Creative Process: Unfinished Film

I once knew a man who would have these creative ideas, maybe arising from the tiny hash pipe, but he never seemed interested in giving them form. We’ve all been there. Some of the best times are sitting around the dinner table inventing ridiculous things that just live on as evaporative clouds of thought. Anyway, this man thought of a short film, with a different person doing a different yoga pose and telling their story. A woman in Tree Pose, balanced on one leg, arms and hands reaching for the sky. Maybe her story would be the tenuousness of being a foreigner like him, living in America for years, but always intending to go home. A neither here nor there state that’s hard to inhabit for long.

An old man in Warrior II pose, his sight fixed beyond the forward arm’s fingertips on mending the bonds with his son before it would be too late. The other arm reaching back with its open palm letting go of the already forgotten argument from long ago. With strong legs, the front one bent at the knee, the back one rooted and straight, the body focused forward.

But structure, he wanted some structure, a frame rather than random yoga poses, so it would be the classic flow of the Sun Salutation, the linked series of movements that heat up the body and are endlessly repeated in yoga classes across the country, the bane of people with shoulder and knee issues.

I take this evanescent idea and carry it further in my imagination. The film begins with a Sun Salutation cut together to make a smooth flow moving from one character to the next, a preview of the people we will meet. Then we settle in with the first character, a tall reedy Black woman with long locks, Eve. No, let her be Lilith untamed, the true first woman. She stands in Tadasana, Mountain Pose, lifting up her toes and planting them wide, her palms pressed together at the heart. Pilgrims are called to her as she makes this magnetic pole. Effortless, or so Lilith makes it seem, it takes everything for her to gather herself, show up, be still out in the open, remain grounded and ready. In voiceover, she talks about important people and opportunities coming to her when she lives as Mountain and says, “I am here.”

The second character is Cristos, a large bellied Greek man of grace, sweeping his arms up and folding himself forward like a jackknife in Uttanasana. His hands rest for a moment on the floor, touching earth in reverence. His story is that of the gardener and cook. He rises slightly, places hands on shins, and with a flat back, looks up. It is just like when he is in the kitchen, pausing to visually check in on those he feeds, taking in their sighs of delight and louder exclamations of appreciation. Cristos folds back down, rests his hands on earth again, and goes back to preparing the next dish.

And so it goes, from a Thai Puerto Rican Welsh Irish child jumping or stepping back into Plank, doing this for his friend with cancer, how he wants to be strong for them. A young veteran with a near bionic left leg lowers herself into Four-Limbed Staff and then down to the ground, explaining her new definition of wholeness. A very old White woman telling of her hippie midwife days as she rises into Upward Facing Dog. Lowering down prone and moving into Downward Dog, an American of Korean descent adopted by Jewish lesbians tries to capture the intense feelings of meeting her birth mother. A young dad who learned yoga at the rez health center jumps forward and lands in the jack knife of Uttanasana, remembering being on the diving team while studying social work. Lifting up partway with straight back, hands on shins, is the sculptor who could form everything well but his marriage. He folds into Uttanasana, trying to hide the threatening tears. A teen facing down anorexia rises with sweeping spindly arms all the way up and back to Mountain, her hands hanging down, turned open by her sides. She tries to gather the strength of the land, which is full and abundant and fleshy.

We see everyone now, all these bodies with their stories, lying down on their mats arranged like spokes in a wheel, heads toward the center. This could be an aerial shot. A pregnant Chicana in Corpse Pose whispers of all the ways her body is no longer just hers. An old man, perhaps the one from the original Warrior II pose idea, turns to fetal position on his right side, sharing his first memory of sweetness holding his infant son.

Now all the characters rise to sitting in a circle facing towards each other, gathering shawls around their shoulders. They glance at each other with soft eyes, then breathing in and breathing out in a hoop, the simple meditation led by a refugee child whose life is still filled with dire uncertainty, whose voice is clear as a bell. There is a final blessing or prayer, maybe Sanskrit chanting, voiced by all. This is played over a sequence of each character’s face, eyes closed, then open, until we have really seen all of these humans.

Surely someone has made this film already.

The writer Liz Gilbert talks about ideas floating around, not caring who executes them, just that someone does. Or at least one person. She had an idea for characters with a plot, a novel she couldn’t get to right away. Later she spoke with her friend Ann Patchett and discovered they both had the same basic story idea, but that Ann was already writing it, what turned out to be the stunning State of Wonder. Now instead of feeling cheated that ‘her’ idea was stolen by her friend, Liz realized that time and tide bring an idea to the most viable creator at the moment. Now she could or anyone could also start with the same bones, but would make an entirely different creature. But she was already onto some other project that she had been tapped to bring to fruition.

So even if someone has made this film I’m writing about, at least this version lives on in these pixels, not just my imagination. “There are stories in the air as thick as birds around me,” wrote a man named Brian Doyle. Let’s feed the stories with our time and whatever material is at hand.