mindjames

Tag: dreams

  • Rapumentary Vol. 1 – The History and Birth of a Mockumentary

    Here it is, me finally blogging about the current project I’m working on. I’m gonna try to kinda keep this series organized. I also kinda gave headings for the various parts of this, in case, say, you didn’t want to bother with the preface or parts of whatever (e.g. preface is irrelevant to what I’m actually up to)

    CONTENTS:

    PREFACE

    WHAT I’M UP TO

    – Historical Context

    – The Beginning

    VOLUME 2

     

    PREFACE

    I went through a phase where I debated if I wanted to discuss the current creative project I’ve been working on, or if I just wanted to work on it and whenever pieces of it start to surface, it would be what it was. For whatever reason, I tend to hold my pet projects very close to my chest. For instance, the mini-series I’ve been developing for the past year is something that I don’t even really discuss with any other member of the crew. I have so many ideas for that thing, from characters to visual techniques and so on, I guess a part of me is paranoid if I blab too much that pieces of my precious baby will be transplanted into other unrelated projects/crew videos, where as this is something I have a really strong vision for and don’t want anything diluted. This mentality is pretty ordinary though, people in similar spheres often poke fun at photographers and how paranoid they are with their endless watermarks and other methods of ‘protecting’ their IP and work. I will say one thing, ideas are everything to me, and I just like the whole potential shock factor– as in, when something finally gets produced, hopefully someone (who likely knows me) sees it and will think, “wow he did this?,” and hell, maybe that is coupled with a negative connotation instead of positive, but at least I surprised someone. It is that whole self-expression thing. I don’t feel like anyone really knows me until they see these grand schemes that are extensions of myself that also explore the realms of art and creative energy.

    Anyway, back to the point: I realized a few things. In summation, I was being foolish. For one, this isn’t one of those “idea is everything” kind of projects. It relies more on execution than the idea, just ask Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix. Secondly, and I’m surprised how long it took me to realize this, I can talk about any project I might be working on in a vague enough manner to not compromise any details that might need to be protected– if that were ever something to worry about. I already have an tendency to be over ambiguous as it is. Finally, I am pretty sure that most people who ever read this are people who have actually mentioned reading it or discussed my blog with me before, these are people who likely have heard me talk about these projects in some way already, or I wouldn’t mind talking early details with and so on. On top of that point, anyone who I don’t know of reading this, it isn’t like I care because I’m not giving away the secrets to immortality or anything anyway. I guess the main point is that my audience is really small, so if you’re cool enough to be in that audience, then you deserve that extra insight and exposure to what I’m working on.. not like that’s a great life bonus or anything (but it is good resume material). I’ll also go ahead and say that if you do read these entries and I don’t know you do, you’re more than welcome to mention it to me, even if I don’t know you well. Because that makes you cool to me (ego fertilizer), and gets you up on my employee of the month wall. OK..

     

    WHAT I’VE BEEN UP TO

    Historical Context

    Let’s start it like this, I am now one half of what can only be referred to as a ‘pseudo fictitious hip hop duo’.

    I feel like, from a surface view, this is one of the most unlikely things I could end up saying about myself, but I must reinforce that my idea of exterior perception is often pretty off, so who knows.

    This project is much more than that, though I was recommended to introduce my project like this by a friend, and I agreed with that suggestion. It’s like the triple threat/attack in basketball, I can pass, shoot, or dribble from that point– take it any direction. Let’s take it back to the beginning.

    This project has roots that begin in high school. Years blur into each other at a certain point, but I’m thinking it was junior or senior year, so 2005-2006. We, the swb crew, had a really simple idea of taking Ryan Baker (our resident rap encyclopedia and tall guy) and making him spend a week or two pretending he was trying to become a rapper. The two main ideas that led to this general idea were the though of having him go to an open mic night somewhere acting like your average suburban, middle class caucasian’s idea of a rapper/wigger/gangsta blablah, looking and acting the part and then trying to rap. Of course, the furhter away this open mic or writer’s night was from that genre of music and subculture, the better. Secondly, we wanted to put him somewhere, like perhaps on the streets of downtown Nashville with the whole donation hat or whatever and him try to freestyle to people walking back and so on. Basically, just another ruse that we thought up to make Ryan make a fool of himself and film for our own enjoyment.

    It was a great idea for us at the time. Little planning needed, fewer resources, quick and easy to shoot and also gave Ryan a role, which was always important because he would come around pretty rarely, so it was always important to use as much of the limited mileage as possible. Of course, this project was never to be, just like dozens to hundred of others. I think Ryan’s availability was the main thing, plus we probably were mostly all talk on it.

    A few years of dormancy passes until opportunity springs out of the earth, much akin to the moment that Jed Clampett misfired at some game and oil came gushing out. Except this oil geyser was carrying the precious gold statuette of Ryan Baker, the rap artist. Double jackpot. Around this past April, Ryan told me he was going to be in Fairview, or at least Middle Tennessee for the entire summer. Working off of a few assumptions, I knew that the people in the crew with the most availability would be solely me and him. Basically, my schedule was wide open, his would be wide open, all the other guys would be in and out. It was obvious. All my other projects I had been working on were so far down the pipeline. So I pitched revisiting the idea to him, he was down, though I’d also guarantee he didn’t take me seriously, or believe I was going to take it seriously.

    The format was supposed to be weekly to bi-weekly web episodes, with the goal of being able to compile them into somewhere in the vicinity of a feature length mockumentary. In my head, it was the perfect solution. I saw this as having the same commitment level of the original idea. Something that doesn’t take much forethought, or work to execute and push out. We’d be able to rely on always having something to work on each week, while having room to do other swb crew projects, and then I started working on the thing…

     

    The Beginning

    School got out for me and Ryan said he wouldn’t be out of Knoxville til June. This was a bit of a disappointment because his initial declaration made it sound like he’d be around sooner, but on the other hand, I had the green light from the girlfriend who was excited to see me actually working on something after 1-2 years of nothing, no job or school clouding my time, a new computer that I had dedicated to video and music production to keep me away from gaming too much, and so on. Basically, I was set to launch, so I decided to do some test flights and work on some of the music end. Since we wanted to do everything in house, I was taking on the burden of pretty much every aspect of musical production. From songwriting, producing, even singing and rapping. Of course, I didn’t have plans on actually being on any of our main character’s tracks, but rather just recording scratch vocals so Ryan could get an idea of what I was thinking for any given song and beat. Problem was, he ended up liking what would eventually become my parts. This led to the birth of another character in our mockumentary and eventually to the evolution of one man with a dream to two men in a group with a dream.

    That summer had many plan changes, for instance, Ryan was only around a tiny fraction of the time he said he was going to be… then he moved to California. Your lead man being that unavailable is pretty gamebreaking. That, I think, has been more of a good thing than a bad thing though, because the entire time I’ve been able to focus on the music aspect of the entire project.

    I’d consider this at least a three tiered project. Music, performance and film. The music has to come first, we want the music to actually be good. We have to build the idea of legitimacy even if the characters and personas are ficitious. Of course, the music sometimes is coupled with these characters, so things like subject matter and what not are not as immune as the music, but I want to get into this later. Then once the musical foundation is established, build off of it and get into the performance and filming aspect, which are tightly coupled, but not quite joined at the hip with each other.

    All things of the filming part fit in well with my experience, but the other two are only in the periphery of my background. Music production is time intensive as it is, I’d say more so than anything performance based. For instance, I can write a song, and to get a demo out of it will take exponentially longer than if I wanted to go grab a guitar and play it at a writer’s night. So like I said, it’s been good how things have worked out so far, because I’ve really devoted enough time and energy into the music for this pseudo fictitious hip hop duo to crush an anvil. There are other elements, such as writing and idea and character development that are brought along at all stages, but this is how I divide it up, and this is the stage that project is currently under.

    So we arrive now at one of those retrospect moments. In retrospect, I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time. It’s kind of funny that I expected to be able to one-off on these songs and get them out quick, but then again, at the time we were expecting to merely make stuff that was passable for the character. The problem is, if I get started doing something, there is only one way for me to do it: do it right.

     

    Volume 2 – My Odyssey into Music Production

  • Tyrannical Dreams

    I’m not sure I’ve ever had the same dream more than once. Instead, I’ve had dreams set in the same world or environment, in fact, it is a pretty regular occurrence. Sometimes I like to think of my dreamscape in the same vein as a video game like Zelda (this concept applies to a ton of games), where you have this massive world and it is divided up in to these very distinct and pronounced regions; each with their own separate titles. There is almost a certain reputation associated with each one. As far as the universe I’ve constructed in my dreams, it is an environment that puts such a world you might find in one of the Zelda games into a molecular perspective. With that said, when I have dreams set in these very similar settings, I feel like I’m just in a different region of my dreamiverse.

    For instance, I have one series of dreams that has a few defining traits. The biggest player in all of it is the nighttime setting. There is no concept of day, it is a very dark world, the only light is provided from the dim orange glow of street lights and sometimes houses. This leads into another dominant aspect; it is predominantly set in a large suburban neighborhood. Most of the time it is specifically modeled after a neighborhood of one of my best friends– a place where I spent a lot of very memorable times in my childhood. There are two other major characteristics I can identify off the bat too.

    First is the concept of powerlines. In a visual sense, they are always of great importance. The angling of visuals in my dreams is often from an elevated view, one that is often high enough to be looking down from power lines, but I also can recall a lot of visuals of just random cut aways to looking up into the night sky as the dimmed grey clouds speed by, sometimes revealing the ruler of this nightened world– the full moon. Finally, and probably most distinctly to me is the presence of what I’d call vampiric creatures.

    These aren’t actual vampires I’m talking about, but if you look at characteristics of the fiction of vampire folklore throughout history some of these things are consistent. Also, when I say creatures it is important to note that that they are essentially human in their cognizance and existence, but they represent a more ascendant and powerful figure above what we typically see as humans. In all my dreams in this setting, I’ve never figured out if they were predatory of just observational, but in this vast, dark neighborhood they often scour on the power lines prowling about, camouflaged with the night sky in excessively long black-caped cloaks. They fly about from street light to street light and are seemingly incapable of making a sound. In particular, there is one that tends to be dominant in these dreams, a female of this species who has often given me very uneasy feelings in my dreams– sometimes even terror.

    I’ve had dreams in this setting that have led me to going to an absurdly massive neighborhood pool that was packed, wandering around the same block in my lonesome in an endless cycle as I was stalked by the vampiric creatures, a set of dreams that revolved around safely traveling to a caged outdoor basketball court, one where I took refuge in a basement maze that connected my friends house to their neighborhoods, and probably the one that I remember the best: the one where another street wandering leads me to an entire section of the neighborhood that has been engulfed in a cornfield. People’s yards and houses vanished into this small country of corn, except for one house that was a little bit off center in the maze, as a family sat in rocking chairs on the porch in the distance. When I managed my way to the house it was vacated.

    What I’m getting at is less a dream recollection, but really the emphasis that when I dream, while a lot happens and there is a very powerful audio/visual presence in my dreams, I believe the most prevalent effect to be an emotional one. Maybe not emotional in the watered down version we know in our consciousness– anger, sadness, happiness, love, etc.– but the more abstract sense of feeling. Just as I, and probably everyone dreams things that are to bizarre for reality, the feelings I dream are the same. I dream feelings that I could never hope to describe or articulate into any form outside of just feeling them.

    Even further, if I dream, I usually can remember most of it if I put the effort into it. Though, if I do it takes a long time. If I recall a dream and even go as far to write it out, it usually takes at least an hour to go through the entire thing. The feelings are different. I never have to make an effort, but I almost always remember the feelings I experience. I can think to a dream I remember and I.. feel how I remembered feeling when I dreamt it. It works in reverse too. I think of a feeling I remember having in a dream and I can remember the dream in a very distant sense. Kind of like seeing a painting at a distance that barely makes itself aware to the eye. While with recalling the occurrences it is kind of like knowing the answer on a test but not being able to bring the information out.

    Now, when I brought up this suburban night world dreamscape I specifically wanted to point it out because the dreams tend to be rather unpleasant. They really aren’t good dreams at all. I don’t wake up from them and feel good. I wake up from them and if I have the time to soak it in and ease back into reality, I feel like I’m in desolation. A kind of dream that can make my mind take a vacation from the immediacy of reality for hours– I don’t know if other people have them that often, but I’d hope that you’d know what I’m talking about. Most of the feelings I have from these dreams have flavors of terror in these highly abstracted and complex feelings, yet here is the caveat: I love these dreams. If I had a choice, I’d take living in a world like this one that I dream than the reality I know. I think I can live with admitting this because it is simply impossible and will never actually happen. I enjoy my dreams better than reality. It is the only redeeming quality of sleep. The more I learn about my own dreams though, I realize it isn’t just these super surreal settings and scenarios that are so addicting, though they are, but these feelings may be the greatest draw of all. The combined effect of all of this leads to the essence of what dreams are to me. These things you end up aspiring for, but in this case can’t have.

    Let me quickly note that I’m not trying to give reality a diminutive quality, but just that dreams are addicting because, well.. I think I’m about to get in part of why I’m thinking they are.

    I remember when I was a lot younger, reading up on lucid dreaming. I think there was maybe one time up to that point where I had realized I was dreaming but didn’t wake up, but it was very short-lived. Apparently you can condition or train yourself to have a greater propensity to dream lucidly, or become aware you’re dreaming. Who knows how much legit backing there is to this idea, but I did try it for a few weeks in my teens one summer, and it definitely seemed to work. Funny thing is,  for the most part I always decided to fly and not do much else in these instance, and I never woke up feeling rested. But given this concept, then if you have awareness that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming, then you are gaining control of a world that nearly has the perception of reality on pretty much all the senses. That’s a pretty powerful thing to consider.

    Just thinking about this a little bit really leads me to believe that a lot of why I really have an addiction to dreaming and visiting all these worlds my subconscious has constructed is because I am in control in some sense. I can’t help it that living in a world where Stevie Wonder drives an ice cream truck and sings with joy about killing one of my best friends as he makes constant attempted to obliterate him with his ice cream truck, ultimately leading to us sprinting into the back of his truck which is, in turn, a cafeteria with marble floors and tables that is at least a mile wide is more interesting than waking up every day and going to school, doing the same actions and hobbies on a regular basis, seeing the same faces, interacting with the same things and abiding by the same universal principles.

    It is a dynamic escape, an unpredictable and fresh adventure each time. One that provides experiences, sights, sounds, events and feelings that we rarely get in our everyday lives (though there are definitely things that reach and exceed this standard in reality, they are rare events). Though, sometimes I think this represents the tyrannical self. In a physical sense, my body, my mind and so on is generating these dreams. On some level I want to feel and experience what I dream, or else I wouldn’t really dream them. I mean, I like having terrible dreams from time to time because the powerfully intoxicating feelings they give me when I wake up. And I know that I have some sort of preference to my so called dreamscape than what can sometimes be a mundane and limited reality.. so is there some sort of latent desire for a self-generated tyranny? I suppose so, as I have the gall to even think that a world that is heavily influence and even constructed by myself is better than the one I live in. Pretty selfish really.

    Good thing they’re just dreams though, right?