Being sober is like being sick and waiting to get better but you never do. You just start leveling your expectations of things that used to excite you. At the mention of something that before could have at least created a fantasy of interest you quickly readjust and remember almost everything is dismal and grey and it is so now without the taste and feeling. Last night I went over to my friend's place. A couple who have an apartment in Richmond that I can drive to. I used to take the skytrain. I refer to the couple as my film friends. Sometimes I go as far as to say they are my only “film friends” in Vancouver. Because every other space where maybe I would make “film friends” is some whacky half-collective of community nothingness or hyper-industry people who would make me pay to join the club. And I have no money. I spent all of my “money”, which was just an extended limit on my fancy business credit card I got when I was 21. I got the card because I needed to “own” a “company” to apply for this Canadian arts grant, that, funny enough, I received. So I spent all my “money” on this movie I made with my best friend. The whole thing felt parallel to a life we had lived as teenagers and then one we were creating right out of thin air. We hung around in that space for a couple of weeks in our hometowns and dragged four other boys along with us to help. We paid them in cooked meals and 24 packs and long drives and hard stares. One of them I think we actually paid in money, or someone did. We spent the last of the shoot in this trailer in the micro-small town I grew up in. The trailer was directly across from the mountain my soul died on and also my old piano teacher's house.
(Sayward, our final night filming)
My best friend and I called this movie “Drinking and Driving”. It makes me laugh talking about how we started and finished it. Sometimes I get embarrassed about the title in front of older people though. It makes my cheeks go red and I feel like everyone can see through me. One night we bought the boys red wine as a present and as dessert. We had screwed up some scheduling that day and two of them had to wait around at the lake on a cloudy day with no cell service. The wine was the least we could do. My best friend and I probably drank most of it anyway. We sat the boys at the table and talked power dynamics and whether it was okay to masturbate to people's photos on Instagram. I think we settled on, it was okay, as long as you didn’t tell anyone. A tree falls and no one hears it, fucking the dead cat, and so on.
My film friends showed me their strange movie they made for a festival in the UK. I guess it inspired me to write some things down.
Every day I try to convince myself to go for a walk like I was doing when I was in Australia. Everyone said going there would be good for me and then it was? I didn't go because it would be good for me. I went because a director who inspires me asked me to be there for her movie, and she gave me a part. Memorizing lines is funny, like a real job, like homework. My days on set were spent laughing, gossiping and holding my iced coffee with my robe on. Questioning things and being pushed in different directions. My days off I took the bus to the hills. I called everyone back home who would pick up. I stared into the hot grainy valley and wondered how I had gotten there in the first place. I saw unwound again, the second time in one month. The music was so loud this time my ears rang for two days but I went to sleep that night happy.
(Adelaide, on my first real day off)
I told my best friend who made the drinking and driving movie with me about how my sobriety felt like a sickness and she said that was good. She reminded me that we have always liked being sick.
My dreams lately all take place in the same world, some of them feel like they mean something and the rest fade away. Bike rides down the highway. Summer and driving in my mom's car on the way to something my mom had to do. I was guided then, maybe I want to be guided now.
(Vancouver, the other night)
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