It's celebrity time, or my version of it at least, as I put the opening touches onto the new photo movie coming from the Photography Channel. The working title is "Anxious Moments," and the movie details my existential worries despite the beauties and opportunities of my life. Time ticks to pieces, and I drip as a useless counterweight from the hands of my expiring clock. No comedy, unfortunately, just an onrushing end. Drives me crazy, so I will say so. This gallery is a series of shots of Danny Bikko (Brendan Sheelagh Bikko, to be concise) used in a segment of the movie that is now almost completely edited. More links to come when there is video to watch.

Back from Mexico in two pieces.

The me I am and the me I will become, already opposed.

A TV show called "My Own Private America" produced by Sandie Black and me and Ingo Juliusson is ready to edit. Veronica, where are you? And my pictures of the aurora borealis are the lead feature in Dave Snider's TV pilot "Time Frame" produced by the Photography Channel. And Will Rokos and I slowly come to agreement on a script and strategy to make a movie for Cannes which might, unbelievably, be about vampires.

But now is now, and coming back wounded and scarred from Mexico after tripping there with Maya Nelson is the primary story I have to speak. Almost as if it's the only language I know. The words and poetry are hung up in negotiations, held hostage to ambition and greed and youth. I would shoot myself except there is too much to do. And I am smiling widely as I write this, eating sushi on 9th Avenue, with the Sun brilliant outside. For more Maya, visit her website preview at Wolf's Daughter, here.

Just back from Malibu and a great visit with old pals in a gorgeous movie location hacienda above the Pacific, and in tow is a panther without a leash, Maya Nelson, arctic model. We drove the 101 over the hills to the ocean, she at at the wheel, and me feeding her intensely complicated lines that I want her to do in English and Icelandic. She's feverish, coming down with something, and I think I should give her a break and let her rest, but this sort  grueling ordeal is part of becoming an actor or a performer: You simply do not have the choice of when to accept a break when it knocks on your door. And this is definitely Maya's break, on a small Seanie Blue scale, since the images and scenes have evolved enormously since we met three months ago, and her confidence has a nuclear bloom to it. She is not scared of the lines or ideas and the work involved, and punishes herself for the slightest mistake or mispronounciation. Fine with me, since I no longer bother to give her much instruction when we shoot pictures, since she has become so adept at anticipating what movements I need. We have shot 7200 pictures in one week, not enough video, and discussed the performance impulse until we were ready to kill one another. We leave Hollywood tomorrow for New York, and have critical questions on our horizons. What are we actually making? The birth of a model or actor? A movie? A book? And why?

There is no applause as we kill a possibility on the phone, me among buildings, and she in the Arctic. I wanted to travel the world capturing the chrysallis of a girl transforming herself into a woman, from sensual thrill into a sexual weapon built to kill. But to kill who? Me, of course, as I watched her change, from the streets of Katmandu to the alleyways of Hollywood. Because how could I convey the joy of watching this animal change without falling in thrall myself? I hoped she would break my heart, shatter me to pieces, when the last day of this effort arrived, and she walked away from me and my cameras without a glance backward, into a future I predicted she would have, and instead . . . I am disappointed. Angry at her casual and lazy indifference to my grand schemes. Why did I bother? She never could put her head into this game of mine, because she's not interested in being anything but a girl, even if she liked the idea of the travel and the pictures and acting and glamour. It would be better, this sense of gloom I am under now, if there was pain I could admit instead of my annoyance. I'm just pissed off, my time wasted, and the movies and art I hoped would result seem like nothing more than silly shadows thrown by a young girl over the blueprints of a silly old fool, less the architect of beauty and drama than he thinks. And this is the worst pain of all, to know I have fooled myself, making silk out of leather, even if this is a common drama for men who would be artists. Early fools day.

She is listening intently to what I have to say about how we will shoot and how she will move. She doesn't blink, and she sits on the edge of the chair, trying to remember everything because there is to much to do and too little time, but she knows me well enough not to hope for anything different. Her cellphone rings, and she holds up a finger, hang on, Sean. Sure, says me. She reaches for the phone and does not check to see who is calling before she turns it off. She is looking at me again, eyebrow arched. This is why everyone loves to work with her. Hollywood is full of shooters and producers who complain about their models and actors staying in touch or conducting business on the set. I shake her hand. She asks what for, and I tell her it's to balance all the times I was urged to kick models or actors in the butt when they checked their phones to see who called. The interruptions kill momentum, but the actors hardly care. It's all about them. The Raindancer laughs. No, Blue, it's always about you, that's why I'm here. It is so easy to work, suddenly, and we smile like puppies through the first 300 shots.

Dave Snider from the Photography Channel calls and wants to put togther a piece on my aurora borealis photography. I laugh out loud, thinking this is a joke. PC has vids of Steve McCurry and David Alan Harvey and that ilk discussing their work, and I'm going to be hung with them? This is a serious proposition, I soon realise, since there are only three dozen vids up on PC at any one time, and mine might be the featured video for a month. Head reeling, I track down the pictures David needs. Here's a short preview.

My plans change for a third time in two weeks, and I take advantage of a strange confluence of activities to remain in Reykjavik. There is too much going on to relate, but the movies or the possibility of a movie crops up again, in many ways. The country is about to plunge into a very anxious period, of several years, perhaps, and I can just sense that creativity is a terrible gamble at the moment. Art that is not practical, in general, attracts a sturdy Scandinavian scorn, in my biased opinion, and I am hopelessly invested in the artistic impulse. So I wander around the city and visit my friends with an open desire to express what I see as a piece of art. No problem. Except I wander into a piece of art in the form of a young model named Maya Nelson Wolfsdottir, who was born on a farm and has "the architecture of dreams in her face, and the athletics of escape in her limbs," as I have just written her. I start to channel all sorts of expressions through her, with photographs and then video, but let me just relate one small sequence that has left me in the role of both James Mason and Peter Sellers in Kubrick's luminous 'Lolita': There is an accountant in one small office on an abandoned floor in my building, and he listens to Beethoven or to his menopausal wife sobbing on his cellphone, nurses his badly swollen prostrate, and comes to his door whenever he hears us galloping through the hall. He is alone, but unable to admit to being lonely. And Maya Nelson is trying to translate some lines of mine into Icelandic when she runs into a problem with:

" . . . pheromones are leaking from my eyebrows . . ."

In a flash she is out the door with the script and knocking on the accountant's office, where she asks him for the proper words for 'leaking' or 'sweating,' and of course reads him the entire line. She sees him looking at her magenta bra in open-mouthed astonishment, thinks for a moment, and then devastates him by saying, "I don't need help translating pheromones or eyebrow, just want to know what you think about the word 'sweating' versus 'leaking,' since Blue wrote 'leaking' but I think 'sweating' is better." He has not recovered since this encounter, and nor have I, and the architect and I stand in the hallway together linked by this private humor of sexual semantics. He is shaken by the bra and her long neck, I am sure, but for me the shock is more sentimental than sensual, since I am realising that she has outgrown 'Lolita' -- she is more woman than girl, I must admit -- while I have not.

There is a movie here. Could be made in a week. And this is just one of many possibilities. But I have better things to do and so does she, we remind each other, like parrots. Is the idea good enough to transport beyond her presence? This is the test for me.

I am in the Zocalo, sitting at a table at one of the cafes lining the square. I am unbelievably pissed off about being in Oaxaca. I hadn't wanted to come, but a friend badgered me into the trip to take pictures during Oaxaca's famous celebrations of El Dia de los Muertos. The trip will cost me two thousand bucks, and I am doubting that I will be able to sink as I wish to into local society; I am simply part of a touristy maelstrom taking the images and memories out of Mexico without caring a whit about the context and complexes of the country's troubles and distinctions. Everyone wants a picture of the costumes and masks on Halloween night, or of the candles flickering in the cemeteries as families gather overnight to welcome back the spirits of the dead, and I am gritting my tteth at the prospects of eight days in the wrong place, surrounded by tourists and accosted by locals who wish to sell me junk for whatever cash I can spare. Worse, the novel I've been working on every day for two months comes to a shuddering stop: the only thing I can add is a flourish I write on the airplane flying down. I cannot believe I am here. Agreeing to come and unable to tell a friend "No" when I needed to will cost me dearly, I am thinking, as I sit at my table in the zocalo.

And then the waiter is there, wondering what I would like. It's not his fault. So I smile and order a juice and fruit. And I ask him his name. He asks if I am in town for the celebration, and I groan. No, man, I say, I've come to mexico for the only reason I would ever come to Mexico, for the magic. The waiter smiles and says: "If you've come for magic, you've come at the right time." He leaves to fetch my order. I am suffused with hope, suddenly, that something magical is bound to happen. I am in Mexico. Magic cannot be very far away.

My mother dies with grace and haste, surprising everyone who thought they knew her. We'd quarreled, as families do, and she became the second parent of mine who I rejected on the way to becoming the zombie I am. I got to my parents' bedsides just before they died, but hardly in any way to say "Sorry I am such an asshole, but I have better things to do," for which I am terribly sorry to admit neither would have felt much pride. They weren't wired to understand that art is a hook you keep swallowing and keep hunting, regardless of the menu the world insists on putting in front of you. I have always known what I wanted, and my parents never had a clue about what they wanted except to say it wasn't what they had; like lobsters they kept looking for the next comfy cranny; like a shark I cannot stop swimming, eating even my family and friends if it means I can keep my dreams alive. There will be a way of marking me as this kind of animal in the future, just as the scientists have announced they've found the Beta male gene, the DNA that makes men willing to sit in one place and grow a brood as their exit strategy. I am a mutant, I am afraid to say, unwilling to accept responsibility or care for property, and hopelessly addicted to the next idea that flirts with my imagination. I want to obey every impulse to create, every instinct to cheat death by saying, "Look at what I made," so I can keep making my own little world, so I can keep living the life I choose.

Thanks for the condolences and concerns about my sudden marooning in the present. I suppose my mother was like a spaceship crashed by the lake or on top of the hill, and represented some sort of escape or rewinding of my history, but to tell the truth I've never itched to go back, and if obliteration and heartbreak lie ahead as well as adventure and creativity, well, that's the price I'm willing to pay, even if it means I have to steal from the people who love me most.

Again, thanks for the condolences, but I don't speak that language: Tell me what you're up to, what you're doing, where you're going, and what it means to you if you don't get there. These are the stories I need to hear.

Been scratching at literary pebbles, and got the urge to roll a rock of images onto the screen. This video took a few hours to put together, initially as an offshoot of something similar I was working on for the photo collective 15x100. This video would probably hasten my separation from that cool group, too. But the video would get me going in a very interesting (and necessary) direction . . .

test for God Died in Hiroshima from seanie blue on Vimeo.

Start this month with a bang. Start where?

You do stuff and it comes back to haunt you or vaunt you, and it feels nice to get a note from designer Jyl Freeman in Hollywood with news that her short movie is being considered by the Getty Museum to be part of their new frontiers video-makers, and what do you know but that I have a small role as the meat worshipper in scenes with the ravishing Rebecca Davis on the beach at Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Movie shot two years ago. Chek the vid, and give it your vote! 

The night I come back I find myself filming a scene involving my BadTV partner Sandie Black and the poet Roland Varity and a bowling ball. I am reluctant, pregnant with my own plans and poetry, and I get yelled at and challenged and then concentrate long enough to get out of the shoot. In the Bank of America two days later I am making a deposit and I hear the poet's voice. I look at the plasma display, and CNN has picked up our parody of Hillary throwing bowling balls at Obama, played by the poet Verity, and I am laughing at this incongruent moment, because I hate CNN and the plasma pollution in the lobby every time I go to the bank. My footage will decorate the trash on CNN for the next 12 hours, and it feels good to swim up into the mainstream this way except that every time I see the footage, I think: 

This is the principal problem with living in the United States; you are always screeched to buy, pushed to purchase, fooled into spending.

I clench my teeth in airports when I see the baggage carts locked into a dispenser, available for a dollar to cart your bags 100 yards to the exit. I bought a compact flash card, not even half the size of a credit card, and it came in formidable plastic packaging the size of a book; we had a piece on the Tonight Show a few weeks ago, and I told the producer Leno should be given four products from Best Buy or Circuit City and try to open them with scissors or a sledgehammer. That would be dark comedy.

-------------------------

Anyway, you can see the CNN clip, where Sandie as Hillary and Varity as Obama appear about halfway through. Hilarious. BadTV is f------ with society!

The finca up in the mountains
has mangos, strawberris as big as your fist,
coffee, sweet sweet onions, tomatoes
(local tribe is called Tomatoyo)
papayas, some kind of bread apple, cacao, lemon, lime, guayaba, mandarin, orange,
grapefruit, and apricots, all on Pedro´s farm,
which is powered from a mill he built on the waterfall.
A cabana here would cost 3000 or 5000 dollars, up on the hill, with a small pool next to it,
no heaven could beat it.

Cesar the Contra offers me a hand up and I tell him I have laid down to have a heart attack and die in this impenetrable forest, where the seeds and nuts can sprout from my body in a wild shout in this jungle, bragging about the city where once they sat for sale on the shelf, packaged in plastic as “Trail Mix”. Cesar yanks me to my feet anyway, saying: “I had a heart attack five minutes ago, but the water is right here, and you never felt water like this, untouched by humans for years, as chilly as a dagger.”

Hilarity, er, Hilary, gets the Sandie Black treatment in a genius spoof.  Too bad she won't be in there for four years to be laughed at, because then Sandie would have some legitimate employment in the entertainment world.

Chanteuse and megababe with brains Jonelle Vette posts a story about what it's like to travel with Blue to the catch the Borealis (and what it's like to have him as your very own freaky friend), and this is a small excerpt:

"My friend Mr. Blue - photographer, philosopher, writer, force of personality, world traveler and fount of unbelievably good ideas, has either been everywhere or at least read about being everywhere. I would bet 50 bucks on it. And every time I'm convinced he's gone completely insane, he says something out of the blue that wraps my whole world up into a ball and tosses it out the window like it was no big deal. We've known each other for 8 years and traveled together to India in 2000 with a handful of others. And out of habit of language i call him my friend, but for years and on this trip to Iceland he has been more of a guide and a sounding board and a catalyst. And the truth is he doesn't exactly feel like a friend and our connection to one another doesn't feel familial as much as revolutionary. I could hardly call him a comforting presence in my life and if anything, he's like a scar from a knife fight that every once in a while still stings whenever i forget that I'm the one creating every single piece of my life."

-- From Jonelle Vette's story at JPG Magazine

She's an all-round talent: When I crashed at 55mph into the mountainside on the way to Palenque, the Penthouse Pet and I crawled out of the burning wreckage and all we could think of was to say that at least Jonelle's CD was still playing in the flames.

During a planning session for a movie project about Brazilians in the USA, I ask the director Veronica M. why she is noticing the sudden attention on Brazil. She sees her country's profile everywhere, in the arts, in the news, though she lives in the Imperial City. She knows Brazil is talked about as an "emerging" culture as India and China are also talked about. But "City of God" was not made in India or China. Milton Nascimento has no peer in terms of American commercial success in China or India. We do not read a Chinese Amado. Why? I tell her I think Brazil is the nation most like the United States because of its genetic diversity: I think of China as a monochromatic society, even before communism, and India is infamous for its caste system, which extends even into the Patels and Singhs in America, refusing procreation with local Yanks in favor of maintaining pure blood, despite the kinks of DNA inherent to copulation by proximity. But this is a racist stance, even in 2007. It cannot be expressed without censure, I warn her. She weighs the opinion and understands that I am suggesting she invents a character who can drawl a controversy by suggesting "our music can be understood by anybody because we're willing to have a baby with anyone we want to." My silly opinion about the fascination and acceptance of Brazilian culture in the USA isn't what is important, Veronica understands, but the invention and expression of ideas is crucial in a life of exploration. And Veronica is an explorer, make no mistake, teaming up with a longtime pal from the Betapunks days, Andres Jacomix. He gets the Brazilian connection: speech is like desire, and shouldn't be repressed under any condition, which he knows as only somebody who grew up in the silent shadows of Chile could know. What a potentially cool team Veronica and Andres can be. I am like an old man prodding them, no longer juiced by my own energies, and I say a lot to them but mean only one thing, do what you do and not what I say . . . but do. They've got the itch, and I'm telling them, as I always have, as I always do, like a broken and shrill message: Scratch. The itch will go away, and everyone will want to talk about your interesting scar.