Creating Comes From Memory

Something Inside Yourself

It’s near the end of the month…time to write…yet once again the all-perplexing question, during all too many similar days…what? Where is that resonance…the reminder…the unlikely encounter…re-visiting…an awakening of sorts? One sage line provides the day.

In 1981 I wrote my last university exam having spent a semester engaged in what I thought to be the only film studies course offered in the department. Time has been unkind…though the teaching remains somewhere within my ether my ability to recall my professor’s name has diminished. All I have is Barry. I really must find out…likely not too difficult…perhaps I will call this week*.

The course…simple enough…a comparison of Australian and Japanese film with a once a week visit to Cinecenta Theatre where I immerse myself within the screen…perhaps popcorn…no doubt popcorn. Then off to class to engage with others in the questions and discussions posed by our leader…our sensei…Such rewards!

Leaving the course’s final exam, I suggested to my father that I will need to return. So distraught thinking there was no possibility that I had found my way with this exam. The prof prefaced his test document with his insight about answers…there is no right or wrong…write the way you feel…

Now, near 41 years later, I return to these roots…Let’s re-engage…let’s recall the Japanese films and one director in particular – what does Akira Kurosawa say…his great advice to aspiring filmmakers?…if you genuinely want to make films, then write screenplays. All you need to write a script is paper and pencil…It’s only through writing scripts that you learn specifics about the structure of film and what cinema is. That’s what I tell them, but they still won’t write. They find writing too hard.” As I continue to watch the video, I ponder they still won’t write.

I can write.

Kurosawa continues,…have the patience to write one word at a time…I often say that creating comes from memory. Memory is the source for your creation…you can’t create unless you have something inside yourself.

And so, I write…one word at a time.

Something inside yourself? I still have these days…

I thought my challenge, during these days of the morphing spiked menace, to be memory…but the opposite is true, the challenge is the desire for new memory (because I cannot travel). I find that time away from place has left me wanting for the feel of these landscapes. I yearn for the turf, the stone, the trail.

With Kurosawa’s thoughts…I today choose to remember an evening classroom of 1981, discussing film…creating…reading…real-life experience…there is no right or wrong…one word at a time – memories give me voice…today’s images memories of voice – one instance at a time.

Part II (25 January 2022)

*And so I called…perhaps I would soon have a name to this Barry? The phone rings…the answering voice of the line…Sandra…feels my request not too difficult…Soon my day brightens with a simple email including outlines of two film courses (one each semester) led by Barrie McLean! HA 367: A more specialized investigation into cinema with attention to the use of myth and symbol…

Again in that darkened room…waiting for the first scene…soundtrack, titles, cuts, movement…today there is more…a name to a memory…the name of the adventurer…whose voice of myth and symbol prompted this writer’s desire to dig a little deeper. Write what you feel…roll credits…discussion…something inside yourself…all the time seeking something more.