I don’t know…
… even if I secretely do.
I owe it to myself to question my ideas in the moment.
It is very important to remind myself that the way I do things might not always be the best. The easiest trick to get that locked in my head is to always start with ‘I don’t know’. I may have some kind of perception of how things used to be or should be, but I would not forgive myself if I ever start thinking that I know how things will be in the future.
Without saying it out loud, the silent ‘I don’t know’ in your head will make you ask yourself questions that you think you have already answered, and maybe you have, but these might not be the answers you are looking this time around.
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The very last literature assignment I got in middle school was sort of a revellation for me. Up to that point in time I was somehow convinced that we were always supposed to write comparative essays in school (which was the case in high school, but not before that). So I was struggling to write these really boring and numb pieces of s***, because I had no real knowledge at that point.
But when my teacher was giving the last assignment in class I found out that we were allowed and could have been writing fictional narratives all through middle school. After a brief burst of dissappointment I then got excited and wrote my first, the theme/title was “Who am I” (I hope you understand and can imagine what kind of random bulls*** comes out of a 15 year old teenager when he tries to write a comparative argumented essay on that subject). This time I had my mind open and just started shooting.
The text started with a girl waking up somewhere where she is not supposed to be. After opening her eyes and realising that she is in complete darkness, she asks herself, first in her mind and then out loud, “Where am I?”. As a reaction to that, someone else in the dark and indefinably big room asks back: “Who are you?”.
So that continues for three pages, at some point involves 5–6 characters (in the end I really didn’t know myself, how many there were, it was a 1,5 hour assignment so I did not check the continuity or logic of the thing, and that’s also not important in this case) and goes through a subtle explanation about the fact that these people have no way of knowing how far or even in which direction they are relative to each other. All of the dialogue is in form of questions.
They try to figure out what is going on, and why. Somehow through very logical conversation they start getting to know each other, after a couple of disagreements, a make up, acceptance and a little bit familiarity, there is only one question (and probably only one character as well) left.
“Who am I?”
This mindbender was followed by a magnificent obscure little piece (today I would say it was kind of a animated short script) called “My day as a washing machine” (this was a prank subject given to us by seniors who were substitutes for teachers on Teachers’ day) with a really emotional washing machine living through the social world of clothes, all kinds of relationships and even a tragic ending, with the washing machine waiting, with a tear in its eye, for his favorite dress, who never showed up.
And then high school started, with the same boring numb pieces of s***.
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I have at least three active notebooks; a personal notebook, for the ideas that I consider my own or for myself; a work notebook, which is for projects and processes dictated by other people (colleagues and partner-projects); a drawing notebook, for… well, drawing.
Every once in a while there are questions in each of them. I usually start a new project with a couple of really philosophically constructed pseudo questions about the theme and atmosphere to get the mind going, like “How would you know the days are passing when you don’t know where the sun is?”. Then the notes start to get more and more realistic, about technical solutions, specific emotions or scenes, with questions like “How can a make the audience feel calm when the actor on stage is angry?”. Then there are these random questions just in between, like “Whathappenshere?” and just some “what?”s, “why?”s and “how?”s thrown in anywhere.
So, I feel very strongly that these questions, lingering and locked in my head, give me an edge to always figure out just the right way how to say or do exactly what I want to say or do. It is very easy just to do something, do it the way it is possible. But possibility is far from the only thing I’m after. The bigger challange is to do something so it would be also believable, unsinkable and real. This is where I start asking questions.
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To be continued…
