Yet Untitled Lite 008 - A Dance With Instinct
(and another premiere!)
Hello dearest Yet Untitler, How are you?
Can see the dragonfly in the photo above? Takes a little seeing before it becomes apparent, no? I took the photo with a rangefinder camera, and using one of those required a bit of extra seeing as well.
A rangefinder makes you deliberate just that much more about what you want to focus on. The focussing square is also at the center of frame, so you have to decide your frame after you decide your focus point. In other words, your image is formed in real-time in a fantastic, simultaneous alchemy between seeing and creating.
Why am I channelling my inner Henri Cartier-Bresson at the start of this newsletter? Because I’ve been indulging in some of that seeing/creating simultaneity each week while making my weekly 2-3 minute films with my kids.
It’s been fascinating, stimulating and my insides have been doing some acrobatics! Below, I offer you a little peek into what up in my head right now.
I shot another film last weekend!
Here it is:
I’m enjoying this current groove of shooting on Sunday and then putting the film together over the week, stealing moments to do it between things.
This is what usually happens:
I go in with a film in my head. Then I encounter reality - unwilling actors, the limits of my skills and other challenges - which lead to…another version of the film in my head. This isn’t a bad thing. Ananya and Aahana - my daughters and so far recurring stars - might surprise me completely by doing some you-just-can’t-make-this-shit-up kind if stuff. The unexpected may add another layer or possibility to what I intended originally. Or it may not. But I’m thinking about it while I’m doing it. It’s thinking on my feet. It’s constant reconfiguration. It’s the rigour of process.
It’s taking a photo of a dragonfly with a rangefinder camera.
Apart from a blurry pre-visualisation of something new coming together - a mix of unexpected finds and promising accidents over and above the meat-and-potatoes stuff that was needed to make it work - there are also GAPS. This is the stuff that I know I didn’t get, blank spaces that are also things in themselves. What will the gaps yield? Will it all work? Will it not? I cannot know till I edit. The anticipation is juicy!
As a writer who has written for nearly 20 years, my instinct has been sharpened by constant use. But before it was sharpened, my instinct was also powerful in another way. Before it became a thing, it existed in an ethereal, unburdened form. It was more a force than a thing, formless, yet potent. Today, I feel it has a shape - a heft that’s reassuring because I can feel its edges - like a sword. But I feel an old feeling while making these small films. Is it the thrilling presence of ethereal, unencumbered instinct, I wonder? Whatever it is, I’m grateful for it. It’s nothing short of a dance!
A time will come when I will know more, and this will be both a burden and a treasure. As I come to know more, I will do more - bigger, (hopefully) better things. Perhaps a time may come when, for a time, I may lose sight of instinct. Will that make me fearful? If I end up fearful, perhaps you will remind me, gentle Yet Untitler, at that moment - to persevere. Among you who read this weekly whisper from me are those who have already done this a few times and will do it again. It makes me feel protected.
For now, I’m enjoying this lovely dance between unencumbered seeing and creating to the music of instinct.
I am paying attention. I don’t want to forget how it feels.
What is instinct to you? Have you made a friend of it, ever?
Tell me.
I want to know!