Bizarre family behaviours

I'd like to try getting into a discipline of sitting still long enough to write just for fun. Family life is just so, I dunno, full of family, that there hardly seems the time to luxuriate in the joy of seeing some words on the screen that no-one else has written before.

Oh sure, there are the endless nights of re-doing high school assignments with the kids - I think I'll do quite well in year 10 again this year - but those feeble attempts to straighten the syntax of an increasingly belligerent 14 year old who seems oblivious to the joy of a well crafted phrase, the chime of a nuanced metaphor and the basic courtesy of accurate spelling just don't carry the same satisfaction for me.

So it seems the small thing which happened at home is a nice place to rediscover the joy of some words.

Offspring #2 is studying film and TV at school and is in the middle of making a short (5 min) film. He has to write, storyboard, script, shoot, direct and edit this thing. I'm sure he could tell me there are several hundred other things he has to do as well (did you ever wonder what all those job titles in the closing credits of movies actually do? Does a "best boy" make really good sandwiches?)

Speaking of sandwiches, #2 has written a short story based on a real life experience he had as a "sandwich artist" (I'll leave you to guess which food franchise it was with), and pulled together a couple of mates, some equipment and gone off and filmed it- nearly.

The other night he and his friend (who was playing the character of the "sandwich artist") were in our lounge room shooting a few crucial seconds of the final part of the story.Picture it if you can- #2 with camera in hand, filming another kid who was pretending to be #2, walking through the lounge, uttering six words, opening the door to my bedroom (which itself was excelling in the role of #2's bedroom), and pretending to be going to sleep. The two of them shot this sequence SIX TIMES!!! (Maybe it was once for each word?)

All the while, the rest of us sat pinned to the walls, out of shot, barely allowed to breathe lest we spoil the audio.

It all felt strangely,well, ... normal. But wait, this had never happened before, and yet it was completely fine.

I believe the reason it was so comfortable, was that after years of #2 telling us that making movies and working in film was what he wanted to do with his life, he was honouring that intention, and us, by allowing us to witness him practicing his craft.It was another piece of family that I never expected, but enjoyed just the same.

It was truly an honour. And I hope to remind him of it at the opening of every film he ever makes.

Its been a long time...

..since I rock n rolled? Gee it sure feels like it. Sometimes life gets so busy with "stuff" that I forget what it's like just to do stuff. For me. Stuff that doesn't have a pay off.

I can remember when I was in my teens, and playing the guitar and singing seemed like just about the most important thing in the world. I had ideas about songs and music that just seemed to come out of me all the time, and I barely had enough time to write them down. Sitting on my bedroom floor when I probably should have been studying, it really truly didn't matter that I would probably never be any good at guitar-ing. Those were the days when you really could imagine anything.

35 years on and what have I got? A growing family, monster mortgage, a generally stimulating and satisfying job to do each day and 2 pretty nice guitars, sitting in their cases pretty much from one week to the next.

I used to be able to rattle off hundreds of songs, but now I have an alarmingly limited repertoire of hackneyed riffs and partly remembered lyrics. Funny how if you don't play 'em, you lose 'em. Where did those songs go?

More importantly, where did the singer go?