Video Project Nears

I had a meeting yesterday afternoon with my video crew for the Sweet Home shoot. We're prepping for our initial gathering of footage for the video narrative of my memoir, A Marvelous Paranoia.

We were lamenting that by Tuesday, when we drive to our first locations, the beautiful weather we're briefly having in the Pacific Northwest will likely return to normal--that is buckets of rain will threaten to overwhelm us.

We were discussing the project in a beer garden exposed to the glorious, life-giving sun, on a rare gorgeous Portland day.

Then we reminded ourselves how important reality is to the project. That is, it rains here in Oregon nine months out of the year. While being what I consider a humorous look at growing up in Oregon, I'm also reminded that a certain pathos guides the book, and that is to a large degree a circumstance of the sadness that afflicts Oregonians susceptible to dismal skies.

Pictures of the very clouds roiling in the mid-Valley, hinting at the kind of darkness that sometimes consumes the unwary among us, are in fact apropos to the narrative.

Falling rain is necessary.

Rain is as elemental to an Oregon artist as big waves and sunny skies are to a California surfer.

Provided we can keep our gear dry, I welcome the rain, for rain is an underlying aspect of the story.


TS