By the way ...

In the end ...

We ended up with another boat. So now, after the film is done, it actually came to some sort of 'happy ending,' i.e. we now have a working boat! And, of course, my hope is that this will not only be a happy ending, but a happy beginning of a long, and interesting 'our life with a boat in the family' story ... I have been quite reluctant to use it so far, finding all sorts of excuses to not use it, too much wind, to rainy, to late, etc, mostly because I am afraid of being lost at sea. The reason for this is that the engine, the outboard motor, on this boat is also pretty old, that is from around 1980. So until I know I can trust this old fellow, and get to know him well, I do not feel the need to take my 4-year old, and my wife and myself far out on the open sea. Eventually there is a hope that we all will feel comfortable with this, which is partly the point of doing something like this in the first place, that is, to become familiar and comfortable with something we do not feel comfortable with in the first place. Time will tell if this will work out! :)

How about another boat?

Well, I could not get the motor starting, and there are some other problems with this boat as well, so it does not look too good getting the boat on the water ... But, then, a neighbor of mine came over, seeing me struggling with the boat, asking if I wanted to use his boat this summer? They were not using their boat very much, so if I needed a boat to get out on the water, he was happy to let me use his. It is very much like my boat, with the exception that this one works! :) In return I could offer him a boat slip, which was something he did not have, so we both felt that we benefited from this deal. It seems like my movie will get another ending than I thought it would, but then again, the movie was supposed to be a documentary more than anything else, so that is quite alright.

It is getting closer ...

It has not been much going on in terms of the boat the last month. One day the sun is melting down the snow, the next day it is snowing again. But now we are entering April, and I think it is time to take the tarp off of the boat. That will be exciting! The weather today is really overcast, so it isn't very nice outside, but at least it is not snowing. The forecast for tomorrow on the other hand, says clear, blue sky! I will be filming the actual boat (and not just the tarp!) for the first time, which will be really nice. This is the time when a lot of things will happen. Inspect the boat, hope it is not in too bad shape. Fix whatever needs fixing. Hopefully the motor will start! If not, I don't know what to do about it, but I'll think about that if I need to. Then it is the 'shining up' part, and then, in not too long, it is time (I just took the pacifier out of my son's mouth, of which he replied 'stupid dad!' Oh, well, he's been home from daycare for 11 days now, partly because he does not like to go there, and partly because he has been sick. As a result I have been able to do squat ...) to put the boat on the water! That will be very exciting!

Snow, and more snow ...

It has not been much progress with either the filming or anything else lately. It has been snowing almost every day, which is nice for the kids, and for people that like to go cross country, but not very good for doing stuff with the boat. The good news is that it is not -4F anymore, which has been the case lately. Now the days are getting longer, clearly, and it is around 32F and sunny. Very nice! I found it a bit hard to write down my "secrets from my past" since it involves a lot of grief, sorrow, and supressed feelings. Oh, well, I think making this movie will be a nice way to let it all out, even so, I still think I will be hiding behind the format and nature of film making, namely that it is something which is perfect for fabricating stories, which in turn can turn out to be true, or not. In other words, film making has a history of telling lies. It is perfect for that. And even though I will tell a true story, the viewer will not know if it actually is true or not. I think that is a powerful aspect of making films. It is a tension that can be taken advantage of in many ways. There will also always be a rather strong filter between the film maker and the viewer. Any viewer will also read the movie differently, and none might actually read the movie as it was intended from the maker. This is again something that just needs to be taken to account, and might even be amplified deliberately, or not ... Ambiguity is one way to work with that. Repetition another.

Progress ...

I went down to the boat slip yesterday, and did some filming. I also received the key to the docks, which was kind of weird, being a really high-tech card-reader solution. The gates themselves are solid metal gates, and pretty impossible to get by. I didn't like that very much. At first the 'man in charge' down there was reluctant to give me a key at all, since I didn't have my boat out at the moment, and there 'really wasn't any place for me to be without a boat' according to him. That is very different from what was said when the docks were new, just 2 years ago, where it was said that the area should be kept open for the public, being a very nice place to walk, and fish and jump into the ocean. I guess they are afraid of theft and stuff like that, but it would be the simplest thing in the world, and probably smarter to do even without a gate, to get there with a boat. Oh, well. Oh, well, there goes the romantic notion of the friendly boating community ... As a member of the 'club' I will have my say, and I will speak for a more open and friendly attitude towards the public. People do have insurance, and it is surveilance and guarded by members all the time anyways ...

Anyways, when I was filming down there, it was very quiet, very slow, very grey, and in my opinion, very nice. The ocean has its own pulse, and there is lots of motion, life, and sounds if you just take the time to look and listen. Drops constantly dripping, boats slowly rolling in the water, birds making distant sounds ... and the clear water you only have in the winter... beautyful! On the bottom of the sea, lots of starfish! Hundreds, probably thousands! Pretty amazing. So even though it almost seems like everything is in a state of hibernation, which is also true about me, there is still life, and very much its own beauty!

The boat is hibernating! That is actually a pretty good word for how I feel like the state of the boat is right now. The problem is: will it wake up in the spring?

Notes about script, storyline ...

The script is maybe what will be the hardest part to come up with. Right now I'm thinking of doing the whole thing with a voice over, which I think will suit the format of the film well. In that way I can comment on what I'm seeing/filming/showing and thus make a good connection between what I see and what I think. I have always been enjoying to look at details, strange things, things that other people probably don't notice and don't care about, that appear around us, almost everywhere you look. The camera will be my eyes (naturally) ... In this way I can interchange between telling the story as a superficial, what you see is what you get, and the deeper meaning, the symbolic meaning, the clichés ...

It will be difficult to make a complete storybord that will be strictly followed. Partly because I want to film over a long time, going from winter to spring, and how the nature looks, how the weather changes will be part of that. This means that whatever weather will be, will be. Also, the movie is, superficially, about my boat, and what that means to me. What I know about the boat now, is that the boat has been 'sitting' still for 3 years, without any care at all. Last time I tried, 3 years ago, the motor started up, but I do not know if that will happen now... Thus, this will also be a journey into some unknown territory. What happens, happens. Anyways, the boat is only an excuse for me to tell my story, my fears and joys. If this will be a happy movie, a sad movie, depressive or optimistic, I don't know. I really hope it will turn out happy and optimistic though, since I feel like I am an optimistic man, after all. An optimistic realist, that enjoys the moment, and tries to make a good life for myself and my family, with the help of my friends and family :)

I've been doing some filming already, and I think it looks good so far :)
(I've been filming the boat under the tarp, in the snow, and I've been filming the docks, on a really nice sunny, winter day... Today there is about 25-30 inches of snow, all in one night, that makes it hard to get around, but would be nice to film as well ... I'll see what I can do ...

Black White etc

To continue my exploring of the clichés of death/life and winter/spring, I will try to explain why I think these clichés still will be usefull. After all, it is probably me that is most worried about making it into a cliché movie. Ok, it will be a cliché movie. It will also be a very personal movie, and that scares the shit out of me. I know that only very few people will bother to see it, and they won't even know if it is real or not, but I am more worried about looking at it myself. That is, I am worried if I can do this at all. Will I be honest about my own feelings? Do I know my own feelings? Do I know myself? Will it be obvious that I am a nut case? I have thought about these questions a lot of times. I think a lot of people think about questions like these a lot of times. In other words, it is pretty common (i.e. 'normal') to think about yourself as 'ab-normal.' At least, this is what I tell myself. Norway is often regarded the 'best' country in the world, according to a set of parameters like health care, income, expected life rate, women's rights etc. Still, Norway has one of the highest rates in the world of suicide among the youth. Why is that? Well, one explanation is the dark winter we often experience here. It is dark. And the further north you go, the darker it gets. Luckily, where I live, we have a little bit of sun even at the darkest day of the year (unless it is overcast). In any case, the dark is a factor for sure. Another thing that has been said to be a factor, is the fact that Norway is such a wonderful country to grow up in, everything is perfect, everyone is happy, everyone has it made. If you are not happy, live a perfect life, there is something wrong with you. You are not normal. And to not be normal in a perfect place is really hard. You feel guilty. How can you feel bad in the best country in the world?

For me it was a bit different. Although, 'different' was exactly what I did not wanted to be, and that was my biggest problem. Since my father died when I was 13, I tried to hide the fact that I was different. I wanted to be 'normal' too, like everybody else. Most of all, I was missing the possibility to say out loud 'Dad!' At that point I did not emotionally miss my real dad, probably as a result of some sort of emotional self defence, and was generally feeling 'happy.' I felt lucky that I could live by my aunt and uncle, two people I was really looking up to. I felt especially happy to be with my uncle since he was my mother's brother, and to be with him was to be closer to my mom, a mom I never knew, and hardly know anything about even today. As I grew older, I realized that my situation was special, and that I was not like everybody else, and most importantly, it was not even necessary to be like everybody else. This was not until I was at least 20 years old. Maybe even 25. In any case, this was also at the time that I stopped being 'happy' all the time, probably because I was starting to listen a little bit more to my own feelings, daring to feel sad, but not much.

I still can't control my emotions very well. Since I have years and years of practice of hiding my real feelings, it has become a part of me. Well, the real question is of course if I have lost my ability to have feelings at all. This is a very hard question to answer, and it bothers me a lot.

One of the consequences of suppressing your own feelings is that you become bitter, angry, sad. So what can you do? I don't know, and that makes me scared. I know that what I am trying to do right now, is to recreate my own childhood, through my own son, but with a different outcome. In other words, I will do my best to stay alive so that my son will have a safe and 'normal' upbringing, which of course is what every parent wants for their child. If I can make him happy, I will be happy, that is the plan. To keep him happy at all times, though, has proved to be very hard, as it is the case with every kid. Those situations though, are the ones that become very hard for me. I get very upset when my kid is not satisfied, when all I do is to try very hard to keep him happy. The same thing happens with my wife. If she gets mad at me, or gets sad because of me, I get mad. I feel misunderstood, frustrated, desperate, lost, but also angry and hateful. Many times I have been walking away, thinking the only way to satisfy my vife, and the only way for me to end my confused emotional chaos inside my head is to commit suicide. What is holding me back, logically, is the thought of my son, and that I have promised him, and myself, that I shall be there for him, and I know that he will be a happier person with me alive, than dead. But it really feels awful to not be the perfect dad I was hoping to be, to give my son a better upbringing than I got myself (my dad also had a lot of anger controll issues, maybe as a consequnce of his wife's death, or maybe it is something we are born with?) and to see myself doing the same mistakes as my dad did, losing temper etc, does really not feel good.

Outline

The movie will be a documentary / biography about myself (very narcissistic) where my boat will be a central symbol of sorts ... The idea is to make the boat into some sort of allegory for a timeline other than its own. Now it is wintertime, and the boat is laying on dry land, as most boats in Norway do. This time will represent my childhood, and I will look back in time and give some information about the past. Central to this will be the fact that my mother died when I was three, and later my father died when I was 13. But there is always a new spring comming, and it will get warmer in the weather again. Very classic life/death allegory of course, but hard to avoid too. I will focus on visual and audial elements in the movie as the most important, almost hiding the real story underneath, as I always have a custom of doing ... Hopefully the movie will end with the boat being put on sea, floating, not sinking, without too much sentimentality and such ... I guess that will be part of the challenge.