The Songs In My Head

A couple of months back I started to hear song lyrics in my head and found the ability to rhyme words in a way that had always escaped me. Every time I previously tried to sit down and write songs, it felt forced. I was pretty shocked to find I was hearing them in my head so I began writing them down.

I’ve been keeping them in a folder on my laptop ever since and realised that I finally needed to get some of them off my laptop and into the world in order to let them go, to set them free. So here’s a few of the completed ones in the form of poems rather than songs:

“No Longer Here”

You threw up your walls
I could see it through your smile
Waiting for you to call
I’ll be waiting here a while

You put your arm around me
I froze, I couldn’t move
I lost myself for so long
In lies I thought were true

But now the fog is lifting
White noise is almost gone
I hope you’re happy one day
When all is said and done

I’m leaving this feeling
Before it haunts my soul
I’m bleeding this evening
One thing I can’t control
I’m leaving this feeling
Before it ends in tears
Now I’m nowhere to be found
And my heart’s no longer here

They let me fall too deep
I’m hurt, I hit the ground
You were so blind to me
You never made a sound

Risked my heart and lost a piece
No escape, no way out
I had to crash to save myself
And kill all of my doubts  

I’m leaving this feeling
Before it haunts my soul
I’m bleeding this evening
One thing I can’t control
I’m leaving this feeling
Before it ends in tears
Now I’m nowhere to be found
And my heart’s no longer here

And I lost sleep over truths unsaid
Been trying so hard, it messed up my head
Your mouth said yes, your arms said no
You shut me down, so I’m letting go

“Surrender”

Our eyes met like swords
At the walls of your heart
You sat there looking bored
Now it’s tearing me apart

Arms folded like a shield
Kept me out in the cold
Just tell me how you feel
‘Cause this is getting old

Now we’re in the trenches
But you’re not on my side
Missing our adventures
I don’t want to say goodbye

So please put down your arms
Long enough to let me in
I promise you no harm
I won’t be the same as him
Please give me a chance
I’ll be your defender
Just this once I’ll ask
So tell me you surrender

Guns raised at the ready
Not even bluffing this time
So still you’re holding steady
Afraid your heart will be mine

We’re both poised for battle
Who will win or lose
Not feeling good at all
‘Cause you get to choose

So please put down your arms
Long enough to let me in
I promise you no harm
I won’t be the same as him
Please give me a chance
I’ll be your defender
Just this once I’ll ask
So tell me you surrender

There’s no white flag
It’s nowhere to be seen
I’m not happy, I’m not sad
I’m somewhere in-between

You never gave me a chance
I’m not your heart mender
Too many times I’ve asked
It’s my turn to surrender

“Wide Open”

I should have known much better
Third party clues dragged me in
I fell down the rabbit hole
Waiting for us to begin

I was tumbling fast
No one slowed me down
Reaching for a helping hand
I’m still reaching now

They all knew my weakness
It was my Achilles heel
I feel so stupid now
For believing it was real

I was wide open like I’ve never been before
And I took your blows as they were keeping score
I was wide open and I didn’t see
All that time you weren’t into me

Falling fast and I hit the sides
Rebounding when I saw your face
Cheeks burned from tears uncried
Will I ever escape this place?

Bruised and bleeding I’m on the ground
I see truth in your eyes again
If I’d cried I would’ve drowned
Now you can’t see me as a friend

I was wide open like I’ve never been before
And I took your blows as they were keeping score
I was wide open and I didn’t see
All that time you weren’t into me

I took their inch and I ran a mile
Swept away by those words untrue
Lost in the magic of your smile
Falling for the idea of you

I was wide open like I’ve never been before
And it became something I could not ignore
I was wide open, but now I’m breaking free
I won’t linger here, some things aren’t meant to be

Four Words and a Poisoned Apple

“He likes you too”. It only takes four words, just those four words and before you know it your mind is flooded with expectation, hopes, dreams and you’re hit with feelings you never thought possible as you accumulate the courage to put yourself out there again. It’s like a fairy tale, maybe fate had our paths cross for a reason? Maybe this is that special person I hadn’t even been looking for? Then again…maybe not.

Most of us have lady friends who just want us to be happy, they mean well and they think they know what it’s like to be gay and how hard it can be to meet guys who aren’t just looking for sex. Let’s face it, the odds are already stacked against us so any help can only be a good thing, right? Well, the potential pitfalls of that mean you can sometimes fall into the trap of becoming a project and feeling like some kind of social experiment or mathematical equation: “if I put Gay X with Gay Y then we’ll get Z and everyone will live happily ever after!”. Um, yeah, but no.  

The problem is, when girls get involved everything gets way too complicated. There’s mind games, gossip and sometimes the little white lies really aren’t that little at all. Really, all you want to do is cut through the bullshit and sit down and have a conversation with the person it’s about, but then when you do manage that it’s too late. You’ve already gone too far, you’ve done and said enough to create the weirdness after acting on false information. At the time that can be incredibly embarrassing and painful, but eventually it just becomes funny and morphs into four other words instead: “What was I thinking?!”.

When it comes to attraction, I always use the Oprah method; “never allow yourself to want those who don’t want you”. Once you know someone doesn’t want you, or more importantly – they don’t even really want to know you, there’s no point wasting time trying to make them change their mind and see how awesome you are. You already know that and so do your friends. It’s like running after a moving train; eventually the platform will end and you’re not going to catch it, you’ll just fall off and end up on your face.

The disclosure of mutual attraction is a dangerous thing, it should be approached with caution. If it’s not true or the people saying it aren’t 100% sure, then it’s deadly. It’s the poisoned apple of the mind and at some point someone will act on that information and things will never be the same between those people again. It’s very hard to have a normal friendship once that revelation has been made, I wonder if even a reboot would be possible and that’s really a far more upsetting and painful thing than them not being “into you”, it will always be a lost opportunity. When you’re brave enough to make the first move in the first place, finding out you’ve been duped is a bit like being locked out of the house naked when a group of school kids are walking past laughing. When this happened to me (metaphorically speaking), I thought about it.

I thought and thought and then I asked myself, while I’m left out here naked in the cold like this, why not let everyone walk past and have a laugh too? If I do that, maybe some of them will relate to it? Maybe it’s happened to them too and they’ll start to laugh with me instead? Maybe I’ll feel better about it then? That will mean it isn’t allowed to be pointless anymore.

So, I wrote a play. It’s a play about love. It’s a play about being gay and it’s a play about all of the above. Oh yes, and now I’m speaking in rhyme. FML!

“Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can” ~ Elsa Maxwell

“Someone Like You” by Chaz Harris is on at BATS Theatre 2-11 August. Tickets are available here.

Rosemary’s Baby

 

Also published on GayNZ.com

I remember writing a blog post relating to gender identity when I was blogging for Stuff.co.nz a couple of years back, I’ve had trouble tracking down the post to refer back to it now but the horribly transphobic opinion piece by Rosemary McLeod about transgender people having babies shows just how bad things are in the world of online opinion pieces these days. I won’t link to the story just because I’m loathed to give them the traffic, but look it up if you feel the need.

When a mainstream media news website is willing to publish what is essentially hate speech and hide behind opinion and freedom of speech to justify publishing it, you begin to wonder if any of the people working there studied journalism at all. There’s this thing called ethics, you see, and I personally question the ethics of allowing a piece like that (opinion or not) to have such a public platform when there is nothing helpful, thought provoking, intelligent or funny about it.

Several times when reading it, I thought it was someone from Westboro Baptist Church, famous for their hateful and bigoted views, “won’t somebody please think of the children!!”. But no, this was a writer paid by a news organization to write opinion pieces and who presumably has an editor reading their work before publishing it.

The opinion piece has in recent years become a license to write anything, no matter how poorly researched, misinformed or offensive. It then gets defended under the guise of freedom of speech should anyone not like what they’ve read, but by that point the message is out there and the damage is done.

This may be a logical defense for someone writing on their own personal blog, but when given the power and audience reach of a mainstream media platform, writers need to think carefully about what they write and editors need to also consider what they publish. Although the opinions may not be the same as that of the news organization, it still reflects on them by association and shows they are willing to put out certain messages into the world.

There’s a common misconception that opinion pieces do not need to be thought through or measured when the truth is, it takes more reporting, not less. A news article should only continue until all reasonable sides of a story can be represented but an opinion piece is more like a debate rather than stating opinion as facts, or at least, that’s what it used to be.

Since the demise of the NZ Press Association last year, the time for objective or impartial journalism in this country feels like it is long gone. Whether you like it (or realize it), advertisers pretty much own the news now. Want to hear a good news story about a New Zealander doing well overseas? If it involves an award most people have heard of, a celebrity connection or a sensationalist angle then SOLD! That will get clicks and that will make money. As for the rest, you probably won’t hear about it.

As I tried to understand how such an ignorant, offensive and hateful opinion piece ever came to be published I was only able to come to one conclusion as to a train of thought that explained it. “That will offend everyone, that will get them sharing the link, that will get clicks and traffic and our advertisers will be happy”.

Never mind the people it refers to, never mind that it belittles the far more complicated and emotionally wrought process many go through when realizing their true gender identity. I might not be Transgender, but even I can recognize that repeatedly saying “he/she” is the equivalent of saying “faggot” in every sentence, and it’s completely unnecessary. One someone decides to be male, “he” is the correct term or, you could always call them by their name – now there’s a novel idea.

By turning someone into an ambiguous “he/she”, it serves to completely dehumanize them, and contrary to what McLeod might think, a Transgender person is just that, a person! But alas, thinking about people’s feelings doesn’t make money, does it? Hurting them sure does, but that still doesn’t make it right.

Valentine’s Day

So, I survived.

It’s “Valentine’s Day” 2012 and I decided to blog about it. I may or may not have had a few wines at this point, but let’s face it if you are single then haven’t we all?

I can usually get past this time of year wearing the disdain of the single person who is closed off from love or feeling that combined with the guarded demeanor of the person who is staunchly against commercialism. I’m well aware it’s a defense mechanism though, something I use to try and stop myself from getting hurt, but this year, for probably the first time I found myself feeling something for someone so I did force myself to send a Valentine’s gift. It was on my 2012 end-of-the-world bucket list to do so anyway, but from my gut I knew I still wanted to send it!

I’d already discovered this person had started dating someone, that’s an interesting thing to objectively analyze though, I was ready and preparing myself for the “I don’t see you that way reply” – why do I always go in expecting a guy I’m attracted to, to not to like me back? In this particular case, it was more about timing which is something that has happened to me four times before – every time I find I’m attracted to someone they are already in love with or dating someone else! Bad frickin’ timing or what! I need Doc. Brown to show up in his DeLorean and take me to the point when I can be in it to win it!

It feels a bit like being stuck in a property chain where you’re waiting for the people to sell their house so they can buy yours and so on. I find it interesting how much I suddenly relate to all the heartbreaking songs like “Someone Like You” by Adele.

However, as I stepped off the bus home tonight, walking up the zig-zag path home I suddenly couldn’t breathe and found myself struck and overcome with a feeling of overwhelming sadness. That hasn’t happened to me on a similar level since the time around when my dad died which in itself annoys me! Either I am turning into Taylor Swift or something is a little bit different this time!

I don’t know the guy that well, so it must really be the result of falling in lust with the idea of them rather than the actual person. I say lust because I do not believe you can fall in love with the idea of someone, but I do think you can fall in lust with that. The promise and idea of them is almost always more exciting and attractive than the reality, but to be honest I’d be happy lying next to someone and letting them snore as much as they like if there was just someone there for a change. I don’t really believe that is desperation though, I think it’s just human.

After a heartbreaking rejection a few years ago I’d told myself that the only way I would ever open myself up romantically again would be if I had the knowledge that the other person maybe liked me too. So, I got enough of the various signs and I did it. As it turns out I was too late after thinking I had jumped the gun and gone in too soon, but I’m always the guy that bets on the winning horse after the race has started. However, something I realised through that process and in writing a theatre piece about it was to stop believing that the winning horse was them and that it was actually me.

My mum has always told me that things happen for a reason and I am also a fatalist most of the time as well so this was a situation I found hard to decipher. Oprah has a method for this anyway “don’t allow yourself to want those who don’t want you”. I wish Oprah had a method for what I’ve been dealing with, damn her for retiring!

Have you ever had a crush on someone and how long did it take you to get over it?

It’s been a long time, baby.

Hello blogosphere, it has been a long time, a very long time! Almost three months in fact, a whole year has come and gone since I last posted, what is up with that?! It must be the end of the world or something, oh wait 2012. Have you seen that movie? Scary stuff! I sound like I have ADHD, like that guy from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. In actual fact I am just tired and unwilling to go to sleep yet. Did I mention I haven’t blogged in ages? Right, yeah….

I come with reasons aplenty! Since the end of August last year, myself and my fellow Producer Eleanor Cooke were dealing with the bitter news that our fabulous fantasy short film about bullying and domestic violence had been shunned by funding bodies, although we expected that. Never mind, me being me, I had already decided the moment I stopped writing the script that I had a film in my head and it was not going to leave me alone until words were spoken, footage was shot and four days of sleepless nights had been had by all. It was time to make another short film.

Since then, Eleanor and I have been knocking on every door we could think of, using a global crowdfunding platform through which we raised around $1500NZD towards the film’s budget and have raised money from several other avenues. In the last month, we have really seen much more momentum and raised around 40% of the amount we need to shoot the film in April.

“Broken Glass” is my first foray into the world of fantasy and follows a young boy who is being bullied at school and has an abusive father at home. One day when playing alone in the woods, he encounters a mysterious creature that will change his life forever.

The film has gained the endorsement of two major organisations in the family violence sector; Shine who are NZ’s largest domestic abuse charity organisation and Jigsaw, a network of 42 family and child protection services. With their support, we are hoping that we can raise enough to get the important issue of family violence on screen in the context of a modern day fairy tale.

Meanwhile, in amongst all the excitement of planning to make this short film I have also been developing a feature film script called “The Glassmaker” which is the intended spin-off project that the short film will serve as a kind of origin story or prequel to. I’m currently in a race against time to get that feature script into a sharp and focused enough shape before we shoot the short so that they can both feel like two pieces of the same puzzle, so to speak. So, as you can see, I have been rather busy! However, I am hoping to be able to blog a little more frequently now that we seem to be on course and bringing you updates on it. I might even have time to blog about some other things too, much has been happening in the world, have you seen Hillary Clinton’s 30 minute speech to the UN about LGBT rights? If not, go forth and seek it out. It was full of goosebumps and hurrah’s.

We are now $4000 away from our funding goal of what we need to get the film in the can, you can find out more about it at www.brokenglassfilm.wordpress.com or see our teaser trailer here:

Wellywood or What?

Now the finalists have been announced, here is the entry that I put into the competition. It didn’t make the final voting stages but I did win a pair of Sevens tickets for it so all is not lost

Broken Glass, Not Broken Dreams

I know I’ve been AWOL from this blog lately as I’ve been working very hard on getting my next short film project off the ground.

“Broken Glass” is about 11 year old Max Petersen who is being bullied at school and has an abusive father at home. One day when playing alone in the woods, he encounters a mysterious creature that changes his life forever.

In July, we were busy putting together an application for the New Zealand Film Commission’s funding scheme Fresh Shorts but unfortunately didn’t even make it to the shortlist. Not getting the money was something I’d prepared myself for and possibly in a cynical form of self-protection, I had half expected it.

However, that didn’t soften the blow from how disrespected I felt when hearing the news through a friend on Facebook, we didn’t receive an official notification about it until a week after the shortlist was announced and I wasn’t the only one that happened to either. Having entered Sundance a few years ago with my short drama “The Shoe Box”, even with the thousands of entries they get I still got told we hadn’t made the cut before they announced the lineup. Oh well, let’s move on, shall we?

So, there I was, sitting at work one morning after hearing this and wanting to just go home and hide under my duvet for the rest of the day. I sat there wondering how we were going to get this film made since I can no longer afford to keep self-funding these things. I mean, there’s only so much debt and begging people for favours a person can handle before you wonder if you should just give up, but I often get into arguments with myself about that so I don’t consider it worth thinking about often. What else am I going to do? Giving up on filmmaking means giving up on life.

A couple of people I know make a habit of being professional applicants for funding grants and just give up on a project if they don’t get the money. Personally, I think a project is kind of doomed if it comes from a place of, “I’ll only do this if we get the money”. At least, that’s not really the way I personally like to work. Even feature projects that I ve worked on developing that I know are strong commercially are films I want to make and have spent a lot of time on without being paid because I have a passion for the concept, theme, the movie I see playing in my head or something about the characters I’ve created. It takes money to make a feature film, but whether or not there is money available isn’t what decides the time I spend on developing it.

This film came into being on the night of June 12th 2011 and it just happened to be a month prior to a funding deadline so we applied. But when I wrote it, there was a short film stuck in my head that I had to get out onto paper. By the time that first draft was over in the early hours of June 13th, I’d already put it out to the universe and told myself; “I am going to make this film”. As I sit here four months later, I still don’t know how we are going to find the money or get the film made, I just know that we are going to do it…why? Because we must.

So, I decided to take matters into my own hands because, feel free to call me crazy here, but I thought we had a pretty rockin’ script and so did the LA based script editors I’d been developing it with. Thankfully, I must have done something right because after approaching a few organisations who work in the domestic violence sector, an organisation called Shine, who are New Zealand’s largest domestic abuse organisation registered as a charity, gave us their endorsement from reading the script.

Given the choice between money or the approval of an organisation representing the sector for the subject matter your film portrays, I think I prefer the latter. It’s fair to say my faith had been wavering a little, all kinds of self-doubt had started to creep in and my dad’s favourite reminder to me has been starting to feel like a broken record, “remember, overnight successes take ten years to happen”. Well, I started as a runner on a feature film in 2000 and now even my friends have started telling me that I’m due a break! Universe, are you listening? Please take note, thanks muchly

I’m not sitting around waiting for things to fall in my lap though, we’ve launched a funding contributions page on RocketHub; a crowdfunding platform like KickStarter but global. We also put out a press release about the project the other week which didn’t get much media traction but it was always a long shot. We’ve certainly found so far that many companies appear scared to sponsor or support a film addressing domestic violence and that isn’t that surprising given how prevalent it is; a third of New Zealand women have experienced physical violence from a partner within the last ten years.

A few people who have read the script for “Broken Glass” have said it feels closest to the kind of films they see me making and I’d agree with that. Doing the drama short a few years ago was a very personal way to exorcise the loss of my dad, get some practice and do something serious. The web series was to try a more agile, fast-paced/loose style of filmmaking developing my skills of working with improvisation and comedy. However, I’d say that this time it’s getting serious, this time this film has me written all over it. It’s a film that has something to say and gets straight to the point but through the fusion and contrasting elements of gritty realism and ethereal childhood fantasy/imagination.

I realised recently that all the projects I’ve created to date have some kind of fantasy element to them, “The Shoe Box” might have been a family drama but there was a slight magical quality associated with items that had the power to invoke fond memories of someone no longer with us. Even “101 Dates” which was an online dating comedy was never meant to be grounded in reality, it almost exists in its own outrageous alternate reality in fact.

When I look back at the major influences on me in terms of my career aspirations, it was a film that made me believe there was an island with dinosaurs on it that made me want to be a filmmaker. It was an epic fantasy quest about dwarves, elves, wizards and hobbits trying to destroy a powerful ring that made me move to the other side of the world in search of a place where making that kind of film was possible. It was a film about the loss  of a parent disguised in the form of a monster movie involving a group of kids making a zombie film on their Super 8 camera that made me write a script combining a young boy’s harsh reality contrasted with an experience of otherworldly fantasy.

What those films all have in common is imagination and the suspension of disbelief. They are films about something or a story that are not of this world and yet they are grounded enough in reality with universal themes that everyone can relate to. Therefore, we believe we are really looking at a living dinosaur even though we know that’s impossible, we believe we are really seeing a wizard cast a spell and that we are really seeing an alien creature stalking the residents of a small town.

At the end of the day, all I want to do is make people believe in and care about things that they secretly know are not really there. It doesn’t matter if that comes in the form of a magical dragon they can’t see or just enjoying the company of a group of characters they can relate to and believe in. It takes a real-life wizard to achieve the manifestation of belief in others and ultimately, I just want to make magic for a living.