Day 22

today i was able to get a hold of a friend's caravan and the four of us took another drive into victoria with full batteries, a better camera, and our own purchased mini dv tapes for the independent project "uncovering the unlived." after spending the night discussing questions to ask the people we approached for this 'documentary concerning matters of society' (cough.. cough... society! society!! society!!!), we took to the busy streets of a clear and mild sunday afternoon.

we saw many things, including the same sitar player who had played a bit of 'norwegian wood' when i had asked him the previous day. there was a weekly flea market where another permit-holding busker (apparently you need to audition to the city counsel for this privilege) sat on a short, beat-up suitcase and hammered out rock and roll and blues on his guitar while playing harmonica on the neck and keeping beat with a single kick-snare. i don't feel special anymore. anyways, i happened to stop right as some random skater dude walked up to the musician and asked to play some cross-harp blues duets. the moment was perfect, i flashed my own harmonica that was effortlessly produced from my left pocket, and the three of us nodded and performed an impressively coordinated blues set complete with individual solos. this was the first time that i'd really played with a busker. as soon as we started, i handed paul the gl2 to film from his spot in the gathering crowd.

after the jam and applause, the random skater dude faded back into the streams of daytripppers and i stood back to record some more of this guy's music. upon his next break, paul and i were granted with a short interview concerning matters of society, music, and inspiration to include in the documentary and then we too faded into the masses. we ended up talking to another busker who played a song after the interview for the camera. this pattern of picking interesting-looking people to talk to continued as we blew along the sidewalks and streets in the mild ocean breeze.

later as we sat in the van for a snack, i noticed from the driver's seat that the utility pole in the sidewalk had a blank "hello, my name is..." sticker on it. i'm not sure i can describe the exact flashes of idealization in my mind, but i jumped out of the car with the video camera and had paul come over to stand near the pole. these next few sentences will come to life if you read them outloud. begin narration. "the camera trailed down along the community of rusted staples before resting over the image of the sticker, to which i added the voice-over 'hello, my name is.. pole.' after this short pause, the camera drifts to the new zealander who looked into the camera and said 'ello, my name es.. pole.'" end narration. if you can imagine those two shots while saying those two lines over each location, i think you'll understand why it took us about eight takes to get through the short scene. we were in hysterics on the side of the road next to the randomest set of 'poles' in the city. one afterthought- i think i can attribute this conception to the connection of familiarity with my heritage.

finally, we took a two-dollar coin and applied super-glue to one side and then went to chill inside starbucks while the coin sat on the pavement other side of the glass window. i was really excited about this as i had always wanted to do this for a long time. the camera rolled and other coffee drinkers sat alert to the events about to take place on the busy sidewalk outside. the four of us sat and discussed how some things in life can't be spent desperately searching for but instead all we can really do is be ready to react to these situations as we move through life; all the while society wandered and circled the streets outside, oft treading over an opportunity that, ironically, could not even completely parallel our analyzed analogies for life and love and the such.

i'm not sure when i'll start editing the past couple day's footage because i plan on adding to this project, but hopefully the prank documentary from earlier in the week will be on youtube in a few days. i'll keep you posted.

Day 17

today started as a work day, but a couple of the guys asked if i wanted to get in on a prank and, seeing how it is my responsibility to make videos of any important action, i left the office to do just that. sounds like a good reason, right? here's how it went down..

one friend, jen, had left her car, a teal caravan, at the ferry lot over the weekend when she went to the mainland to visit her rents. we left camp a few hours before she was to arrive back, bringing with a massive tube of saran rap and several cleverly-worded posters for the decorating of this otherwise bland vehicle.

i brought a full battery, a fresh tape, and the gl2 canon video camera along to 'document the important action' for future video use. this turned out to be an awesome experience in on-the-go, documentary directing that i'll begin to edit tomorrow morning.

after the forty-five minute drive, we found her van-tastic vehicle (that was one of the titled signs we prepared) and rapped the entire thing with heavy duty saran. surprised with our speed, we were forced to wait around the parking lot for an hour until the ship was to arrive.

documentation during this waiting period captured everything from the poster's lame word-plays to passerby's reactions to our van's artwork to our own reenactments of '"move that volkswagon rabbit!"- the car we drove in with, and finished with mocumentary, over-the-shoulder and blank-stare interviews among ourselves, the five villains. finally the vessel docked and we hid- i jumped into the bushes, of course, to get the reaction shots, while the others scattered around the parking lot. we waited. i'm going to stop explaining here because i'm not going to be able to do justice for the moments that followed.

i can't wait to go to my office in the morning to edit and produce this.

a couple guys that i hadn't gotten much time to chill yet went down to the dock after dinner and jumped in for a quick swim. freezing-cold water.

and apparently, there are several poetry-interested people here and they got excited by my idea to have some sort of weekly original poetry reading, complete with low lights and djembe accompaniment. we'll see how that goes.

also, tonight after group bible-study and swiping some left-over cookies from the kitchen, the two new zealand dudes and i went for another jam session. each experience has been jelling better and better and we're gettin some creative, malleable stuff, which is exciting for all of us. it'll be interesting to see where we might be able to take this..