Just watched PBS' take on The Donner Party. Hwhwuhwlwll - what a grisly, stomach churning story. The Mrs. likes it though - as she is a former California restaraunteur I guess it has appeal.
Thinking today of my movies - that is the ones that I made. I was an 8mm and Super 8mm enthusiast in my boyhood - I was going to be the next superstar of avant-garde film-making. I made also several scratch films and some film collages. In 1980 I submitted a list of my films to the Contemporary Media Study Center in Dayton, OH. Some of the listings were a fiction - maybe two or three of them, and certain numbers (they were all numbered) were unfinished. But I submitted a list of 41 or 46 items, all made by the time I was 19. Today, I have only two of them, and these survived by accident. Perhaps I can recall details about the other films and share them here. In the meantime, I keep a sharp eye out on eBay in the hopes my films will turn up.
I also made videos, starting in about 1981 - many of them (no idea how many, really). I still have several of these, and know others that I don't have yet survive in other hands. I would rather have had the films, quite honestly. Not that I wouldn't welcome seeing some of the videos I know were made 20 years ago that I haven't seen since.
But I have advice - if you're into visual arts, don't use video - use film. It's more expensive, but face it, a film can be around 20 years and if you don't project it too much and take care of it by reeling it back and forth it should still look pretty good. A video is like a film recorded on an audiotape, and it develops the same kind of glitches, dropouts and crap even just five years after you're done with it. Even if you don't watch it often.
I've been reading up again on some experimental film-makers I admire, and it makes me want to start to work in film-making again. But I have no idea if I still have my vision, and my left eye is weak now, although Raoul Walsh got along okay with one eye. So did Jack Ford and Fritz Lang. Back in the mid-1960s, when European producers were going crazy over anthology films such as "Rogopag" and "Spirits of the Dead" some guy across the pond wanted to finance a feature called "The Three Eye-Patch Film" made by these three directors I just mentioned, all of whom were one-eyed. But nothing came of it (come to think of it, Tex Avery was also a one-eye.)
In the end, I suspect that what keeps me from breaking out the Super 8 camera I have (which works) other than the extreme difficulty of finding the film-stock is that I just don't want to take food off the table to support the expenditure. it was different when I was 19 and willing to starve for my art. I still am, but there are two others in my life now that will starve along with me - sort of like the Donner Party.
Finally, I wanted to share some of my 14th Century historical timeline I have been working on. What's this for? I dunno - maybe someday I's like to write a book about the music of the 14th century. It's a favorite period of mine. Think ol' George W. is an ass? Check out Phillippe "the Fair" - (bear in mind, I just started this and it's still sketchy)
1285 Philippe IV, “the Fair”, is crowned king of France. He is the tenth French monarch in the Capetian dynasty that began with Hugh Capet in 987.
1289 04 27 Qalawun, the Mamluk sultan, retakes Tripoli from the French.
1290 11 Qalawun dies; his son Khalil assumes power
1291 06 21 Khalil retakes Acre, putting an end to the Great Crusades. The crusaders retreat to Cyprus.
1294 12 13 Pope Celestine V resigns from the papacy in Rome.
1294 12 24 Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani is named Pope Boniface VIII in Rome.
1295 01 23 Pope Boniface VIII is consecrated in Rome in a ceremony of unprecedented splendor and opulence.
1298 William Wallace is defeated in Scotland.
1301 01 01 The Fourteenth Century begins.
1301 12 01 In his Papal Bull "Ausculta Fili", Pope Boniface VII declares the church (and thus, himself) the supreme authority over all mankind, from which neither King nor peasant should consider themselves exempt, or risk the punishment of God.
1303 09 07 In the town of Anagni, a force of 2,000 mercenaries led by Guillame de Nogaret (and backed by Philippe the Fair) storm the papal palace, and hold Pope Boniface VIII prisoner. The palace is thoroughly ransacked, and its archives destroyed.
1303 09 09 The townspeople in Anagni finally come to their senses and drive the French invaders out.
1303 10 11 Pope Boniface VIII dies in Rome of a fever.
1303 10 22 Pope Benedict XI, “the Blessed”, is consecrated.
1304 07 03 Pope Benedict XI, “the Blessed”, dies. His death after serving in the papacy only eight months is widely suspected to have been a result of poisoning carried out by agents of Guillame de Nogaret.
1305 11 14 Pope Clement V is consecrated after a long and difficult conclave. Almost immediately Philippe the Fair begins to pressure Pope Clement V to remove Pope Boniface VII from the papal roll.
1307 10 13 The Knights Templars are rounded up on the orders of Philippe the Fair on charges of heresy. They are tortured, and are forced to sign false confessions.
1310 03 12 54 Knights Templars, who had recanted their confessions under torture, are burned in a mass execution held at the Port of St. Antoine.
1314 03 18 Jacques de Mornay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake on an island in the Seine, along with Geoffrey de Charney, the preceptor of Normandy.
1314 03 22 Pope Clement V issues a Papal Bull officially dissolving the Order of the Knights Templar.
1314 04 20 Pope Clement V dies at Roquemaure.
1314 11 29 Philippe the Fair is killed in a hunting accident.
Now mind you, the Knights Templars were the crusaders who had managed to take the Dome of the Rock from the Arabs and hole up in it for a hundred years. If we were to try to do that now, it would be the end of the world! But these guys were tough, and they were anything but heretical (despite what some Freemasons would have you believe.) But what they did have, and what Philippe the Fair wanted, was a fortune in riches. Quite simply, Philippe the Fair didn't want anyone in France who was richer than he.
You can't tell me that it's mere coincidence that both Pope and King perished within mere months of the burning of the last Knights Templars. Not only that, the King's entire heraldic line was stalled in less than a decade, and the Valois came to power, bringing the Capetian dynasty to a close for good.
If any of this sounds strangely relevant to "things as they are", please don't hold me responsible. A sign reading "Those who ignore the past will be condemned to repeat it" hung over a heap of dead bodies found in Jonestown in 1978. And the quote, which is almost elevated to the status of a cliche that nobody pays attention to in this society of idiots, doesn't come from Shakespeare or Orwell or any other wise-ass intellectual; it comes from Walt Kelly. Truer words were never spoken.
Uncle Dave Lewis