and trust the audience, but, well, his films don't make me sit forward in my seat. Ah, well. He doesn't care. Jean-Luc Godard, though I haven't seen his current films, seems to be even edgier than in his heyday, if not quite as loved by critics. He's striving.

Striving. I'd like to strive. To my own credit, when opportunity presents itself, and it does, I seize it. But can I count on that?

I'm not sure why I'm writing this. The germ was to simply show this awesome commercial and relate my own feelings. Those feelings quickly developed into a rather revealing blog. Which I will let stand on its own. I don't believe in apologizing for how one feels, only how one acts. Perhaps that's what all this is about. The desire to spur myself on so I don't have to apologize to myself anymore.

I'll have to sit and think about it.