On our way....again!

So here we go again, packing our bags and moving on back down to LA after a long stint in Portland since early September. While waiting for our visas to come through we moved up here to stay with Aleigh's mom where we continued to work on the project, raise money and enjoy the laid back life of Portland. Since we subletted our little place in Val Verde in June, we have moved a record breaking 6 times in the last 5 months. In attempt to save money and devote ourselves working full time on the project, we opted for the nomadic life of rent-free living at the cost of a permanent home. Pictured here is Sage hard at work at various places--during his waking hours he probably spends 98% of it staring into the glow of his screen, connecting to digital worlds and beyond. We will soon be in real life with our Cuban digital friends and all this will finally be a reality.
-aleigh

Happy Birthday Yasef!

So on the westcoast it's still Yasef's birthday. Perhaps he is still celebrating. He wrote to me that he had dinner plans with friends after a full day of working on our project. Vegetarian dinner plans. Sounds birthday sexy, right?
Food. It was a big relief when I learned before I even arrived that Yasef primarily eats vegetarian food too. (Agnieska not a big fan of vegetables-Agnieska and I differ often in our taste in food, although ice cream...)
In the past few years I've begun to eat fish and fish was a big staple in my diet in Cuba. Day 1, Laura had arranged for a delicious lobster dinner for her, Yasef, Agnieska and I. First time I ate lobster in my life. And, yes, I liked it. Oh, and I'll just say now, I love plantains! (And I have for a while, not the first time I ate those but had to give a little !!)
I took this photo of Yasef that first night, before dinner, just after Agnieska arrived at Laura's, a few hours after I landed. I love the colors of Laura's living room, she decorated it to compliment an enchanting painting that hangs on the wall, just to the right-a soft facial profile of a woman adorned with a few flowers, petals. This photo touches on the "magic hour" time of day. A time that we hope to figure prominently in the story and filming. During the magic hour everything in the world glows with a liquid radiance, like it could melt and fly at the same time. A truer skin, than what is exposed, worn on objects and living things during most of the rest of the day. The magic hour highlights a rich, stirring beauty; a welcomed path to mingle curiosity, passion and dreamy hope.
Many more stories to be shared, still only a beginning in the land of blog and CFA/EL and on and on. Happy 32 Yasef!

I begin to blog...

So. I’m going to dive into this blog and periodically share some of my musings working on The Closest Farthest Away/Entrañable Lejanía. The photo above is of Agnieska- my partner in crime on the writing scene (just in case you haven’t watched the video interviews yet.) We could not stop laughing taking this photo. Days when it wasn't raining or too sunny (it was August, so blaring hot sun) or there weren't some kind of renovations being done outside (a bathroom off of the patio got new tiles and a new toilet.) we’d eat (or take a break and Agnieska would smoke) on Laura’s patio. We saw these legs on Day 1, and every so often these legs would have traveled about from bench to chair to rocking chair. Sometimes we'd move them, sometimes we'd sit with them. We were always entertained by them. And one day Agnieska wore this white ensemble and came up with the idea for a photo op. Of course a different angle may have concealed the trick, but we were amused nonetheless.
This was during the first few days, we were figuring out characters and discovering plot points for the script and scenes set in Cuba, making them more specific. I've taken more photos that I will share from time to time, and always after a trip, one wishes she'd taken more. But my fingers were usually focused on my keyboard and not on whether or not I'd taken pictures that day. And when Laura and Yasef brought the camera around, I could get incredibly shy. And when it was as hot as it was, you don't really need a zillion sweaty pictures.
But Agnieska and I hope for more adventures, and yes, more opportunities for her and I to collaborate on future projects.
Today (October 2) Agnieska emailed that she is going to now begin work on the v4 Spanish translation - in addition to talking with the rest of the team, she and I have continued to send each other scenes and notes, going through another few drafts since the time we worked in person together. The script continues to tighten, but as we bring more realistic scenes into the mix, and crafted patterns within the sequences of time, we’ve wanted to keep a sense of our jumping off points, of a kind of dreamlike magic. Underneath all our writing and digging into the who, what, where, when, why and how is a whimsy that is captured in this photo.
-Joy