Little Bill

LittleBill: did you ever find a boy to date?
Kimba: a boy???
Kimba: noooo
LittleBill: no boys for kimba
Kimba: oh yeah none
Kimba: i was kind of in a void the entire last year
Kimba: i was like not having a good time
Kimba: haha
LittleBill: like, were you?
Kimba: shut up :P
Kimba: i’m not a valley girl
LittleBill: but you were like not having a good time
Kimba: yeah typo
LittleBill: haha typo.

I think there’s something fantastic about the written word. Words are amazing to me, and those who can paint with words better than I can snap with a camera blow me away. But putting pen to paper does not constitute living — no matter how eloquently you write. It doesn’t matter how many (or few) charming sentences or paragraphs you can convey. Life is meant to be lived.

I wonder how many people expect life to come to them, who come at this process with expectations. If you want things to be different, then chances are it’s you who has to change.

This applies to me, too.

I’m coming back to life.

I went to the doctor after some subtle nudges by my employers — they said, “get your ass to the doctor tomorrow.” — good enough for me. Now I’m on an antibiotic, have resumed eating (sort of.) and am feeling alive again.

It’s been a long long time since I’ve been so sick that I have had my energy completely depleted. I felt like a waste of space whose only purpose was to hack and cough.

Well, it’s almost over. I’m not quite at one hundred percent, but I’m getting there.

Soon I’ll be alive again.

Perhaps it’s being sick that has done it; the daily battle against my weak chest and my high fever (102.6 F/ 39.2 C) surely has caught up with me. It could simply be cabin fever.

Or it’s simply that I’m fucking bored.

As of Thursday I will have been sick a week. Sure, the fever long since broke yet I’m still hacking away. You see, I have a weak chest. Bronchitis can kill me. Hell, simply sleeping on my back can render me breathless. I’ve nearly died of walking pneumonia. When I cough, Nothing. Comes. Up.

What I have discovered in the past six days is that my drive to do anything has left me. I cannot work, I cannot’ sleep, I cannot play. I cannot leave my house. I have as much interest in reading books as I do sitting on the couch: none. My creative drive has left me wondering if I ever cared about anything.

I suspect it’ll all snap back into place as soon as this disease leaves my body. I hope, in the meantime, you can understand that I just don’t give a damn.

I’m inspired again. You could even say I’m supercharged. Excited.

This past weekend, my roommate Mike and I made a film. It wasn’t much, just four pages. But it was enough to get my juices flowing again. This past project was Mike’s film — we’ve been making films together for years — and I served as the Director of Photography: I was the Cinematographer, did all of the lighting setups, and operated the camera. Mike wrote and directed.

To be fair to myself, the excitement began a few weeks ago when we held auditions for the film. There was a call for actors, a space rented and readings given. Also, it’s film festival season. That helped fan the flames, too.

Nothing against Mike by any means, but I think what got me charged up to do this was when I found myself thinking that’s not how I would have done it, which is not to say what he did was wrong or bad per se, just not how I would’ve done it. This, of course, sparked my latent desire to actually make a film again.

This is good. I call myself a filmmaker. I’ve even gone as far as to describe myself to perfect strangers (read: girls I’ve met in bars) as a filmmaker-who-doesn’t-make-films. There’s a zillion of us out there. I’d rather be able to describe myself as one who does make films.

And that’s where I am now. I’m making a film. Soon. There are stages to this process, of course, and I’ve just finished the outline. There’s no title yet, and the plot synopsis will obviously stay secret. After this will come exhaustive character studies; script writing; scene breakdowns; location scouting; storyboards; costume, set, and lighting design, finding cast and crew, auditions, and finally filming.

All of this for what will be anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour long. And I’m super excited. It might get quiet here in the meantime, so enjoy my really bad short film, The Blind Date in the meantime.