I've thinking about it and blogging about my desire to do it, and this past Sunday it happened; I recorded my first podcast. I should say we had our first recording session, we being my friend Jesse from Rebels Without Applause who I knew to be a generally funny guy, a good improvisor (especially with voice based characters which are the basis of what I want to do) and basically up for anything. So I met up a microphone in the middle of my living room, plugged into my laptop and we started going. Unfortunately, I did a poor job of setting up Garageband and some of our funniest stuff from the two or three hours of hanging out we did was lost but such is life. What remained was about two hours of material, which I've cut down to forty five minutes and which I'm continuing to massage, trimming pauses, false starts, umms those sorts of things and adding transitional music where appropriate.
One thing I've learned so far from this process is that making your own stuff, and doing it well, is a difficult and time consuming process. Especially when your working in a medium like say film or radio where you have to painstakingly comb over every piece for usable material, organize those pieces into piles and then compile them into a whole that makes sense and is effective at conveying your theme or message or whatever.
But anyway, the first episode is done, it's online here http://mikehandelman.podbean.com/, so I guess in addition to this blog I now have a "podblog" or whatever that's supposed to be. I have limited storage space, so I might need to upgrade to a paid account for like $2 a month which isn't bad... until we fucking EXPLODE AM I RIGHT?! No of course that won't happen. Do you know how easy it is to do something like this and how many people are out there doing it, many of whom are much more experienced and better at it than I am? Lots, that's how many.
This brings to mind a tension that sometimes becomes a problem in my relationships with fellow artists and actually hit a violent boiling point to where someone I've considered a friend for a while has declared he won't talk to me after I perhaps too harshly criticized his idea, which I found rather extreme and outlandish as an in to the entertainment industry and questioned his ability to actually do it, which he took as unsupportive and insulting in the extreme and I've been feeling bad about since. This habit of unerring rationalism of mine, and my sometimes poor filter, alienated a bunch of my friends in high school as well when they were really into writing hyper ambitious genre screen plays which they then planned to film using the school's TV equipment. I would point out how A) violent they tended to be, and B) called for a level of production values we simply didn't have access to, and they would get pissed and we'd argue and I wouldn't back down because I was a stupid 17 year old and after a while they stopped talking to me. Which is understandable because I was always being negative, even if I thought I was being constructive and I was probably pretty frustrating and irritating to deal with at the time. Losing those friendships, especially so close to the end of high school, made me pretty sad.
And I think there is a tendency towards a manic quality in creative people, and to an extent in myself which I try extremely hard to be self aware about but which other creatives may or may not, especially when their in the middle of on these manic phases. So they'll lay out their ambitious screen play idea (more often than not it's a screen play idea) and I'll poke various holes in how difficult it is to write a good screenplay or make something produceable on the level of a very small time film producer and they'll get frustrated. Or you know, that conversation with your (possibly intoxicated) actor friend about how their going to be a movie star, and I'll usually say "the likelihood of that happening is nigh impossible" and they'll ask me "well don't you have some big dream? Don't you want to shoot for the stars?"
And yeah, I do, sort of. I allow myself to indulge in grand fantasies of movie stardom every once in a while, but in my mind the path of seriously considering those possibilities leads primarily to disappointment and failure. Both of which are simply parts of life and especially part of being any kind of an artist where it's incredibly difficult to get anything to catch on commercially on any kind of large scale, much less to the point of being able to support yourself... and so I make that my big dream, that small goal to support myself as an artist. Occasionally I allow myself the slightly bigger dream of doing that while making work I'm truly satisfied by. Then we go into the realm of large scale commercial success or recognition or whatever. And that's not why I want to be an artist, it's just for the joy of art.
As is the case I'm sure for all or most of my peers, certainly for those I feel close to. But sometimes they allow themselves bigger dreams than I do. And when confronted with those dreams, my reaction is similar to when I see that in myself, I try to bring them to Earth. Sometimes too harshly, like in the case of my friend, who misunderstand that and took as a personal slight and offense or declaration that he wasn't good enough or as good as me or whatever. Which wasn't the case. I tried to explain that, he hasn't responded. And it could be that friendship is lost to me, or that he'll come around, I don't know. I don't know where he's at, after the provoking exchange I saw him several times before he left and we seemed cool before I got his message condemning me. So I wonder if something else is going on to put him in that headspace, I can only speculate. And feel a certain amount of sadness, which has been very distracting from the work I've been trying to do getting this modest podcasting project to resemble something I can happy with...
Anyway, it's a problem, how to be both supportive of friends and their endeavors and also truthful and honest and how to know when someone wants to hear honesty or just faith and support, which are not mutually exclusive. Even if I don't believe in an idea, I can still believe in a person. I don't know, I shouldn't say anymore in case they read this. I want to talk about my feelings of frustration and even anger at being unjustly condemned for expressing an honest thought, and so far after the fact. But it wouldn't make a difference.
I just have to keep my head in the game and keep moving forward. I feel like I've made a lot of progress this summer. I grew and discovered so much studying movement, and portraying Alfred. I began learning the principles of editing video and now podcasting, all of which is very exciting. Thinking of the future, I know it will hold more frustration like I'm feeling now. And struggle, oh God will it hold struggle. But also hope for friendship and art which are the truly essential things in life.
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