Explicable

Today I bought a package of Almaloy armature wire at a nearby supply shop. I'll likely start cutting lengths of it and beginning to assemble the next practice puppet tonight and tomorrow but I want to tell you quickly what insight about Halfland I caught today.

I have been greatly confused about why, even though I ate, drank, and slept this little film project for so long, was I not actually getting much of anything done on it. I wanted to do it. I could have. But even after carting the cement molds and supplies for it from house to house as I moved through these years, it didn't ever even move to the nascent animation stage I'm in now. I couldn't make any sense of that until...

I realized today after this week of my first little toe whetting of actual frames and puppets that it's no wonder why I hadn't moved on it before. I look at the skills required to complete Halfland as I envision it, the highly complex set fabrication, the puppet finishing (that's the only bit I knew I could do well), the technical/software aspects of shooting, the equipment/software mastery of shooting and editing, the animation performance being smooth and expert enough, the digital editing (would be easily half the film's worth in my case), the sound track syncing, you get the idea. Heck, if you're animating, you may have even felt this way. I look down the road at all these skills that I currently don't possess and have wondered, way under the surface, if I can pull it off like I'd like.

I quit a life in ballet at age 18 because I took a hard look at the career of dancers and coldly determined that, while I had certain gifts at it, I lacked some essential factors to make a go of life in that world. I quit it, rather than fail at it.

So, I look into this passionate (and shockingly everlasting in my heart) project and know that I hadn't started before in earnest because I didn't think I could. I really had no idea that was going on. No longer an inexplicable quandary, doing a little animating brought my hesitations to light.

My answer back to those doubts is a hardy, "Hell, Yes!" I'll do it, as I can, good or bad. I know that I'm privileged for the opportunity to work on it. I'm grateful for the ability and health to work at it. I have no timetable on it other than to make real progress daily. And it is more fun than I ever imagined it could be. So that's good.

When it comes to pass, you'll all have a ringside seat for it, or as my lifelong friend Jerry says; he'd like a visa to visit Halfland one day.