JOURNAL: THERE'S BLOOD ON MY MOTHERBOARD

 My biggest fear continues to be that people will find me boring. Or grow bored with me, I'm not sure if those are the same or two different things.

It's a thing that has haunted me for always. I used to think I could banish it, that I'd beat it and cast it off like a brilliant and powerful amazon (not the corporation) never to be held back again. But now I recognize it will probably always be there. It's become a thing to face, to test--to dance with and romance and then to shy away from again.



There's a lull in building friendships--a great gulf that scares me every time. The initial getting-to-know-facts-and-favorite-colors step is second nature now. The shy young kid who crept around her dorm building freshman year and sat paralyzed unable to speak to anyone in her classes has blossomed a bit. But there's this deep cavernous pit, a moon crater, or perhaps a Kola Superdeep Borehole--a scientific drilling project that I'm afraid of going into because I hate when we come away empty and walk away from each other. Perhaps it's better to look at these as expeditions in the name of science and in the pursuit of truth rather than feeling like I just shared a bit of my soul that I can't get back even though it's been rejected.

How do you even share when your raisons d'être are made of things like cupping your hands in front of your face and blowing at the honeysuckle petals in your hand to watch as they flutter in a puff of tiny brilliant orange specks? Marvels like that are so quiet and small, they're hard to share with most people.   

I'd been pondering this because I've dipped back into a reclusive phase and I'm feeling the need to break out in some way. Last night I was twiddling my thumbs reflecting when I knew what was needed was to film something. Anything. So I took a walk to a hidden little nature preserve I discovered a few months ago with a boy--I'd known for a long time I'd need to go back alone to make it mine. Even then as we'd held hands we felt like two solo units who happened to be there in step with each other. I walked there hoping I'd find it again, find it before it was dark. I found the stairs just as we had then and I climbed down into this beautiful place. And for a minute I filmed the stream as I looked around and breathed in the world. 


22 April 2016 from Marge Bjork on Vimeo.

"I don't have to answer that question"

There is an excellent documentary series that you should check out:

Starting in 1964, Michael Apted chose a variety of seven year old British children and has followed up with them every seven years since. 49Up came out most recently, I believe, with 56Up coming in a few years. That is, if we can trust my math.

One of the underlying ideas of these films can be found in this clip:

"Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man." 

In other words, so much of our character is formed by the time we are seven, the unchangeable core of us and who we will be as an adult is already there and can already be seen. Upon reviewing my report cards and evaluations from second grade I was forced to agree with this ("has trouble expressing herself clearly"). And there was further proof this afternoon. When I was a kid I would wrap string and elastic bands around my fingers until they turned blue and my parents would have to cut me loose. Today I wrapped my finger up in black electrical tape as always and a few minutes later found I'd turned blue.


link to a PBS P.O.V. interview with Michael Apted
a clip of my favorite participant, Nick, in 49Up
 

swimvation continued

Because this is what I'm like:

Friday night some friends are over so I pull out the quilt I've been piecing together for months (you know, the one where if people ask me "Are you making a quilt?" I say, " Uhhhh.....yeah.....kind of...." because I feel embarrassed?). It's mostly pieced together and looking at this Alicia (I think it was you) says, "You've done a lot, are you proud of yourself when you see this?" And I, who had just been feeling overwhelmed thinking of all that's left to do and can't seem to narrow my focus to these last few stitches that are needed to perfect one section, I say, "Sometimes I can't feel that."

And we hear as film students all the time (mostly from people who are NOT in the filmmaking trade themselves) that obviously we're not all going to be that filmmaker we admire, there's a lot of us, we can't all be that filmmaker who gets screened in theatres, even limited-run art house cinema kinds of theatres. And as I'm an average human I think, Oh, I can't be, I shouldn't even try to make a feature length documentary. 

But at least for the moment at this point I can remember Werner Herzog's funny voice I heard on NPR this morning saying, "You have no excuse not to make a feature film. People can make a feature film these days for $10,000." Which is really, extraordinarily cheap if you weren't aware. (DON'T WORRY MOM, I'm not planning on anything like that.) And Werner sometimes eats his shoe if someone (Errol Morris) makes their first feature length.

Maybe you can see, though, why I'm doing this to myself if you understand that I LOVE FILM. I can't help myself, I don't want to watch movies all the time, but if you want to see me get excited, ask me a nerdy film question and if I don't know the answer I'll spend hours trying to figure it out. Poke my eyes out and make me blind: I still love film, I'll just listen to it. The beauty of the innovation and history and effect and humanity of it all makes me cry. Poke my eyes and cut out my ear drums and I'll learn braille to read about it and find some way to tell you about it.


This is what I uncontrollably want.

swim for all salvation*

AHEM: I'm-going-to-officially-no-holds-barred-take-the-plunge-into-following-my-intuition-passion-and-dreams-and-become-a-starving-artist.

Oh, how is that any different than what I'm already doing?

I'm going to consciously embrace it and not shy away anymore. No more shooting myself in the foot, this will be more like shooting myself in the head. No. No, bad attitude. That's what can't happen anymore. I've already told you (probably) that I'm going to move home and make a series of short documentaries about North Dakota. I've had this on my mind for months so I figured I should tentatively plan for this and hesitantly tell people, and look in the mirror and ask myself why the H I'm not a dynamic, wildly-employed, talented person, who do I think I am?

If anything ever falls under the category of a stupid question, those might be some of them. And if the questions aren't, whatever answers you come up with will make you feel stupid.

I can do this. (yes?) I'm jumping in, praying the sound equipment I don't need anymore will sell on Amazon, people will buy my postcards on Etsy (more on that later), and maybe this other web project I'm working on will get underway and I'll be able to face all the inner dragons I'll find on my sojourn on the Great Plains and I'll come out with a web site and documentary work that I can be pleased with and some festival audiences that like it too.

And maybe even some distribution please?

I long to dive back into that isolated prairie but I'm afraid of drowning.

Oh, world, please, just love me. Is that too much to ask?


*line from song I like giants by Kimya Dawson. 

internship part 1-ish: Frederick Wiseman.

I have an internship. Not paid, I've got payings coming from elsewheres, you can ask me about that sometime. But this internship: I can't be vague on this–I feel too blessed. I'm a researcher for RadioWest, a regional NPR program produced here. Take a taste of today's show to see how cool it is.

But I want you here with me, so please take part in my journal entry for today.

I wish I could explain the drive through the winterized canyon today, but there's no words for this magical weather event I saw over the reservoir. Someday I hope to go back and film it and know what it was. I got to Park City around 10:15 (when I was told to arrive at about 10:45), paid $6.00 to park because I didn't want to worry about time or parallel parking in the van. I was already nervous enough. My insides were jiggling around, I felt light headed and like I was going to puke–that horrible acid feeling like when I forget to take my antacids for a few days.

I walked in through the Kimball Arts Center's main door per Elaine's dierections and was pointed to some double doors at the far end of the foyer. What it looked like beyond those doors I could not imagine. There it was, my destiny, fifty feet away.

Perhaps I should explain that I hadn't yet met any of these people. I had an impulsive moment a week ago, I sent an email to Doug, and now I was starting my internship by showing up for a live recording of the show today.

It turns out my destiny was in a long room. I was at one end by a chalkboard wall (I cringe!!) and the microphone end of the table. At the other end were people.

"Hi," says a confused young lady, the other intern they've had for a while, just a few years older than me.
"I'm Marge..."
They all look up, it takes a moment, then–
"Marge, I'm Doug" (The host) "And I'm Elaine" (the producer)
"And that's Louis," says Doug pointing to the mustachioed man at the laptop near me.
Someone says (my head was whirling), "You'll have to pardon the mad scramble we're in right now (I was showing up just before the live show today), there might be some swearing."
"You just missed my swearing," says Louis.

Doug is in the zone going through his questions and notes. Elaine is trying to do something with a USB thumb drive and talking about printers, someone is bringing in a fifth laptop, and Louis and Cynthia are taking care of tech things.

"Can I help with anything?"
Another momentary pause as they all look up. "If I need anything you'll be the first to hear about it," says Elaine.

I sit down. A few minutes later I'm asked to adjust the thermostat. I'm at my post adjusting said thermostat when two people walk in. I turn around and see Frederick Wiseman. He's two feet away from me. I've been reading about him for years. He's great. He inspires me. He's two feet away from me. What do I do?

I sit down. So do FW and lady who was later identified as a Salt Lake film person and I can't remember her name at the moment.

I still feel like I could throw up.

Cynthia gets me a water cup so I sip and worry about spilling it over the electrical cords in front of me.

Out of the corner of my eye I keep looking over to FW but I don't think I can say anything. Do I, as a barely intern, merit speaking to him? I don't know what's proper etiquette. And what would I even say? "Hi" obviously doesn't work.....(?!?!?)

As you listen (because I know you will), know that during the last break I finished drinking the last of my water because I thought, "I've made it this far without creating some catastrophe, I should make sure I can't knock my water all over those microphone cords and ruin everything in the last five mintues."

He's so great looking, such a character. His eyes and his hair! I mean:

Now listen to the interview!!!

let me be boring

So lately I've been on this researching Frederick Wiseman kick. He's a filmmaker that's a legend in documentary but not necessarily to the wide world. Part of the reason for this is that he makes films about institutions–a mental asylum for the criminally insane (in 1967 so you can imagine), law enforcement, high school, juvenile courts, welfare, ballet companies, boxing gyms to name a few– and they're observational films: Let's sit and roll with the camera and take our time. You might not know this about me anymore because for the last couple of years I've been making docs for pay or for causes, but that's my first love. I want to be a "boring" filmmaker and I've forgotten that. The cause of commercial documentary is a foreign and stressful campaign to me: I doubt and trip over myself because it's my counter-intuitive. Anyway, thanks Freddie. Thanks for you doing what you've done. I forget myself.

Oh. Also, you should look up pictures of Frederick Wiseman. He looks like a thoroughly charming and idiosyncratic character.

And, I guess, happy 2011. I can't believe this eleven business. Time is no linear beast, it's an unwieldy, fluid, and here-and-there substance. The next thing we know I'll be 45 and...well...I don't know the rest of that sentence.  

Sometimes when I spend all day editing I feel like writing blog posts every half hour. Because it's getting hard to focussssssssssssssssssssss.

Grandma

(not a photo of my grandma but a photo of Wild Bill Hickok) 

My Grandma wrote me a letter when I was fifteen that said, "They won't let me stay at the house by myself. They don't trust me, they think I'm going to run off with Wild Bill Hickok." Thus began my adoration for Wild Bill and thus was manifested my Grandma's sense of humor that was barely masking her frustration with her children and with aging. My Mom said at this point she wasn't the mother she remembered but this is the Grandma I knew.

My Grandpa had died three years before. I would see my Grandma spinning the rings on her wedding ring finger and I would wonder if she was thinking of him.

She had spent the summer living with us and when fall came we relinquished her care to my Aunt because it was decided that our winters were too cold and lonely to keep her with us. But I had delighted in having someone who dawdled over meals like I did. And someone had the time to be delighted by me. I could amuse her by trying to balance spoons on my nose or convince her to go driving with newly permitted me by telling her it would be an adventure. Growing up 1100 miles away from all my relatives and being the same age of some of my cousins' kids meant that I'd never had those close grandparent/aunt/uncle relationships. This was my one chance.

She died when I was sixteen, my last grandparent to go. It was June, we drove down for her funeral, slept on the floor of what had been her bedroom and cleaned out her closet. I was bequeathed her beautiful fake fur coat because everyone else in the family felt I was the only one who would actually wear it. I do.

This summer my mother unearthed my Grandma's journals. She's been reading them and soaking up the writings and wit of the Mother she had known. One Sunday I was Skyping with my parents and she said, "I wish I could Skype Mom and Dad in Heaven." If I could invent that, I would. But she tells us about these journals and how she wants to pass them around to her siblings. I stared at the beautiful brown book in her hands and asked her if I could type it up first so there would be a digital copy in case anything got lost. She looked dubious, maybe that's because I am a typical university student who takes on too much. I begged her, "Mom, I love journals, this would be something I would really enjoy doing." My sister took up my case, "She does, Mom. It would work, she could type for half an hour a day, it would be relaxing for her."

I won and I'm happy. I started typing this evening and in just half an hour Grandma made twenty jokes. This is the woman in that large, old photograph who I'd stare at and think, "Now, that's classy. That's what I want to be." This is the woman who once wrote me a letter wishing she could go back to the home she and her husband had built and lived in for sixty years but could not because she could no longer take care of herself. I bet she did dream of running off with Wild Bill Hickok.

lots of carole king songs

Sometimes I stay up late pretending I don't have a soul and that I don't care. It's a silly way to live.

I won't do that tonight.


In other news, thanks to my great brother-in-law I've been able to borrow an HDV camera from one of his photo buddies. Now I will stop stressing out about not being able to capture Paraguay tapes. Now I will start stressing about other things. Why am I so slow to change? 

Only solution I see in sight: Yoga tomorrow morning.


And a bike ride.

Yes.

Oh, and most especially jumping into a lake.

safe. I assure you, safe.

I tell you this here, this thing that is not quite a public thing, because I don´t know how to tell you this in person because I don´t quite yet know what to say.



Yesterday the harp camp ended and we were put on a bus with one of the student orchestras to drive back to Asuncion. Halfway there our bus crashed. There was a thud and some wild driving and I flew up in the air a little and it all seemed to happen very slowly because I remember grabbing on to my arm rest and J and thinking ¨You´re not supposed ot have time to grab on to anything when you´re crashing¨ and I wondered if the bus would roll and if we would be a little crushed. I also remember thinking, ªI´m fine, I think I´m fine, am I fine(question mark)ª

And then the bus stopped with out any rolling or falling of luggage or crushings or much of anything at all. J and I poked our heads out the window to see what we could see. Part of the side of our bus had peeled away and was sticking out, but it seemed to be only a couple of feet of metal, no sweat. I was hoping we could maybe just bend it back and keep on driving. We can do that, right (question mark) It IS Paraguay after all.


My North Dakotan upbringing prepared me for hitting a boulder or a post or a deer. So when J and I couldn´t resist our documentary curiosity and opened the door to exit through the driver´s cab I was surprised to see the windshield was gone. Did it have one in the first place (question mark) Can he roll it down (question mark) Because it can´t really all be broken can it (question mark) And when I had to crawl over the twisted remains of the door and jump five feet down to the ground I just thought of it as part of the adventure.


I was surprised to see the front left corner of the bus reduced to knots of metal. The damage I was expecting to find were some mildly damaged harps.


Then we began walking back to the crash site. A man came walking in our direction. ªThree deadª I heard him say.


They can´t really be dead, I think, I mean, they can all be revived, right (question mark)


And then we saw the car. Or what had been a car and was no more knots of silver metal and then I realized that the thud thud thud was a group of men working to hack off the door of the car and there was--well, in the end, there were five dead and I saw them. I couldn´t film, I couldn´t do anything but silently cry and hold J´s hand as I watched their bodies that looked like they no longer had bones or muscles being carried and placed into the back of pick-up trucks.


I don´t know how long we watched everything. The directors of the orchestra found us and told us there was a van waiting to take us to Asuncion. J got our luggage from the bus as I stood imobile waiting for her. A man approached me and asked if I had been on the bus. I knew he was a reporter and I knew I didn´t want to answer his questions and I couldn´t understand how he didn´t just know that I couldn´t really speak spanish but my brain was working too slowly to get myself out of there.
So I answered him.
He asked me where we had been coming from.
Pedro Juan Caballero.


A professor we were traveling with saw me and took me away to wait for J by the van safe from the reporter.


We, ten, and our luggage and a harp rode three and a half more hours in a six passenger van listening to the strangest assortment of music. Electric organs and ironically a spanish version of that Last Kiss song. You know the one that Pearl Jam and that group in the fifties sang. About a car crash.


Thanks to some wonderful people we are now safe and warm and comfortable.


I love Paraguay and I want to tell you happy stories. They are yet to come. But I tell you this one first because it must be said and it must be processed. I don´t know what to think. I only know two things-- I must think differently about life otherwise I can´t handle it and I am ever so grateful for how much everyone has been doing for us this whole time in Paraguay. Do you ever feel you can´t ever repay the generosity shown to you (question mark) I feel that more and more every day of my life.






Love,
Marge

goodbye al gore

This is it.

Tomorrow I leave for Paraguay sufficiently relaxed by sun, sand, ocean, and having nothing to do but make faces at small children and read books.

I leave finally feeling excited and starting to realize just how bad my spanish skills are.

And I miss you and you are all getting bear hugs upon my return. And I am going to hunt down some Tillamook yogurt.

I love my documentary filmmaking career so so so so so so so so so so so much.

!

(My throat hurts from ocean water and reading books instead of sleeping)

angels crying so hard they're laughing*

I have broken into an odd, all-over, symmetrical kind of itchy rash and the only thing we can figure is that it's my stress exploding out. It started yesterday and I went through an entire tube of a generic hydrocortisone cream. I've been wrapping my head in a turban so I can't itch my ears. 

This started yesterday because today is the eve of my departure for everything.

So thank you, heavens, for suddenly letting all your rain pour down upon this earth because I went outside to stand in said downpour and it's the best I've felt all week.

I can promise you one thing, I will continue to be stressed but this is the best summer ever.



*read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/science/29tier.html

is there anything you keep using with affection?

I learned something yesterday: I can very effectively threaten people when I'm holding a raw egg in my hand. I might take advantage of this. Watch out.


I've been in this morass of cameras, microphones, XLR cables and strange poetic documentaries lately. Where I'm going with all of this I'm not quite sure. I only know one of us is crazy and I've lost my book, At the tomb of the inflatable pig: Travels through Paraguay, and now I'm reading some heavy book about U.S. foreign policy with Israel. That might suggest something about who's the crazy one. And my mom is concerned that I shouldn't travel internationally with this book and if the book is in anyway correct in what it says about the Israeli lobby that's probably more of a valid concern than one might realize.

The answer, to the question asked above that wasn't originally asked of me but I found on the website of Naomi Kawase, one of these poetic filmadoras I've been morassed with, the answer is that there are a lot of things. A lot of things I continue to use with affection. Most obviously there is Bicycle (again, that is Bicycle not Lester, sheesh) but then there are cameras. I hope to install you with a piece of morass filmmaking later on. In the near future. Poetically speaking.


 

wednesday is garbage day

Last night as I was laying on the grass of the dark midnight air, I could hear people, house by house, rolling their garbage cans out to the street. Some people do this at six o'clock in the evening. Many others were out between 11:30 and 1:00 a.m. checking this task off their list. Maybe this speaks to the age range of my neighborhood. Young families with a million things on their plates. A good amount of twenty-somethings. A humanities professor. One woman was talking on her cellphone. At least I assume that. But who knows, maybe there was a terribly quiet individual replying to all her chatter. 

I was transfixed by the echoing rolls of garbage bins, imagining full summer lives taking place before and after this weekly event. This sound has such a power for me. Maybe because it started in my childhood as a thing that only happened on vacation. In North Dakota where I grew up everyone fended for themselves to provide a garbage can, there were no uniform city utility bins to pick from. And there was no rolling them to the street. No, the garbage truck rolled down your alley and somehow--maybe there was a man attached to this truck--the garbage disappeared. Our garbage cans would always blow away in winter blizzards and we'd have to--that's a bit dishonest--my mother would track them down.

There's such an enormity of things going on around us, what a full engaging thing, this world. The woman on her cell phone reminded me of my mother talking on the phone to one of her sisters, sitting at the kitchen table doodling and taking notes on family happenings. I used to study her doodles and her cursive writing.

This weekend I had a conversation with a friend about seeing multitudes of people and imagining how they had lives outside of yours that carry on regardless of your place in them. It brought me back to this vignette of a film made by the professor for whom I'm working. It is one steady clip filmed on the London Underground with Professor narrating underneath about this very eternal mystery. He speaks of magnitude and of a poem by Wordsworth. Simon Lee: the Old Hunstman. My, is it a beautiful poem that I can't stop thinking about.

vest: a story of risk takings and not talkings

Not in my suggested age range of marrying but the vest! (link to yet another sartorialist picture)

The problem with working from home is that it just looks like I'm chillin out with my laptop. Who wouldn't talk to a girl so technically accessorized? So do I write up a sign that says "I'm not ignoring you I'm working?" Can I get one of those in that old-timey plastic red with white relief lettering? Sometimes I just have to take care of business. Because last time I counted I'm working on five documentary projects. And one will be chock full of stop-motion because I'm supposed to raise $10,000 for a restaurant and millions of films on kickstarter are booooorrrrringggggggggg.

Other current dilemma: At what point do I invest in a camera instead of shlumming around for all of these projects?

there wasn't ever anything else in this world for me but this

Today as we sat on our back row in Film History class (the class where I get to draw evil bunnies on my tests) the lights dimmed and we watched Jaws. Imagine my joy at finally seeing this 1975 landmark film.

At one point a newscaster stands on the beach of Amity and says, "but a dark cloud has come over this island. A cloud in the shape of a killer shark." 


End this as a night where a classmate and I lay on the floor of an aisle in the uni. library reading about sci-fi movie scores.

Sometimes I bask in the light from the projection booth and think of how magical cinema is. Oh what great art we have! We work and it's uncomfortable and long and ambitious and tedious and it's magic. We've captured something, told a story. Images of life and imagination and dream. Soundscapes create worlds outside the camera frame. Cinema is alive, it's interactive.

The moving image!
Watching the world through a viewfinder!
Exploring everything for the rest of my life!
Reaching people through storytelling!
Giving voice to the voiceless!
Expressing the importance of our quotidian!


I am in love.

je vous remercie

You see, I'm going to Paraguay with my friend Jenica for two weeks to film a documentary.

We got a grant.

We'll be making a short piece about Sonidos de la Tierra a program started by Luis Szarán. You can watch a PBS Frontline piece about it here.

I am so grateful and so excited.

This is a really worthwhile project. What a pleasing prospect.

mentholated temples

As a young Marge Bjork, entrepreneurship seemed risky and not worthwhile (although I longed to be a potter...).

As a teenager Marge Bjork, I still felt that being your own boss seemed fliberty-jibitty (even though I wanted to be a rock star...).

As a twenty something Marge Bjork I committed to a free lance life (of filmmaking) afraid of making my own way in the world and secretly imagining hiding away in a library or a restaurant my entire career.

It hasn't taken much time of being a twenty something Marge Bjork to get itching for a fully free-lanced life. I'll do it, I will.

I just want to make documentaries. Period.

we never should have the first time around*

I'm back.

And as I've gotten older I've piece by piece, processly decided there's no time for feeling sorry for myself or complaining so I'm not going to say a word about that.

Instead focus all our faces on: [dadadaddadadadadada!!!!]
Just the pretty news that I am 10 footsteps away from being a real free-lance filmmaker.

"Is this really how I will be making my living?" I just asked myself.
Myself replied, "How exciting!"

And I'm thinking about quilting bookmarks to sell. I've got bajillions of fabrics of yards. And I think bookmarks meet my talent level. I think there's some bazaar I could enterrrrrrrrrr...herm.

Went to lots of grocery stores (my favorite indoor activity) in California and stared at their olive bars. Never bought a single olive, just stared and thought. About quinoa salads. [sigh]

I've been thinking about my bits (or entire sections i.e.: arms, legs, souls, soles, fish, filet) of personality that need mending. Sometimes my independence isn't a silly loner streak kind of thing, sometimes it's nonchalance bordering (oh, I'm babying myself with that one) on hard heartedness. I could use ten (bajillion yards?) more compassion. But you're the greatest world and God out there, n'est-ce pas ? So you will be patient with how prickly I frequently end up being. I tell myself that. Mainly to remind myself that I am no two inch succulent split-rock plant, I've got infinity inches to grow and so I can have patience and not well...[deep breaths] not not have patience.

Last night I drank a mt. dew to stave off a migraine and I was a five year old for quite sometime and taunted Yanka with the return of nineties fashion*. She blamed it on forever21. I pointed out the Willow (from Buffy) inspired floral print denim overalls at H&M. I'm still delighted by it all.

Hey, parents, sister, do you remember that childhood book with the soldier in the red coat who found that trunk of treasure and there was that weird dog creature?

I got complimented on my vowel pronunciation tonight at a hot chocolate club meeting.

bog.

Would someone tell me how to be creative again, please?
Would someone get me out of this funk that's been creeping in and over for a long time. Because now I need to be creative.
There's million thoughts in my head. M told me to write them all down. Make lists and lists and lists and then when the right idea comes along you'll be ready for it and you won't let it pass you by. Unaware.
Good thoughts, too. There are quite a few good thoughts in my head. But I don't want to see them through.
Maybe there are too many unfinished projects bogging me down. Bog. Bogged. I'm bogged.

Hooo ooh bog.
Help me out! I'm in quicksand!