improvising

My camera: the ZENIT QUARZ SUPER 8 

Yesterday I made a super 8 film.

I had half a day free as my son had gone 

to the city with some friends to see the Leonardo

exhibition (disappointing by all accounts).

A few weeks ago I'd given a page of extracts

from poems (some of which I'd collected on this blog)

to a friend who's a musician. She said she'd circled

her favorites and  kept them in mind during a week at

the beach. Upon returning home she'd spent a few

hours one morning weaving them together into

a really beautiful piece of music which

she emailed to me earlier in the week.

I listened to it twice  and was quite overwhelmed.

How could I make anything that could equal this

(potential) soundtrack?

I had a coffee and went down to buy some film. 

When I was setting up a clip broke on the tripod 

and I had to go and buy gaffa tape to secure the leg. 

Half an hour lost. Next the globe in the light 

blew - another half an hour gone. The light meter

was playing up so I had to keep

remembering to add 2.5 (which I forgot

to do half the time).

I had trouble with turning the film and the camera

was making funny noises. When I got it to the nano lab

the developer told me that I hadn't shot half of it

(90 seconds). So I asked him to re-thread it

for me and went home to re-shoot it. He was doing a 

batch of B/W developing in the next half hour and 

our screening is next week. 

I was spending more time mucking around and driving 

than I was actually shooting and now I had a deadline.

By this time I had forgotten what I'd shot in the first

and second halves, so I improvised and I don't know 

what I've got.

It's been developed and I could have picked it up

today but I didn't. I've been wondering why. Maybe  

I'm pushing the anticipation factor. 

Maybe it will be completely unexposed, totally

dark or just rubbish. But maybe there'll be something I like

and something that works with the soundtrack.

I've been thinking about something that

students used to sometimes say to me when I taught drawing

a hundred years ago: 'It's not like how it was in my head'

Whatever is there when I get it onto the projector

I know one thing for sure: it will

be nothing like anything I had 'in my head' because 

I had nothing 'in my head'. There was no pre-planned

path through yesterday except the one I made as I went

and I can't wait to see what's there tomorrow.