I want to be a better man than the one I’ve become.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I see a stranger. I am stooped. My waist has overwhelmed my hips. My beard has gone gray. My cheeks are fuller and rounder than I remember. My eyes are dull. The hardest part about seeing what I see is that I have no idea of this man’s future.

If I look back at a better reflection, one that I have created in my mind’s eye, this man is different. He’s nobler, wiser, well-loved and respected. If I see him in company, it is in the company of friends. They share details about their common lives, loves and their hopes and fears. He listens to each in turn, wise and circumspect in his advice. I want to become this man.

I believe that my path to that goal, to being that person, might be be found in helping others to become who they were meant to be, especially in their work as Creatives.

Last year, before I disappeared into myself, the concept for a course on Creative Counselling came to me. It will be loosely based around five key texts in my life. These are books that I have returned to over the years, fingers flicking through the pages to reread key passages. They comfort me by their presence, their strong spines standing proud in the centre of the bookshelf above my desk. Sometimes I keep them close to me, taking them in my bag as I travel, just one, not all, and I feel their familiar presence next to my bed in a stranger’s house or a cold hotel room. Often, I don’t open them. They’ll just sit on my desk for days, in a corner, reminding me of a duty, or a desire, or a promise I made myself the last time I opened their pages. I’m a reader. All books are my friends, but these books have become more than friends. You know what I mean?

Some friends become more than friends. The things they’ve said play over in your mind when long after they’ve left. These thoughts and memories, the ones you return to again and again, usually revolve around you in one way or another. Circular, spiraling inwards, coming closer and deeper into who you are when you’re alone. I’ll give you an example. A couple of weeks back an old friend an was talking  about the pressures of work. She’s a Production Manager, a stressful job at the best of times, but often made worse by the demands of the stars. But not always. She told us how sometimes those who have access to everything will eschew the trappings of fame and choose something simpler, more personal. On one production, she needed to organise accommodation for Elijah Wood. Coming out of The Lord of The Rings, she imagined he’d demand the star treatment. But she was surprised. He didn’t want the 5-star hotel the budget offered. He asked for an apartment, away from the rush, close to the area his character lived. All he wanted was a stocked refrigerator. Nothing special. And every day he saw her he thanked her for the work she did to keep him comfortable. It was an interesting anecdote, one that cut across the grain of what we think we know about film stars. We talked about being humble. It made me think. How would I be in the same situation? Would I choose the humbler, simpler option, or would I take what I could get? Am I happy with ‘enough’?

Those words have been circling, coming in closer and closer, talking to me about who I am, how I see myself, how I interact with others. A number of people I know could have shared a story like that, maybe not on the same subject, but they have anecdotes aplenty about all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. Their stories would have been good to hear, interesting at the time, but with the conversation over, the story would sink into the depths of memory. Gone. But hearing this story from this particular friend – it’s stayed in my mind. I trust her. She speaks the truth. I treat what she says with respect. That’s what I mean. She has become more than a friend, without even knowing it. She has become one of my secret mentors.

It is the same with these five books. They have become more than my friends. Secretly, they teach me things. The spirit within me communes with the spirit within them. Deep to deep. Their words of encouragement, admonishment and advice have stayed with me, long after I closed the pages. I will admit that some of the thoughts, ideas and anecdotes have transformed from their author’s original intention. They might have meant a paragraph as a cautionary tale, I have absorbed it as a challenge. They could have been writing a section on how to function as an artist, I have read that part as words of wisdom on relating as a father. There’s magic deep within.

There’s a verse in the Bible that talks about the Holy Scriptures, especially in this case the words of wisdom: “Every writing which is written by The Spirit is profitable for teaching, for correction, for direction and for a course in righteousness...” That’s an Aramaic translation of 2 Timothy 3:16, and closest to what I believe the original author had in mind. It speaks to every writing written by the Spirit. I’ll cast that net wide. There is so much out there that is good. And I want to use these resources to help other people.

The idea of using concepts from these texts in order to help others with their creative interactions with the world isn’t selfless. I’ve found that if I help people, it helps me. Helping you to solve your problems or issues in your creative endeavors helps me to better understand my problems. And it makes me feel good.

Here are the books.

The first is “Art and Fear” by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Here’s a quote from the Amazon site:

“Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn’t get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. The book’s co-authors, David Bayles and Ted Orland, are themselves both working artists, grappling daily with the problems of making art in the real world. Their insights and observations, drawn from personal experience, provide an incisive view into the world of art as it is experienced by art-makers themselves.”

Sitting right next to that on the shelf is “Iron John” by Robert Bly. This is from the jacket:

“In this groundbreaking classic, Robert Bly writes that men now know the images of adult manhood offered by popular culture are worn out – and that they can no longer rely on them. He searches for a new vision of what a man is or could be, drawing on psychology, anthropology, mythology, folklore and legend.”

In my bag at the moment is the third: “The Van Gogh Blues – The Creative Person’s Path through Depression”, by Eric Maisel Ph.D. Here’s a quote from the book itself.

“”…virtually 100 percent of creative people will suffer from episodes of depression. Why virtually 100 percent? Because every creative person came out of the womb ready to interrogate life and determine for herself what life would mean, could mean, and should mean. Her gift or curse was that she was born ready to stubbornly doubt received wisdom and disbelieve that anyone but she was entitled to provide answers to her own meaning questions.”

The fourth, which is in the bookshelf next to my bed. “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl.

“Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he treated in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl’s theory—known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos (“meaning”)—holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.”

Finally, the last, which is sitting on the end of my desk. “The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life” by Os Guiness. A quote from the book:

““To play was to be,” said Yehudi Menuhin. “All the rest was rehearsal,” said Artie Shaw. “Nunc dimittis,” said John Coltrane. Somehow we human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us. And often we get a revealing glimpse of these gifts early in life. Graham Greene wrote in The Power and the Glory, “There is always one moment in childhood when the door open and lets the future in. “Countless examples could be added to these stories, but they all point to another crucial aspect of calling—God normally calls us along the line of our giftedness, but the purpose of giftedness is stewardship and service, not selfishness.”

There are many other sources of inspiration that can help us all live a meaningful creative life, one that impacts many people as the ripples spread. These books have helped me, and I hope they’ll help you too. Read them again if you have them, track them down if you don’t  They are worth it.  In the meantime I’ll work on the course. And keep you all posted.

In the Time of Worms

It is 02.30 now. The light is hollow. I am inside. It is black everywhere else. There is silence.

I have been sitting in my neat and tidy editing suite thinking,”Why?” Why do I wake up like this? This morning was an hour earlier than usual. Normally I wake up at 03.10. That’s it, anywhere between 03.00 and 03.15. I lie in bed, awake, thinking and praying, usually. Maybe God wakes me to pray? That would make some kind of sense to me.My mind is so busy with the things of the world during the day, and I am caught up with this incessant thinking, thinking, thinking! that I don’t have the space to be with God, to hear Him if He talks. I don’t hear Him at all, only the sound of my own thoughts ricocheting off the top of my head.Can I be honest here? Can I pour out for the next two hours the things that are eating into me?

When you die, you are buried in a coffin that theoretically should break down with time. Your body rots as the wood rots. Eventually the ‘worms’ will invade. “He’s buried with the worms.” “He’s worm-food now.” That’s well and good when you are dead, but while you are alive the worms of life eat you. They come in and nibble at me all the time. Doubts, concerns, missed opportunities, thoughts of what should, could, would have been. If I was buried at sea I imagine myself eaten by the eels as I half float, half lie on the rocks and sands of the bottom. That’s how I see them. Then they’d be worms that come in like smoky wraiths, the eels of the day, Floating and feeding in the currents of opinion and regret.

My concern is that I don’t know what I should be doing, and I’m running out of time to do it in. Each second is nibbled at by the little worms, the inch-worms of the measurement of small amounts. On their backs are the thread-worms of minutiae, of lost detail, of half-remembered dreams, hungry mouths nibbling. They, in turn, are consumed by the sucking worms, the vacuum cleaners of this last hour. Each day, as mouthfull, is eaten by the great worms of time, like the great worms of Arrakis. They come up out of the sands of eternity with their mouths split wide, speeding like a freight-train, and they surface under the day as it struggles through the desert, and they swallow the day whole, taking it down into darkness. You’d think there would just be one, one day-eating mega-worm, but there are millions, and they are coming up as each of us look over our shoulders as we tramp tiredly through the desert, losing focus, losing time.

What I need to do is stolen, stolen by sleep at night, by day worms and night worms. I’m losing the very ground that I’m walking on. This is sure, this is steady footing. No it’s not. The worms of doubt have come to eat the space in front of you as you walk, while you looked the other way. Now the way forward is uncertain, the security you once had in stepping out is gone. Time is not on my side.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and so many others before them and after them and on into eternity have been seeking and will continue to seek ‘meaning’. What is the meaning of Life? What is the aim of mankind? What are we so restlessly and hopelessly seeking as we wander like ghosts, like wraiths avoiding these things that would eat us, do eat us? Socrates saw the clear separation of the body from the soul. The soul immortal, the body frail and constrained by time. The meaning was to seek virtue, to live the ‘good’ life. The soul directed by a perfect virtue that was unchangeable and outside. Some would say unattainable. Stop, breathe and think. Break the thoughts down into their separate parts. How does the start of this connect to the middle of that and ultimately to the end? How are we connected to the end?

Aristotle said the end must have virtue. There must be a goal that is worth pursuing, and like a set of dominoes rolling back from their inevitable state of all having fallen, the first choice of action must be marked by the last result. Seek Goodness at the end. Does the end of all things have virtue? My horror is that each step is not virtuous. I’m stumbling as the worms eat their way ahead of me.

All of this is so tied up with my understanding of God. What is it that keeps me coming back again and again? Even though I stray away from Him, cut the ties, I keep on coming back. He calls me.

It’s 03.00 in the morning and I awaken. Why? God has talked into my deep. The worms are eating. They hear. Maybe they stop and look up. Do worms have eyes? These are blind worms. So they stop, sensing something that is bigger than their right to eat. And God speaks into the silence that is created by the worms not eating, not moving, not rustling against each other. God speaks: “Life.” God breathes over me.

The worms pull back and I awake. To silence, but to a consciousness that is pricked awake. Here is a space where I know the worms will come into soon, again, inevitably. But they are not here now, and their absence is threatening, because they will be here soon. If I sleep they’ll start eating again, and the night will be gone and the day will be gone and the night will be gone again. And one day I’ll be down among the worms of this world. And my chance will be gone.

There was an image on the old Oppikoppi site that said something to me. I have just thought of it now, actually. It’s the man who is opening his mouth and the worms are coming out. The time-eating worms. They have dates that they are going to eat. Their dates, their assigned time. Nothing he can do, no matter how focussed he is, will stop their progress on those days. They are the worms of 5,6,7 August 2011. The giraffes of ‘oversight’ can look out for him, can watch his back, but he knows that the worms are eating all the time.

What do I do to keep from being distracted? Nothing. I am constantly distracted. I’ll be focussing on ‘this – one – thing’ and then it’s gone in a rush of sensory experience. In the overload of things that will be seen, that will be heard. Things that take away the attention. Maybe I’m just hiding away from the guilt of not doing anything? Maybe I choose the distractions, even invite the distractions? In a neater, cleaner and more streamlined work environment you can see the distractions more clearly. The cool clear light of an unsullied mind invites them in. Maybe.

Tired now. Drifting again. Time to go back to bed. Let the worms have their fun.

(This has been cross-posted from my journal)

Welcome to my space.

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.