The Masochism of Meaning

I have to begin with Happy Birthday, Laura! I love you so much! It's my girlfriend of 4 years birthday today, and I have to say that she has been my biggest supporter and biggest hero during my ongoing fight with disability. She has never wavered or been anything other than encouraging and optimistic even when I've been in my darker places. I can only hope that those of you who like me live with chronic pain can find someone to love you unconditionally in the wake of this terrible enemy.

I also have to say I couldn't be happier with the results of last Tuesday's mid-term elections. I don't want to skew anyone's view of me based on my political proclivities; however, I truly believe that those who suffer under the weight of medical problems can only benefit by having a Democratic congress. The Republicans goals to privatize Social Security and the most recent Prescription Drug Plan has done nothing less than undercut the aged and chronically ill. So, I can only hope now that the Democrats will made good on their pledge to change the destructive course of our neo-con leaders, help those who depend on assistance and to help stop a war which has needlessly taken the lives of American and Iraqis alike and destroyed the lives of those who have thus far survived.

OK, moving on to the final installment in my catch up from May, it's time to fill you in on the progress of my feature film project "Art Imitating Life." I'd like to tell you production is underway or shot and in the can, but as is the way of independent filmmaking we continue to find that final gap funding to get it all going. My primary production partner Haylee Twombly is doing a fantastic job juggling what are now three different groups who are seeking the gap financing. We still have one party who is prepared to give us almost all the money we need; however, we won't get going until it's all there. Too often indie films will get partial financing and during the filming of the picture loose it or not find the completion funds and the project stops dead before it's finished. I don't want that situation. This film is too important to not guarantee its completion and release.

It's a good thing that I'm use to pain and suffering because the bottom line is filmmaking is the purest form of masochism. The constant rejection, disappoint and failure to accomplish the mission of shooting a picture can really tear a person up inside. More over, my insistence that I be the one to physically direct this movie is absurd on so many levels because the stress it will put on my body is not going to help my complications or pain management. The stress alone is a big contribution to my daily problems. But if I don't, then this picture will not have what all other disability films have lacked, a true first-person vision of what it is to live with chronic pain. It's that goal, that aspiration that makes the suffering meaningful.

As long as suffering has meaning, it can be endured. Don't count on the meaning being explained by anyone else, and it won't come immediately. That meaning has to be discovered by the sufferer. And that's one of my other goals is to give anyone who suffers against a situation, physical or otherwise, over which they ultimately have no control to give it a meaning. It's not an easy task finding meaning in any condition of which a person becomes a victim, but it's facing that masochism of meaning that stops a person from being a victim and becoming a victor.

And so the work to get my film financed and production underway continues...