One page a day?

Paul Auster writes one page a day. A day for him is eight hours. Eight full hours in a room. Himself, a pen, some paper. One day, one page. He’s gotten to the point where people (like me) can wax rapturous about that. If you’d written a page a day and hadn’t published any of them, I wouldn’t be writing about you.

Fred Burwick, my mentor, works on the same schedule. One page a day.

Auster writes. Fred writes. Every day.

I do not.

Sorry that the two examples boil down to my own regret. I won’t rest there, I promise. I admire them, laud them, love to hear them talk about their processes. Processis? No. Processes.

They’re two wonderful examples of what every writer should do.

Years back, years ago, in my youth, and when I was young (I fear I haven’t gotten the idea across yet … I was a child, a young, youthful child) … I wrote three novels. One was called James Dean’s Underwear.

As you can imagine, it was too brilliant to be published. I have no copy of it, and maybe if I die and something about me becomes vaguely interesting you might find it at Fifi Oscard & Associates, though if they have even half the interest I have in saving it, they will have destroyed it.

SHAMROCK EMOJI HERE ** [I feel the following paragraphs are best read with an Irish accent … Dublin, maybe Cork, but not Belfast, and not because I don’t like northerners, just because Liam Neeson scares me and I want a lilt rather than an ‘I’ll fuckin’ kill ya’ sound, and he did that French movie, and he’s scary, but …]

Which is to say … I had an agent. Fifi. She was great, she loved James Dean’s Underwear, and she represented my father for several books. She sent my last manuscripts back and said “sorry.” I don’t think I ever met her in person.

And I got rejected by some of the finest publishing houses in New York, with nice notes, very nice notes. Fifi kept telling me my rejections were better than most rejections she’d seen, and if I’d ever seen Fifi, I’m sure she’d have said the same.

I should really have kept going, but maybe I was in a stage where success, wonders, and fascinating rhythm were going to come my way without work, or, maybe I knew there were canyons, mountains, and anxieties to be fed out west and I had to drive to them and walk to them and trudge over the sands to them.

Clauses and phrases and words without meaning.

 

Film progress

People I know I have been asking: “How’s the film going?”

A very legitimate question.

I can’t answer honestly unless I say: “Badly.” or, “Weakly.” or, “Feebly.”

I spent months trying to figure out what I wanted the film to say. No, that’s not quite right. The big stumbling block has been how I wanted the film to speak. We have so much footage, most of it great, some of it passable. We’ve had student interns help with the organization.

But the Voice. A film (I’ve realized) has to have a a voice. I’ve floundered around and, now, finally, have found that voice.

Agnès Varda, Chris Marker, and others were my ideas and ideals. Now it might be more Werner Herzog.

(For those of you who aren’t familiar with these influences, there’s a lot of them on YouTube. For Varda, I’d look to The Beaches of Agnes.)

Now we have a voice, and a plan.

Soon we’ll have a film.

 

Sunset over Battery Park City

I went to New York for a week to visit family. A few of us went to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and we all went out on the roof of the AirBnb place our Irish cousins rented to catch the sunset.

Barbershop

The Yawning Policeman

St. Patrick’s Day Parade, New York, 2016

Mother and Child

St. Patrick’s Day Parade, New York, 2016

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

Before we headed west for the Hellespont swim, we spent two days in Istanbul. Ridiculous, absurd. How can you see Istanbul in two days? You can’t.

So much of this film shoot has been me running in front of picturesque things, getting filmed, then moving on. We’ve dwelt in the places important to the story, but have had to rush through the places that weren’t, no matter how important and fascinating they were in their own sakes.

Istanbul’s a key version of the latter.

Cats of Çanakkale

They’re everywhere in the cities in Turkey. All over Constantinople. This recent article featured the cats of Istanbul. There’s a documentary film that should be hitting festivals soon about them.

Turkish cats and people clearly have a good relationship. It’s nice to be back home with my own two cats, dog, and turtle, but I’ll miss the cats of Çanakkale and Istanbul.

Interfaith dialogue

PHOTOS | ERIC JOHN TRIMBLE

We rode from Istanbul to Çanakkale on a regular city bus. Most of the route went took us across the northern, European side of the Bosphorus, which widens to become the Sea of Marmara, then across dusty farmland before getting to the ferry port in Kilitbahir. The bus took the ferry across to Asia and Çanakkale, and everyone got out to enjoy the crossing.

Our film crew (both of us) were the only non-Turkish people on the bus, and maybe the ferry.

Leander, Lord Byron, and Me: Swimming the Hellespont

PHOTOS | ERIC JOHN TRIMBLE

“I’m an adult. I’m capable of making mature, adult decisions. What am I doing here?”

Curtis said that to me as we stood in a mass on a little ledge on the European side of the Hellespont just before the gun went off telling it was time to swim across to Asia.

Exactly, I thought to myself.