Daughter of Godcast 165 Fall

Hey Dan Kelly here, Shri Fugi Split and this is the Daughter of Godcast Season 4 Choice and Episode 165 Fall.

Why do we strive? Why do we have desire? Desires are like a toolkit maybe. Desire to eat = keep the body going. Desire to sleep = experience integration and repair, desire to poop = discard that which is no longer helpful and contribute to the global life support system by fertilizing plants.

I can keep going with these... desire to communicate = experience rapport and connection, desire for friendship = recognition and play... are these in Maslow's heirarchy somewhere? I'm too lazy to look that up. What this exercise is about is as we get away from the supposed survival basics, things get more mysterious. Why do we want to experience rapport or be recognized? The equations don't really tell us anything. Which is good because today I'm curious about the desire to make art. Which is about more-ing the mystery.

I wrote a story long ago about a man who finds himself in the control room of this own mind. Kind of like that old idea of a little man or woman sitting inside your skull watching the world out of a periscope and running your body with various levers and pedals. But then who runs that little man or woman? And so on. Anyway, in my story, the control room has a microphone for the man to speak to the outside world and other obvious affordances to do basic people stuff like walking. But the control room is rather vast and there's controls he has no clue about. Super powers?

Later on in life I discovered Wim Hof and Freediving and all the latent circuits built in to humans, real life super powers. I'm pretty sure we have plenty of other circuits - controls and tools that we don't even know about, let alone what they might be for. Probably our capacity is infinite, discovering them is the rush. That brings me to art.

Not everyone wants to make art. I know plenty who do, including myself. More than want to, I know people who basically HAVE to make art.. A very strong desire, more compelling than the basics like eating and rest.

The past week I've been back in live action production. My attention has turned, I am disregarding most everything else except what has to happen cinematically before leaves drop. Which feels a bit unbalanced to be honest, which is why I wonder about this desire to make art. Why is this desire so prominent? This desire transcends my desire for a clean house, for a tuned body, for food, for intimacy, for family, friends, sleep. I am way beyond pain and discouragement even.

For the sake of comprehensive documentation and to fully illustrate the wonder of this desire, here's more. I broke my arm in June, and by September I had been instructed by my doctor to go ahead and live my life, so I started body weight exercises. A few weeks ago I started experiencing pain around my collar bone, so i went back in and Hollander took more x-rays. He reported that my collar bone is broken again, the alignment Master Ru had achieved at a distance is gone. Ok so the Philadelphia miracle didn't last, fuck it. I can live with the pain until I've got the scenes I need. A week or so after rebreaking my collarbone, a chronic lower back issue resurfaced. I had been making real progress with various kriyas in the past year, but without warning, the pain was back. So now I've got this fucked up shoulder and aching back. You know what? Who cares. On my first day back on location I fell twice on my broken shoulder, so now maybe it's even a little more fucked up. Who cares? I can carry heavy bags through the forest, I can even wear a big honking backpack full of c-stands. I can do what I have to do, the pain and suffering just isn't relevant.

On the first day back in production, I accidentally formatted the main camera's memory card, loosing that entire day's work. Whatever. A couple days later, I was on location again doing it all over again.

Inexorable.

Hey and BTW - this is not about wanting sympathy for my pain and suffering or mishaps, I wouldn't even be talking about these specifics if I weren't trying to reveal how deep the mystery goes. This is about the power of being taken over by art. I am super allergic to telling people about injuries and mishaps because by and large most people don't know how to respond proactively, their words usually suck. So if you send me messages about how your sorry, I'll know you weren't actually paying attention. Don't be sympathetic, please. Notice what this is really about.

I can only imagine that this is what a parent might feel when their kid needs them. Like Wim Hof or freediving, this passion for creating makes everything else irrelevant. Activates fullness. Reveals resources. There's certainly a balance ot be struck, I don't want to disregard the rest of my life forever, for now tho, this feels incredible. I love experiencing clarity, focus and flow. Being a force of nature. There's so much to notice here, getting a clue from the cosmos.

Episode 164 had an audio version of Buffalo Joe and the Box scene currently in production. Here's a proof of concept for this scene with live action and some rough VFX. This helps to reveal what might need tweaking. I'd REALLY love your feedback, what's happening in this scene for you? Please comment either on Vimeo or on this episode at dog.movie.