I was interviewed by Film Courage last week. The interview lasted over 4 hours. No, really, four hours. They told me it would be an hour interview. So by noon on a typical great Southern California day, I was on my way to Pasadena, wending my way from the Hollywood Freeway to the Pasadena Freeway to Aroyo Seco Road, and then to their small studio in back of their house, all set up for the interview. They had a plexiglass partition between me and Karen, who did the interview, and David, who handled the video camera. They also wore masks, sheilds, hazmat suits, and a deep-sea diver’s helmet. I had both my shots over a month ago, but I played it safe as well, wearing my mask, except when the camera was on and Karen was asking me questions. We talked and talked. There was always more to say. Where’s Lisa with the green tape to plaster over my mouth when you need her. When the interview was over, I checked my watch. I’d been there over four and half hours, it was after 6pm. Afterwards, it was already dark when I got in my car and drove back onto the Pasadena Freeway, which was now packed like a parking lot as I neared Dodger Stadium in the ensuing darkness, red tail-lights of cars blinking in front of me, and there I was, still talking, rambling on about Kant and the Categorical Imperative and how it led to Method Writing. Then onto the Hollywood Freeway and it was like sliding down an ice chute, so fast I missed my exit on Melrose and got all the way to the Hollywood Bowl before I slipped onto Highland and down to Wilshire. First time I’d been driving that far in a year, especially at night. I felt like I’d never driven before, like I was 14 years old and hoping to pass my driver’s test. The freeway and the cars, it felt like a new world. Where had I been all this time? A year in lockdown, a year where most of my navigation was from one room to another. Los Angeles was four square blocks, and now, suddenly, I felt like I was in outer space, rocket ships flying past me on their way to Mars, Jupiter, the Orion Nebula. Los Angeles was no longer my neighborhood of five square blocks, post office, bank, and fruit stand in Farmer’s Market, but the unfolding accordian of a city, brash by day, sinister and mysterious by night, the map of mean streets igniting the reckless heart. It’s there, I could sense it, the globe of the earth turning and there I was, on it, on it, smack dab on it, just like you, just like all of us, feeling the earth turning below my feet and the vast cosmos beyond turning and turning as well. All of it in motion. Moons, planets, solar systems, galaxies, stars after stars after stars, all in motion. No matter how we try, we can’t stand still. One way or another, whether we like it or not, Being IN Time, Turning IN Space, we move; we move on.
