If you walk into my office, the first thing that will strike you in an age of visual entertainment are the bookshelves. I have spent a large part of my life browsing bookstores, and collecting books. I’d hesitate to call myself a bibliophile these days. Those aspirations receded into the mists when we sold my collection of esoteric books to the only worthwhile bookshop in the city. “Seriously? Michael’s books?” the proprietor asked, when my wife inquired as to whether he’d be interested in buying. “Absolutely”.
I read, a lot. And like most people who enjoy savoring ideas and the literary hot-pots they stew in, my tastes are wide-ranging. The sampling of books in my office don’t necessarily reflect that wide a range of tastes. This is a working space, and because the majority of what I do revolves around documentary filmmaking in the area of the God and the spirit, the titles range from Barnouw’s Documentary to Alister McGrath’s Christian Theology.
If you’re waiting for me to finish a call and you spend a little time actually perusing the shelves, you’ll find the one shelf that reflects a soupçon of my personal tastes. Stacked between Robert Bly’s Iron John and Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure you’ll find Eric Maisel‘s The Van Gogh Blues and David Bayles‘ Art & Fear. Those four titles alone might just be enough to give you an insight into my character, creative aspirations and deepest fears. You might also use that insight to mistrust any deadlines I promise I’ll meet.
Across from my desk to the right hangs a portrait of my son, sixteen and bursting with life. It’s filled with sunrise hues; reds, ochre’s and fine grey shadows that will fill with color as his days progress. To the left, leaning precariously against a white-board that still holds production notes from a documentary I shot a year ago is another painting. That one delves into the moment of a man’s death, bleeding from a bullet wound, his precious yet wasted life seeping into a stream of being and nothingness.
Above the bookshelf directly over the desk in front of me are eleven old cellphone boxes. They all have some useless piece of software, or cable, or sticker with a PUK number that I feel I just cannot throw away. There are other things crowded on to that space. A Panama hat chewed by a puppy; a fifty-year-old bottle of Benedictine that I’ve promised myself I’ll open when I sell my first screenplay; a postcard-sized collage that a close friend made for me on her first trip to Malta. The artwork mixes a watercolor sketch of broken pottery with glued-on shards of the pottery itself. Next to that is a sculpture of an African man drinking maheu from a clay pot. He was given to me years ago by a friend, to remind me of those less fortunate than I. Lately, however, I think that the man in question looks more fortunate than I, and drinking beer in the sun is surely a far more pleasant and worthwhile pursuit than those that seems to take most of my time these days.
To my far right is a glass wall, separating this area of reflective thought and hair-tearing stress from the other side of what I do. On that side is an edit-suite, shelves filled with CD’s and DVD’s, blank-eyed monitors and enough blinking red and green lights to replace all the missing landing beacons in most of the airports from here to Kinshasa. That space reminds me that I run a production office, that I have wages to meet and bills to pay. Marx apparently argued that in pre-capitalist societies the labourer uses the means of production to create product; in capitalism, because of its inherent drive to produce capital, it is the means of production that uses the labourer. He was right. My camera and editing suite call me with a deep droning voice, “Use me, use me”, reminding me that I need to be more productive, shoot more stuff, edit more films. As I get older, I’m finding it easier and easier to turn a deaf ear.
To my close right, a printer. Ergonomics dictate I don’t have to move my right hand far from my keyboard to lift the promising pages from the printer cradle, and economics dictate that I don’t have to move my left hand far either as I transfer those same but sadly disappointing pages to the trash can under my desk. To my close left, a pile of presence. This day, this week. Printouts, files, scribbled notes, envelopes. If it’s interesting, promising or urgent, it’s there. In front of me, and slightly to my left is a large flat-panel monitor, a second screen, that’s dark right now. Below it, within easy reach, is a hand-made pottery bowl filled with soft Indonesian ginger. Permen Juhe. My tastes are changing as I age, and the gift I used to buy my father in my teens has become my sweet of choice.
Under my desk is the smallest Persian carpet you have ever seen. Well, not that small. It’s big enough for me to put my stockinged feet on of a cold winter morning. No space left for a dog, or a cat, or even a mouse. Just my feet. Its ground is a deep purple-red, loud, like a brash young wine, with a double Gul motif knotted in a dirty white goat hair. The pile is thick, warm, wool. It’s my indulgence, and pushing my toes into that pile while I write gives me joy.
Behind me is another desk, another bookshelf. No paintings there. A large clock ticks loudly, its second hand beating out a steady countdown to the twelve, except for the area between twenty-to and thirteen-to the top. For some unknown Chinese clock maker’s reason, the beat goes dead quiet for seven seconds, seconds that I note when I can’t find the beat to my next scene, seven seconds that drill their way into my conscious mind because something is missing. Next to that is the door that leads out of this sanctuary into the real world of our house, my family and home. No commuting for me, no barriers of entry for them.
This is the space that I am living in, and sometimes when things are going bad, the place that feel I am dying in. Like a monk’s cell, it serves two purposes: It reminds me that while I yet lean, terrified, against the doors of hell, I also stand, awestruck, in the vestibule of heaven. Which way I choose to go is always my choice. God help me.
Shoot for the Heart 