Choke hold
Lay me to sleep
Set me down slowly
Build me up gently
I feel the pinch and the air that tries to escape
I test my fate with each breath
It’s all in a moment
Fear not the unknown
You WILL know
You will
No matter how much you don’t want it
No matter how hard the climb or how close the wall
~
You will slam into life and it will hold you
Arms tight
Fingers around your heart
Forever squeezing
Choking you to the point of clarity
Believe me
You will know
~
You can have my blood
I don’t want it, don’t need it
I live in the stars
I find myself awake amongst the Gods
It’s all head nods and fist bumps but I’m no killer like them
I’ve read your brittle, little words
And in my strong hands, I watch them all crumble
From screams to a mumble
I hear them all
Choking on their words
Death to the silence
Simple little nothings
Life is what I make
Paper plates and plastic forks
You take this all, this old world force
I don’t breathe – I don’t sin
I just love and I just grin
It’s all for fun
Let’s not care
Let’s find hope but only if we dare
We couldn’t compare ourselves to anything but our selves
We can’t breathe for anybody else
These things keep me awake
I try to sleep but just wait
There’s a tomorrow out there – somewhere
I know I care – somewhere
~
It’s all these simple little nothings
I never understood
Under the hood, the engine is warm
Under the light, the insects swarm
It’s all just a gas and still….
I choke, I choke, I choke, I choke
I stay dizzy but the thoughts stay clear
Clear to the crystal
I can make points but none I want to remember
Somehow control my temper
I must not care, I just don’t care
Eyes roll back but still all I see is life
The love that plagues me
I can’t shut off, can’t power down
Flip my switch
Creator, I beg you
Both hands clasped
Steer me clear of this feeling
I’ll take it if it’s off the hands of someone else
Growing old – I know that I’m just being singled out
There is no balance
The lucky ones get taken
Punching bags made to suffer
Nothing we can do
I’ll fight with all the love of the Gods and still come up empty handed
I’ll rise like the Phoenix every time only to be shot down
I’ll kill and I’ll die and I’ll live
But it’ll never be good enough
Not for your riches, not for your anything
I’ll lay myself at the feet of all mercy but for what?
A few nice words when they burn me at the stake
I’m not writing this, the lurking does it for me
Guiding my hand through words chosen by my psyche
I started, never stopping, and after a few seconds the blood is already there
As for me, the one in hiding – I’m just drunk and couldn’t care less
My heart’s on my sleeve and the words just all fall from my chest
There is no meaning
Tripping over my own tongue, I fall on deaf ears
So many signs in your language
Talking to myself but too busy dreaming to heed the warnings
Not a question of what but a question of when
“if a tree falls and nobody hears it…”
The tree only falls when nobody is listening
Not a matter of time but what matters now
Too much thinking, not enough caring
Too much caring, not enough thinking
I’m looking for the middle ground
I wanna know the lay of the land
Not to keep digging holes so I can hide from shadow
Not to try and undo the great silence that I’ve done
I just want the sleep that comes without the fear of starting over
Sitting pretty spinning
Slouched on a sunset
Horse drawn buggy
Head in the cumulus
Lost in the circles
Remembering childhood
How the merry went round
Round about dusk
That was old business
Man made of horns
One good
Spears like rabbit ears
One bad
Hears what the rabbit hears
The night’s not here yet
Just enough time for a few more laps
Sitting spinning pretty
Both sides of every memory
Remembering little
Except how the merry went round
Free from falling
Ships are sinking
No land calling
What was I thinking?
On my way to the bottom
Did I want more?
Was it living?
I was on the floor
And you sailed by me
Eyes closed
Floating blindly
Currents behind me
Carried away
Happens all the time
Use the last of my strength
Grip my eyes tight
Bury myself behind my eyelids
~
Layers and shades
Exposed rib cage
Heart on my sleeve
Where does it come from?
Where does it go when it leaves?
Runs around crazy
Keeps on pecking
Keeps on ticking
Running on crazy
So many maybes
Hard to be real
I don’t like me
I don’t like hiding
Tired of the fear
Mind and heart fight over who gets to steer
I’m stuck in the middle
Between the layers and shades
~
Time is precious
And it’s all I have to offer
As long as I can remember, I have always watched any movie I can get my hands on. I liked anything that challenged me, especially movies that confused the hell out of me. Even at my youngest I can remember sneaking away to watch “R” rated movies, knowing nothing about them except for the few images and description on the box. Most of the time I was oblivious to their adult nature and usually I didn’t ever fully make sense of them until years later, in some cases – many years later. I bring this up because a lot of my particular tastes came from the oddball assortment of movies I liked as a child; the weirder the better. Often times it seems that the more original a film is or the more imagination it has, the more personal it is. Teams of writers and directors may be able to write good stories but some things will always be sacrificed when trying to please so many creative people, most often this tends to be the more imaginative personal elements. I’ve known for a while now that even as a so-called adult my tastes haven’t changed all that much, and sometimes I understand even less about a film or my interpretations will be way off – and that’s ok.
In fact, I enjoy being somewhat flustered my first time watching a film. I want to be able to keep learning from a movie the more I watch it; to be able to keep being entertained as I obsessively pick out small details I missed before. So when I wanted to make a film, I knew I wanted it to be off-the-wall and crazy and fantastic but still able to reach people, really try to make artful fantasy accessible to a more mainstream audience. I knew I couldn’t raise the type of funds needed to make an explosive, epic masterpiece of sci-fi madness so I had to really study films to figure out how to do it cheap and make it look professional. Ever since there have been films, there have been people trying to figure out how to make lavish productions on the cheap so I knew it would be possible. Starting out, I had no experience in any sort of film aspect; I was into music, mostly hip hop. I was a rapper who loved movies who wanted to make music. One of the aspects of hip-hop was when DJ’s would dig for vinyl to make their beats. While I am no DJ I still dig for music and films and from what I said in my very first article, you can probably tell that my habit of digging has invaded other aspects of my creative life. For me, new is not always the best or even the freshest, ideas do not have expiration dates, and the past is always relevant and can be utilized, studied, and learned from.
So I didn’t know about film, big deal, I didn’t even think about that. I didn’t even have that sit down moment where I was supposed to say to myself “hey, I wanna make a movie.” I was sitting doing something one day and this weird idea popped into my head. The idea was – what if a man walks into a bar he’s never been in before and the bartender says he knows him. The stranger says no and that the bartender must be mistaken but the bartender insists they have met and points to a booth. The stranger looks at the booth and sees a woman sitting. After a second or two the stranger crawls bloody into the booth, as the woman starts to speak the image fades away. The stranger, very spooked, gets up and leaves but not before the bartender says they will be meeting again. That was all I had. To me, right away, this little short didn’t say much but it was interesting and dark. I wasn’t impressed by the message but I was however impressed by the intrigue of it all. Who were these people and what was going on? It doesn’t sound like much now but it had this air of mystery to it, something sinister. I can’t explain it but it felt like something I should explore deeper. I had written it down as a short story, maybe 2 pages I think, and already I wanted to know more.
The only way to find out more was to keep writing. I didn’t know where in the story this scene had taken place or what the story was or who the characters were or anything actually important to writing a story, let alone a script, but I did it anyway. Everything I wrote down got me closer, whether it was a good idea or bad idea. I was not afraid to write stuff out and cross it off later if it didn’t work because at least I had something there. I just kept writing stuff: pages and notes and scribbles, props, costume ideas, characters, etc. I wasn’t writing the final product, the final product would be the movie, so when writing I just let it all out and then sorted through it as the really good ideas started to take form. I learned very quickly that I couldn’t force ideas into the story. I’d write them all out and 1 or 2 would stand out as making the most sense even if they weren’t what I thought to be the coolest ideas. In that regard, I knew I’d still be able to add my personal flare, whether in how it was shot or the dialogue or the music or whatever.
So I had this weird idea about a stranger at a bar and I didn’t have very much money for effects or to hire people with real skills. I didn’t even know enough people to make up what would normally be considered a “crew”. As chance would have it, at the time I had been reading a lot about psychics and mediums, Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky, the dreamscape, out of body experiences – mainly things that were existential or having to do with other dimensions, the Astral Plain which for the sake of my film became known as, the Astral Field. (The occult isn’t necessarily a pastime of mine but it happened to be talked about a lot in the volumes I had been reading in my Man, Myth, and Magic Encyclopedia set that I talked about previously.) Based on the Astral Plane, the Astral Field became a sort of alternate dimension, closely related to the center of Time, from where our reality stems from; all of our ideas come from this place. So this and what I had written somehow seemed to coincide perfectly. It sounded like it would fit and I hadn’t seen many, if any, movies based on this environment/world. To me, this meant there weren’t clichés or “movie rules” already instilled into audience’s brains so I could be weird and original and not have to break the bank trying to imitate different movie worlds.
Now, I had seen tons of low budget flicks that took me to another world, a new and original world and somehow I knew I could do the same thing. Not knowing much about special effects, well how to create them anyway, and knowing that any good costume would cost me a lot of money and might not look good on camera, I had my work cut out for me. I was also my own financer and producer. I had a few thousand dollars in the bank that was an initial investment to buy the most necessary items like the camera and the microphone. Props and everything else was bought as needed, at either a local antique mall or eBay. I had a day job as a line cook and eBay was an extremely cheap and useful source in finding specific props or costumes. Anyway, knowing that I was the financer and how limited my budget was meant probably no aliens, nothing that flies, no superpower that needs to be done perfect more than once, no beasts, no monsters, no explosions, no special make up, probably little to no gore etc… It kind of left me with an empty feeling but the more I studied, the more I found myself able to utilize already established techniques while at the same time making them seem fresh. Things really did just kind of keep falling into place and I believe that was all in constantly working at it and building the story and then whittling it down.
So how did a nobody with no money or experience and a head full of weird ideas get his film made? Well I guess you’ll have to stay tuned for Part 2 of this article, until then – enjoy the trailer for my 1st film Bad Ideas and see what all the fuss is about. This is R.W. saying, ‘if the shoe fits, wear it and run like hell!”
Trailer Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlRr2Msjh7M
Lily pads
Leap little froggies
Get on little doggies
Saddle up a break from swimming in circles
Splashing around making waves
Kicked up scuff marks on the floor of a pond
Dirt bike jumps for the snails
Dare devils of the not so deep
No judges, just beauty
No maker, just nature
Go with the flow
Push away from the floating life
Drift off sailor
Hope you get the best of days
Before it all goes belly up
Davey Jones’ locker
Earth – the ship wrecked, sunken
Waving all sorts of flags of defeat
Defiled
Defiant
Deep space coral reef
Too many pounds per square inch
Under pressure
Gauges all read normal
The water’s all running
Running its mouth
Running away
Little bits scattered
All over the floor
One day a God will clean this room
ryanwmartin 