Image © Copyright 2022 Michael Afendakis

Not gonna lie: This week has been a whole thing. Inspiration, death, and a heartbreakingly predictable breakup, all clamoring for headspace.

As I am want to do, when confronted by… let’s say “shitstorms of emotional what-not”, I called an emergency porch swing session—whereby Michael fuels the furnace of Jonathan’s dubious assertions about the nature of things, with too-good-for-Jonathan wine, and an ear toward clever one-liner openings.

Six hours later (having whittled our current angsts down to their bitter, bite-sized, chewable cores, for later consumption), we found ourselves at Michael’s editing suite.

Michael and I have always divvied up the tasks on any given project: one shoots, the other edits; one writes, the other directs. Notes are requested or unsolicitedly proffered, then incorporated or cheekily ignored…

Yet there we were collaborating, in-time, on our documentary. Snipping and shuffling clips about, layering themes, finding the measure of silences, and creating negative space—room enough for our heroes to spar…

Breaking the edit like a script in a writer’s room.

I’m not keen to silver-line the mourning I have in store for me, at the moment. But I am keen to appreciate the view of my life from 100 yards:

Man up to his neck in it, gasping for art.

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