“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. Continue reading “Leander, Lord Byron, and Me: Swimming the Hellespont”
We all know making a movie’s a lot of work. Even those of us who have no desire to make one. But it’s been interesting to learn how much work goes into preparing to make a movie.
Today was fun, because I got to wear knickers and knee socks, and dwell on the fact that tomorrow we’ll be filming the first bit of footage that gets us on the road to making Swimming with Byron.
It’s the first step of preparation, really, because it’s a video for a Kickstarter project. Our project requires location filming, and to get there, we have to raise the funds. So, unlike many crowdfunding projects you see, ours doesn’t have any early footage to show. We hope it’ll show the idea and the passion.
And knickers. Continue reading “Kickstarter video filming starts tomorrow”
We have our movie site up at www.swimmingwithbyron.com, so there will be some double-posting. Please follow us on Facebook @swimmingwithbyron, on Twitter @swimwithbyron, and on the webpage.
It’s all work in progress, but that progress will pick up pretty fast in December and January as we move towards our February Kickstarter launch date.
At this point we’re posting some tiny teasers about the filming of the Kickstarter video. Here’s the first:
We’re getting ready to film the first part of our Kickstarter video, as I mentioned in a post a few days ago. It’s exciting to go from talking about the thing to doing something about it.
Here’s the lake I’ll be swimming. It’s really the Colorado River dammed at two ends of the ten-mile stretch that runs through central Austin. The day we’ve picked for shooting is supposed to crawl to a high of only 54 degrees, so I’m not relishing the idea of stripping down to my swimsuit and diving in. The water will be a lot warmer than the air, so it’s the getting in and out that worry me most.
We’ll be a small crew: the film’s cinematographer, Eric, two student volunteers from a film and fiction class I’m teaching, and a friend of mine. When I wrote the previous post on this I was thinking we’d use paddle boats, but that won’t work, so we’ll have two kayaks. One will tow the other, the second one will hold Eric and the cameras and sound, and voila, a traveling shot rig. Just like Spielberg does it.
It’s technically illegal to swim in Ladybird Lake, but I’ve done it for triathlons and none of me’s rotted away as a result. Just don’t alert the authorities, ok?
I’ll post a “making of video when it’s all done. I just wish we were going to have a day like yesterday, when I took these pictures. I’m crossing my fingers for good light, but am less sanguine about the possibilities for a sudden heat wave in place of the Arctic front that’s forecast.
I just saw that I have 99 followers on this blog.
Should I offer a prize for the 100th? Who’s it going to be? When’s it going to happen? I’m busting with anticipation.
A big thanks to all of you who are reading. I almost put “by the way” at the end of that, but it’s “by the way” at all. We all sit in rooms and write alone, with the hope – that hope we try to pretend we aren’t really feeling – that someone’s out there reading. Getting to 100 followers and who knows how many readers doesn’t put me in major blog category, actually, but I like all of you, lots.
Look soon for a linked blog to the production company I’m forming to make my first full-length documentary film, Romantic Places. I have to change that title. As I re-read Byron’s Childe Harold, Wordsworth’s Prelude, Shelley’s Frankenstein, the other Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” Wordsworth’s “Westminster Bridge,” and so many others in preparation for the film, I’m hoping a phrase will jump out and say “I’m your title.”
Before heading to Missolonghi, I found out there was a Byron Society there. I’d hoped there was something … a museum, a memorial, maybe even a local group dedicated to Lord Byron in some way. So I was happy to find out there was, and I emailed the president, Miss Rosa Florou.
After Hester and I got off the bus, walked through the rubble of the city’s walls, found the Hotel Liberty and checked in, I called Miss Rosa Florou. She was always “Miss” Rosa Florou in emails. Over conversation in the half a day we spent with her I found out she was married and busy with her son’s upcoming wedding in Athens, so “Miss” was an honorific that didn’t exactly translate. But after all those emails, that’s what she was to me.
She came to the hotel to pick us up. I remember trying to tell her where it was on the phone, but she said she knew it. There were only two hotels in town, so obviously she knew it.
Right now I’m searching my mind for a way of calling someone a character, or an original, without belittling them in any way. Because Miss Rosa Florou is an amazing, hilarious, over the top woman, a character and an original, but one you’d do well to take very seriously while laughing. Continue reading “Missolonghi – Miss Rosa Florou”
Sometimes work keeps me from working. Working on the book, working on the blog, the life of the creative mind vs. the academic one. My university goes on spring break at the end of this week, making this one of those times. Papers and midterm exams need grading, applications for grants should be mostly done by now, and I have at least two letters of recommendation to write before the sun goes down this evening. It’s for good students, so they’ll be to write. But that’s more words that need to be put on a page when my brain’s a little rattled from all the writing and teaching I’ve been pulling out of it these last several weeks.
Continue reading “Balancing the day job with the morning job”
Some days the writing flows. Some other days the mind gets busy preparing classes, grading papers, integrating little aspects of life with the Big Capital Life. At some points, all of these work at once.
I find myself in such a fecund season. It’s a happy, even ecstatic time, but it’s overwhelming.
On top of everything, I’ve been fighting a cold. Tonight I realized that triple sec is the answer. There’s orange, vitamin C in there, and I’m not coughing anymore. So I’m going to to bed, but first I’m taking a few more sandaled steps into Greece. I’m kidding. I never wore a pair of sandals in Greece. But my traveling companion did, because women have many more footwear options. But that’s not the point. Let’s focus. Continue reading “Byron in Missolonghi 2”
Parkinson's Disease Diary 