[This was written when I was, I guess, 24, thereabouts. Again, this was never previously posted. That the same questions are still being asked today meant that I had not progressed beyond this phase.]
Back when I was small, my mind was simpler – I knew things and was sure of it. Subconsciously, I think what I craved to do was to know enough about the world to anticipate things – before people even knew them. To know before someone would do something, from the mundane stuff (how long it takes for that girl in the corner to finish her meal) to the dramatic (when someone would die).
Or, to know before a disaster happens; e.g. I was always proud to know that when one sees the waters on a beach recede and recede and recede and don't return – run.
Consequently, I was constantly learning things. I wouldn't say I was curious, I'm not one of those fucking annoying kids who ask "why?" all the time. No, I just read. I read encyclopaedia in the toilet. For fun. (Probably since I was six.) Which brings me to the next thing that I know – I was smarter and more knowledgeable than most other kids. And I was good at school. I was superior.
I remember at some point when I was twelve, I woke up one day feeling troubled. Meaning I felt severely sad and cried but didn't know why. My mom said then that it was stress - I didn't know what that word meant then and didn't recognise it. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. What I do know is that since then life has appeared to be complicated, not the way I want it most of the time, troublesome, often uninteresting = often unexciting, difficult. I was usually near the top of the class throughout my school years, but I arrived at university and got my first poor results in an exam; that gradually revealed itself to be a persistent phenomenon, and not temporary as I had assumed it would be. It will not go away, it is – I will always get poorer results than when I was young.
Somehow, by remaining in the status quo, my outcomes have changed.
My friends would say stuff like "university is different from primary school" or something similar; i.e. I have stayed static for too long. Since those university days, I have been concerned – jealous – about the fact that my friends knew stuff I don't. A lot of stuff, it seems. I stayed in denial for as long as I could, but now it seems that by denying it for so long, I have lost something.
Something I had in childhood. Something abstract and not easily articulated.
For it has to be something that I lost that made it impossible for me to write nowadays.
Writing stories used to be so easy. I would see a connection between two completely unrelated things - UFOs and Titanic, being unlucky and ESP, economics and astronomy, etc.
I came back to the question today – why do I want to be a filmmaker?
Simple. To make films.
Why make films?
To tell stories.
Why tell stories in films? Why not novels or songs or plays?
Because films are more compelling and engaging, more absorbing than any other forms of storytelling. While there have been occasions when songs or books hold me in an inescapable trance for hours or days, films do it far more often, and in the most intense experiences are more intense than the other storytelling forms.
Why tell stories?
Pause.
I don't know. That's where the line of questioning ends.
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