July 13, 2006
Location: Whitehorse, Yukon
Time 6:05pm
State: Calm

That last blog was supposed to be about my filmmaking process, but I got sidetracked by The World’s Most Well Traveled Garden. How could you not?

In a recent email from one of my close friends mentioned that although I’ve been doing really well to share how I am doing emotionally, spiritually and physically, she would like to hear more about how the road is affecting my film and my process.

Here goes,

I don’t know if any of you have ever heard or read about a young man by the name of Dan Eldon… but Dan (along with Filmmaker Frank Cole) has had a tremendous affect on how I approach filmmaking, and more importantly, how I approach life.

Dan Eldon* was a young photojournalist who has often been given credit for the phrase the journey is the destination. He was a prolific photographer but is probably most well known for his personal journals. Through his journals Dan has captured this idea of life as a constant act of creative expression.

For me this is what it’s all about. This is what I am after. I want to capture the art of life, not my life, although that’s part of it, but the art of ALL life, the artful ways in which the universe magically creates. And I want to explore this idea of how if we could only just learn the art of getting out of the way, everything would be much better.

Considering the above, the question of where my filmmaking process begins and ends is becoming a difficult distinction. I am finding I am reshaping my ideas of work, as everything around me is feeding into my process. I am a workaholic by nature and I am having a extremely hard time just stopping. Stopping is becoming a very important tool for me, since through the act of stopping**, some of the most wonderful things have happened. It’s as thought you have to clear out space in your life in order for your path to take hold. You have to clear out your mind and find silence to allow your true self to emerge. This is what I’m learning.

A good example of this was last week. Having to wait four days on a GMC appointment, I decided, rather than spend the time in Whitehorse, I would head back up to Dawson City to my friend Rachel’s cabin in the woods. There, in the silence as Rachel worked, I would find further direction. What I didn’t know was that Rachel was off for a few days and her roomate Jess’ boyfriend Marc was in town, so instead of silence, I found a house full of people. To the workaholic in me this was not good. But, this is where my definition of working begins to shift. Sitting one evening over board games we began talking about life, the world, activism, family and my project. And, from this conversation I learn that Marc’s parents are HUGE proponents of SLOW FOOD and of going back to the land. I learn they operate a bison farm in Alberta, and if I'm interested, I can go visit, speak with them, learn about going back to the land, and even learn to butcher my own meat. Here I was not working, and a wealth of traditional knowledge had opened its doors to me. All it required was for me to simply stop ‘working’ and let go of my concept of getting things done. Although we're all busy running around with clocks and timetables, the world doesn’t really work this way, you could even argue that all our clocks and timetables are actually slowing us down or stopping us from getting the really important things done. Hehe, what a funny thought.

peace,
d

To be human is to be both a work of art and an artist. – Alan Jones (from memory.. might not be exact quote.)

* If you want to learn more about Dan Eldon, there is really good book out there called Dan Eldon, The Art of Life, by Jennifer New as well as many others displaying his personal journals.

** The act of stopping. I feel the idea of the act of doing nothing really important. It speaks to me of the importance of living an ACTIVE life versus a PASSIVE one. We have to actively stop ourselves in this world, otherwise we find ourselves carried off by technology and false notions of progress. We find ourselves unconscious in Wall Mart checkout lines, buying things we really don’t need. We find ourselves glued to the tube watching crappy television that we’re really not interested in. We find ourselves passively accepting that this is the way things are, instead of actively standing up, engaging ourselves and making choices with lasting affects. All of our choices have lasting affects.