Life Actions: Interior and Exterior

This past weekend Port Townsend had its annual, and well-respected film festival.  Writer/Director John Sayles and his producer wife, Maggi Renzi were the special guests this year.  I thought I had seen Lone Star, but discovered I hadn’t on Saturday night. I was truly impressed by the film’s subtlety as well as the issues he addressed within it, and how relevant they still are. When he spoke afterwards, it was clear that those issues: connection and disconnection, truth and what we do with it, needing to know, following the heart and what happens when we don’t, as well as issues of race and class always present in his films –  were still significant issues for him.  Which is why he and his wife have always had funding issues.  I found both the film and his talk afterwards,  inspiring.  That he continues to explore these things so that we, his audience, will think about them, was thought-provoking.  To hold onto what we value as we age is not that easy.  To keep on keeping on kind of tough as well. Often this past year I have asked myself why I keep writing when so few people read what I write.  For Sayles, though he has a much wider audience than I, in Hollywood parlance, that audience is small as well.  My first answer after seeing ‘Lone Star’ and hearing him speak about his process and answer questions, is because that process brings him joy and keeps him engaged with the world around him. True for me as well. And also, because Sayles clearly wants people to think about these issues and hopefully, for some, alter their destructive behaviors.  Me too.  So this past weekend will help me keep blogging and working on my new novel, multi-generational, using as models my own family (much of the meat, invented).  To waste time at this point to try and find a new agent or publisher, would take away from the part that gives me joy, and keeps my brain, such as it is, active.  I feel less and less ‘less than’ for self-publishing and continuing to write for a small audience, and Sayles certainly helped me in that journey.  So.  I sign petitions, continue my daily work, care for and about friends, relatives and my partner, march, and choose to do one activity each day that feels fulfilling.  All of this seems important, and seeing another artist’s work, and hearing him speak about it, helped me believe my own choices are the right ones.