Yet Untitled 127 - Hunger will find a way
Featuring Prateek Arora, William Dalrymple and a Boy with a Camcorder
Dearest Yet Untitler,
I had a ‘sesh’ with my friend Prateek Arora where he tutored me in the secrets of Generative AI. Both he and I share a common urge to challenge the ‘slowness’ of filmmaking by using whatever we have at our disposal to tell stories.
The impulse is - “Why Wait?”
Years ago, I turned to drawing (working on a graphic novel rather than waiting to make a film about a story I wanted to tell). Triggered by the same impulse, Prateek more recently turned to AI (check out his amazing work here).
The sesh was both amazing and disorienting, because I found myself a neophyte once again. Level one. Game start.
If anything, it made me remember how it felt when I started out as a filmmaker. Even then - I remember holding a set of new tools in my hands - a shiny new Canon FV30 camcorder and a 17 inch Apple G4 PowerBook with FCP loaded up. Armed with these, I remember basking in the warm light of possibility. When I tried to manifest those golden possibilities (swimming like golden carp in my head) I ran into my very real limitations - my gap in skill, in exposure, in maturity, in clarity.
I remember all those feelings gathering into a ball of frustration inside me at that point. But that ball had a magnetism - from within my chest, it pulled me towards something. I did not know what it was then, but that magnetism was pulling me towards eventual proficiency.
Now again, with Midjourney, Ideogram and Luma.ai sitting before me, glimmering similarly as my old Canon and FCP-infused PowerBook way back when, I feel that same light of possibility illuminating a way forward but (aaargh) here I am standing at the maw of a gap again.
I need to level up, to learn another language.
Again.
If you ask me, this challenges an idea I have in my head: that I’ll be only building on my prowess in linear fashion for the rest of my life - only rising in a straight line; to become a better writer, a better filmmaker et al. Suddenly it feels as if the mountain I’m climbing has suddenly run out of … mountain. And I’m suddenly pawing thin air looking for my grip. In some ways, I’m a beginner again.
Begin Rant…3…2…1
Heck I don’t want that what about all the creds I’ve earned what about my “seniority” what about my stature I can feel it all slipping away what about the control I’ve painstakingly gained over my craft I don’t want to feel like a beginner life isn’t fair someone gluten intolerance and unvegetarian me so I can binge-eat on a a Big Mac to steady myself😱😱😱
That’s my poor battered ego speaking.
Let the thing have its say, so it can shut up and let the better parts of me speak.
At the same time, I think all of us are in for an emotional ride with the swift changes and disruptions the world is going through. Jihii Jolly, whose Substack was one of the first I followed speaks eloquently about her own emotional response to AI, literally breaking down the different stages of of her very real reactions ranging from terror to disbelief to excitement and curiously.
So, I documented myself letting off steam above, because I think we’ll all feel different versions of aporia in the coming (weeks, years, days?) and it’ll be important to express these feelings rather then bottling them up.
Now that my rant is out of the way, I find myself returning to the impulse that unites Prateek and me as two people who - at different stages - said ‘bollocks’ to limitations in order to tell the stories we want to now.
Even though I am daunted by a rapidly changing word where newer storytelling mediums are emerging fast, I find that the impulse - the hunger - to tell the stories I want to to tell has not left me.
If anything, it has renewed. Intensified.
Hunger will find a way
“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” is probably one of the most quoted modern dictums of the present century. Steve Jobs shared it as an imperative to a graduating Stanford batch in 2005. It’s well documented and written about, so not much more on it here, but, I feel Steve would be happy to know that I’m currently feeling both hungry and foolish.
Feeling hungry and foolish are the identifying stripes of game start/level one neophytes.
It’s worth noting that in my chronology as a storyteller, the camcorder got replaced by an iPhone at some point. Neophytes for whom the iPhone was the first instrument developed their own advanced proficiency with it in ways that I could not, but I brought with me camcorder continuity, just as those who came before me to the camcorder brought with them 16mm continuity.
The point I’m making is that even with disruptions, there’s genesis. Each of us are bringing our own uniqueness to the disruptions we encounter. As a result, each of us will progress from there in different and (I feel) interesting ways that are functions of our uniqueness. Something new in ourselves feels imminent.
In a recent talk I attended, the author William Dalrymple spoke about a particular historical disruption that is worth mentioning here. In his new book The Golden Road, Dalrymple gives a revisionist account of how India was a major player in Asia’s trade with the Roman Empire (contrary to an accepted belief that the so called “silk route” pretty much only connected China and Rome more or less bypassing India).
Dalrymple speaks about the tremendous wealth accumulated by traders of the Indian subcontinent who - with a little bit of effort - likely made huge fortunes without too much trouble. According to Dalrymple’s thesis, this arrangement came to a grinding halt with the fall of the Roman Empire.
What did the Indian traders do in the face of this disruption?
Well, Dalrymple says that they found a way forward despite it not being easy. They looked eastwards, looking to expand trade to Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia - finding clever ways to sidestep the barriers that had limited this expansion earlier.
One fascinating fact that Dalrymple relayed - it was considered sacrilegious for Brahmins to leave the confines of India by “crossing the black seas”, tantamount to losing one’s soul. The Brahmin traders and expansionists hacked this though, by commandeering the name of one of the major rivers to the east - the Mekong - by recognising it as an extension of the Ganges, any association with which neutralised all soul-losing juju altogether.
Hunger will find a way!
Suddenly, it doesn’t feel so bad thinking of myself as a neophyte standing on then precipice of a disruption. My craft, even if painstakingly built, is a means - a tool - and not the end. It is not the story itself.
My stories will find a way.
My hunger will find a way.
Yours will too. Let’s keep going.
Thanks for listening and lots of love,
V
PS. If upcoming disruptions of any kind worry you, hit me up. You are not alone!
HAHAHA you’ve been waiting to hit us with that “not pleased” photo!!