Filming Bands: Butterflies of Love

(fast-forward to the 1:30 mark if you'd like to skip Jeff Greene tuning his guitar - also we had a 2nd camera, not used in this rendition, so you see more of the wobbly repositioning that I'd typically replace with nice steady widecam angles)

So, at that point, I'm not sure if Mark (Mulcahy) was playing a show that night, but he did play a bunch of songs on a farewell tour for Miracle Legion. That Spring, there were a bunch of final shows I believe for both Butterflies of Love, who were touring on behalf of their longtime London record label finally closing its doors.

I had never seen the Butterflies of Love, although I had heard about them because I knew Scott Amore from the Daily Cafe, and they were actually a fairly popular local band in the late 1990's. Evidently they were even more famous in the U.K. for some strange reason? Maybe it was the thick accent Jeff sang "Rob a Bank" with that did it. Maybe it was due to other lines in that song, and what happened in the very early hours of the next century, just years from when "How To Know" was released.

I remember meeting Jeff Greene for the first time. It was the day that I filmed this concert, actually. He was being sort of dramatic about the fact that the venue didn't want them to bring their own beer in. Everyone sort of put up with it. Later when I spoke to him, he didn't seem very childish at all; when he calmed down, he spoke in a soothing tone, kind of like the way he sings. I remember talking to him and finding that he knew more about me than I did, right when he first met me. That's just what kind of personality he has. I remember driving back from a show later the same month where Mark played Miracle Legion songs at the Bowery Ballroom.

I've heard the studio version of this song, it's available on iTunes and many other places where you can buy music. This version however is truly my favorite. It didn't really catch my attention until when I started looking at the footage while I was editing. I listened to that song so much, I think I text messaged myself a version of just the audio so I could play it on my phone and listen on repeat. I thought a whole bunch about the words and what they meant.

I think that it's kind of a noble song, to boldly and without hesitation say that you volunteer to take on the responsibility of handling someone else's demons. I'm not sure what the rest of the words are about, I'm sure they're personal to Jeff. But the main part of the song - the idea of the song - really paints a picture of a rather inexpensive apartment in a run down town, with two people trying desperately to figure things out in a difficult situation, one in which the problems that they're facing are not self-imposed; perhaps; if I made the music video for it, that's what it would be about.

The Feeling of Being In Love

I always thought that couples who sat opposite one another at dinner were doing it all wrong. I felt that sitting alongside someone allowed both to have a clear view of what the other was seeing. And then it wouldn’t become this echo chamber where the only ones who exist in the world is each other. There must somehow exist this shared perspective in order for the world to exist.

As time wore me down, I faced the same threats; of emptiness and loneliness. I had almost given up on the idea of companionship. The very thought that I could find someone to coexist with, who would be there to listen to my day and make dinner with me, and that if we did something else it was expected but discussed – not from fear or ownership or possessiveness but purely out of respect. I had been wondering if that was possible.

I fell in love for the first time at the age of 18. I was in college at Suny Purchase, and I was taking the only art class I ever took in my entire life. It was a photography course, and I was learning how to take, print and develop standard 35 mm film. There was a girl in the class, and we got paired up on an assignment and it was then in the darkroom that I ever felt the warm touch of a loving soul. A couple weeks later we were making out on a trampoline I had assembled far into the woods of the college campus, and at that point I felt pretty sure that I was experiencing what I thought or was hoping could be the feeling of being in love.

I’ve heard it more times in my life than having heard anyone tell me “Ian, I’m in love with you.” I’ve never heard anyone say that to me in my entire life.  What I have heard, on occasion, is something to the effect of “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” and every time after months and months (sometimes years) of placing all of my trust and hope and energy into a relationhip, I find my self puzzled and perplexed as to what that means. And to some extent, why I keep hearing it from different females.

Maybe it’s because I want everything from the one that I’m with. I want more than what would be considered reasonable. And I give more than what would be considered normal. The influx of generosity and complete wide openness doesn’t always work in my favor.

I got lost on a winding road with hens and chickens and all kinds of ducks. It was the back entrance to the trolley museum, and I found myself out there trying to find myself on these dirt roads full of farm animals not too far away from my hometown. Those were decent years.

These were solitary, quiet, peaceful and placative years. It was time spent really beside myself in awe of the beauty of nature – and the solace of solitude. I spent all my afternoons hanging with the ghosts in the house, wondering when my friends would come and visit.

It happened that perhaps all of that time was worth it. But the minute I found someone to potentially share it with, it all was taken away. I guess the message was that it wasn’t mine to share. And I get that, in a way. And it was better that she knew right away that was the case, rather than to mislead her into thinking that I was in any way shape or form responsible for the place – even though I believe my actions had an impact on the outcome of the place.

Years later< I still wonder what it is that I’m looking for. There’s no way to deny it, I most certainly am. I don’t want to be alone, and the world at large seems to have the same attitude: what’s the point. As thoug the idea of finding true love is a meaningless quest or pursuit, and I don’t believe that one bit. I happen to think that we all have a place and a goal and reasons for us to be here. And I was missing that for a while.

Down the path of rail leading us quietly into the maze of repeat patterns that is New York City,at the other end of that tunnel is a little place that I call home. It’s not like anywhere else in the world, and I believe that as time goes on, it will become even more different from the rest of the world, to the point where it will not resemble any other city.

I was always hoping for something like this… I was hoping for a woman to change my perspective. Someon who I could take to this magical place that I called home, to introduce her to all of the people who mattered to me.  And it’s unrealistic to believe in this because it’s just fantasy to believe that someone would want to drop everything they were doing just to absorb every aspect of your life, and who would always know exactly what to say. And if I hadn’t experienced this in small dosages, mostly at the beginning of great but doomed to fail attachments to previous former lovers, the same ones who would say to me, “Ian I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”

There were times when I felt that the stories that I found endearing about myself, which were often tales of loss, hopeless optimism and redemption, that the message would become clear: no matter how much crazy stuff would happen to me, and regardless of the madness that I would face, I would always figure out a way to make it all work -  and that’s how I became who I am. There needed to be some level of acceptance on that level for anyone who really truly wanted to get to know me, simply because it was such a strong part of what defined me.

There were times in the past when I truly believed that everything would always work out and there were times when I was faced in situations which made me ersiously question that. And throughout many of these steps, money was certainly absent from the picture, both as a plot design and simply as a form of tension. That iw as there only to drive the plot along, at certain points, but never there to buy me a car or take me on a trip when I needed any of that; because, for years, I didn’t need anything extra.

I was happy to go about living the same existence nearly every day. I felt that in some way I would be exempt from aging if everything each day stayed exactly the same. My body wouldn’t notice that time was occurring. Of course we all know that this is not the case, and in the process there’s arguably more work to be done to fix up the place. That still doesn’t’ stop me from saying that I welcome I and would never discourage anyone sitting by him or herself on a Friday night to ditch the same old friends and go on an adventure; or go on a walk to a place you haven’t been, or take a look at something from a perspective that hasn’t been already made into a movie somehow.

I was under the belief I met her in real life, several times over. But it turns out I was only seeing her shine through different sides of people I was meeting. I wasn’t sure if this was good enough in terms of proof, because what I was looking for really amounted to a quest to find god; or some version of the perfect human being who could bring me eternal happiness who was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen in my life.

In that sense, a woman can be like a god to a man. And you really can’t help but thing there’s something of an almost worshipful quality to any truly deep and powerful romantic relationship. What makes us always wonder what the truth is, when the facts are so obvious and in our face? Why should we bring one another through these loud and impersonal arguments about nothing in particular.

To see traffic patterns in cars sand then convert it to video games has been quite a task, but well worth every bit of it. To have a place called home we could both go to, and to find that place in each other’s hearts; these were not things that I found to be impossible, because I could see that it happened fro others with loving partners whom they could trust with their lives and entrust with their secrets in hopes of trading those for happiness – I believed it was possible and not worth giving up on believing.

I could see these specific places, these little moments in time which only lasted an instant. There were nights spent lost in the freezing cold, wondering if I would ever make it home. And other times I found myself not sure where home really was. Told as a story, to most women it seemed dangerous and sketchy to know that I knew what it was like to be homeless. But to her, she’d find it to be a source of strength as it actually is, rather than a sign of my weakness.

Barcade and the Parking Meter Debacle

I was driving with Adrian Stock, filming some additional footage for his fundraiser. He had the idea to drive up to the top of East Rock and film a little bit up there and I was like, sure. It was a gorgeous fall day; the leaves were on fire and we were one more cold, rainy night away from the trees being nothing but their wintry, bare bones.

On the way back into town, I said I just wanted a ride to Willoughby's. Adrian said, "Great, i need beans," so he parked his Volvo station wagon on Temple Street and asked if I had any change. I reached into my pocket and discovered that I had a Barcade token in my pocket. So I thought to myself, F it. Let's see what happens.

I had put a nickel in there, so there were 2 minutes on the meter at that point. After the Barcade token plunked into the meter, the number rose to 40 minutes. I said to Adrian, "Holy crap, it worked! You have 40 minutes!" Then i said, "Wait, how many minutes does a quarter give?" So i put a quarter in there and the meter said 52. Barcade tokens, which are the equivalent of a quarter in value when you get them at the arcade, are wroth a dollar each when you put them in a New Haven parking meter.

I was pretty jazzed up about the news. When we got to the coffee shop, I told Gracey. I was like, "hey, just between us..." and dropped the news and handed her a token. She said, "cool we keep that on the DownLow." It then dawned on me that I had to be careful about how I shared this information, because it could potentially cause some major complications. I didn't want to be at the center of those complications because ultimately I wasn't responsible for the problem. I wanted to be on the periphery, and as my mind started putting the picture together, it became important for me to figure out how to navigate this into some kind of filmwork.

To be continued.

Old Dog

One of the more challenging things in life is imagining that the outcome of the future is one way, when in fact what actually plays out is something very different. Leaving behind those expectations, only abiding by a checklist, is about the best we can do to see fit. In film, particularly, that can be daunting because with the way I conduct my operations, I'm not given a second chance.

I've had relationships go in a direction i never thought they would go; and there have been many jobs that I've taken up where what I hoped for just simply did not turn out the way that I wanted.

Every once in a while, I do something unexpected and it turns out great. It's gotten to the point where I count on the unexpected to carry me through all of the times I didn't meet up to my own expectations, or the situation itself did not.

Carrying through that, trying or attempting to have a better plan for the future, might be what I could be better at. Every time you go through something where you're not really sure of the outcome, you practice that. And the hope is that as we get older, we get better. I'd like to simply get better without getting older, as the world continues and I remain ever-present and aware.

Tapping into that space in my head which i know is not necessarily my own space; the shared space; the social space. The parts of our mind that are not just ourselves but a combination of everything around us. We are so often conflicted by this because it's so easy to believe that all of our thoughts are our own. I often think that we are like mini-explosions; that our particles are paired with stars and photons and galaxies, and that all that we do here on earth as these creatures, these living beings, is to play out what happens in science, both molecularly and astronomically. That we are actors, essentially, acting out our lives as what we really represent are objects in space.

Above all, what we all want is to do the best we can and to live interesting lives. There have been many occasions where I might not have done the absolute best thing I could have done. On many occasions, I chose goofing off to facing the hard work. Or half-assing something which required a full ass. At the end of the day, at 35, I'm still that kid on the skateboard with the camera. Only now the stakes have changed, the equipment has gotten better, and I still haven't learned anything new in a while. On the skateboard, the kids call me Old Dog because I can't seem to learn anything new. Old dog Rusty.