Lately I’ve been feeling envious of theatre and AV-club kids in high school and English majors in college. As I continually fill in the holes of my education and follow the expanding tangents of my curiosity, it feels like I’ve been playing catch-up with things I should've been paying attention to sooner.
I remember being out with a few friends in a parking lot in Seattle. We were all skateboarding curbs and riding BMX bikes in circles—all of us but one. I remember his saying, “In high school, when you guys were doing that, I guess I was in my room playing guitar.”
I feel that now about the guitar players, but also the theatre and AV-club kids, as well as the English majors. I guess when they were learning scales, reciting Shakespeare, connecting RCA cables, and reading classics, I was out in the driveway on my bike or skateboard. Though I did dabble in other performing arts, it’s hard not to wonder what my path would look like had I taken to a different one or another instead of the ones I did. You can probably think of a few turns not taken yourself.
When I was in middle school, I attended a filmmaker’s workshop at Athens State College in Athens, Alabama. We—me and three other adolescents—made a short film called “Super Chicken and the Great Soccer Ball Caper.” A few easy camera tricks allowed the caped chicken (played by me, pictured below in the Athens News Courier) to disappear and reappear in different scenes. I popped in and out of a soccer game that was happening on campus and saved the ball somehow. I don’t really remember what little there was of a plot.
I do remember the McCandless Auditorium where we edited and screened our films. It was a creepy old building and subsequently half of the amateur movies from our workshop were horror films (“Murder in McCandless” and “Monster in These Halls”). I also remember that I never really felt comfortable. I enjoyed working with film, coming up with the story, the shots, and blocking, but the teacher was kind of mean to us, and the parents all seemed vaguely unhappy with her. Now that my interest in film and filmmaking has taken on new significance, I wonder what would’ve happened had that workshop gone differently.
I don’t regret the hours I spent and continue to spend on my wheeled toys, but one can’t help but wonder about the decisions we’ve made, especially when it seems that our current pursuits could’ve been better served another way. Ten thousand hours is a long time. As True Detective’s Rustin Cohle says, “Life’s only long enough to get good at one thing. Just be careful what you get good at.”
Thank you for reading and sharing and swirling,
-royc.
http://roychristopher.com