A Weather Report

I've worked myself to the breaking point.  Work and worry, work and worry.  Now I'm stressing about leaving for California next week.  I opened the CNN online page this morning and saw headlines about Americans stressing over their vacation plans.  Good to know I may not be the only one.  It will be good once I'm there, but I can project every kind of disaster that could muck it all up.

Still, I continue to work.  Yesterday I squeezed in a shoot with a lovely girl from South Africa who was nice enough to contact me with a sweet message about how much she wanted to shoot with me before she went back.  She is a professional dancer, she said, and she had come to the States to try out for the Radio City Hall Rockettes.  Of course I said yes.

When she arrived, I asked her if she had tried out yet.  She said yes, but she didn't get the job.  She made it to the final round.  I shoot with another professional dancer and with a woman who owns a dance studio and they both have a friend who is a Rockette.  Great gig, they say.  Rockettes work three months, October, November, and December, but get paid $2,000/week for the entire year.  They are free to pick up whatever gigs they want in the off season.  So I felt badly for the girl from South Africa, but she was resolutely upbeat.  She had danced all her life, had gone to a performing arts high school then to a renowned performing arts college.  She has had some fun gigs, she says, including dancing for Sting.  When she said that, I pictured her with Sting in a room somewhere, he sitting in a chair, her dancing away, but she disabused me of my fantasy quickly.  "No, silly, I was a backup dancer in his concerts."  Well. . . that's cool, too.

I almost didn't shoot with her because she was a bit timid in her emails about what I do.  I wrote back and said that if we were to shoot together, she would need to be as committed to what I was trying to do as was I.  And when we began, she was shy.  She said she'd never done anything like this shoot before, and as we talked, I discovered (and I shouldn't have been surprised) that she was insecure about her body.  Yup.  That's right.  "I'll trade," I said.  Hell, if I looked like her, people would have a hard time getting me into clothes.  But there it was.  She's an artist, both confident and insecure.  She was the nicest girl in the world and she tried very hard, but that insecurity never, ever left her.  There will be some very good pictures, but it is the other thing that will remain with me.

I once worked on a documentary about a ballet company.  We began shooting the first day that the company returned.  I couldn't believe they were dancers at all.  They were not fit, were definitely heavy, and when they hit the wooden floor after a short jump, the thud was deafening.  This has to be the worst ballet company of all time, I thought.  But over the next two weeks, their dance bodies began to show.  They smoked cigarettes and ate gummy bears and went to the bathroom to throw up.  My idea was to capture all the brutal agony that went into making the beautiful product that audiences come to see.  But I couldn't.  They wouldn't let me shoot what I wanted.  They didn't want to be seen smoking on camera.  Nor eating.  And certainly not throwing up.  They even didn't want me to shoot their mangled feet, toes bloodied and twisted from years of standing on point.  Nope.  And I should have remembered their insecurities when I agreed to shoot with the dancer.

We shot long, mostly because I will never be able to shoot with her again, and in the end, I was totally and thoroughly exhausted.  And after saying goodbye and after cleaning up the studio, I went to the grocery store to get something easy to fix for dinner.  The wine was opened at quarter 'til nine.  Another exhausted evening.

But I went to bed early and stayed in bed late and now the sun is shining and the house is clean and the cat is a lover at my feet.  I've decided that I won't do anything.  Maybe one thing.  But I cram too much into my hours, and for awhile I will quit it.  I won't worry about going to the gym.  I won't pay bills today.  I won't work on any pictures.  I will take a walk. . . if I feel like it.  I will try to get tickets to see "Moonrise Kingdom" in the late afternoon/early evening.  I will have a drink with a friend.

And maybe I'll pack.  It would make me feel better to have everything ready to go as this half week unfolds.  And maybe, really, get the bills paid, too.  And it would be good to knock out a few pictures today, especially for the dancer I shot with yesterday.  I'd better get the tire on the Jeep fixed, too.  And before I go, I need to get some prices on shrubbery.  And I still haven't booked a room in San Francisco nor have I rented a car.  And I still need to. . . .