You know, I really tried to make it to the computer to write a little this weekend.  But sometimes life just gets in the way and keeps you occupied.

I suppose I could have gotten up to write a little last night in the middle of my latest bout with insomnia.  I used to be able to sleep.  But somewhere in the last few years, my body forgot how.  I’m a very light sleeper.  The slightest movement, noise or light will wake me up and send my mind into a tizzy. 

I am  a creative mind.  there’s no denying that.  I just wish my brain could comprehend some of the thoughts that linger somewhere between awake and asleep.  Salvadore Dali used to linger for long periods of time in this state.  The man would position himself on a couch to fall asleep with a handful of silverware over some fancy clanky dishes and as his body would succumb to the night he would drop the silverware onto the plate and as he woke, he would paint what he saw.  …Although I’m not entirely convinced that his work wasn’t heavily influenced by hallucinogenics.

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I’m not sure if I could do that.  Clanking dishes, not hallucinogenics.  Well either for that matter.  I am very fond of my strength in creating from a clean mind.  I’ve tried writing those thoughts down and often times can’t put those pieces back together again once daylight takes to the skies.  I will revive notes of “nude blonde woman becomes dog and licks the blood from the body and runs away on all fours, J.J. Abrahms.” And for the life of me, cannot put those words together into a coherent image.  But if I painted that, maybe would have a legacy.  Perhaps that’s a painter instinct.

Salvadore Dali was also a filmmaker.  He was also a kook.  He self proclaimed himself a surrealist and conducted his life to demonstrate the surreal.  At film screenings he would show up and proclaim himself the inventor of the idea, claiming that the filmmakers had “stolen from his subconsciousness”  I know how he feels.  While on the subject of J.J. Abrahms stole the idea of Cloverfield from my circle of film crew.  About three years before Cloverfield surfaced, we had outlined a viral video film, Called “Crash Site Derivitive”  set around first person filmmakers as they document an alien craft crash site and the monsters that come from it.  The opening twenty pages of the script are almost identical… only ours took place in the fields of New York, rather than Manhattan itself.  It was party scenes.  It was friends having a good time, saying good bye.  Then all hell breaks loose.  Sounds pretty damn close to me.  …and after watching Cloverfield, I remember why we abandoned it after 20 pages.  Yeah.  It went nowhere.  Just as his did.

I do not think J.J. Abrahms stole the script from me.  Nor would I ever make such an accusation.  For I am not under the influence of various hallucinogenics.  But I do value the irony and the intensity involved with collective thought and how creative minds will absorb similar thought processes and analyze their surroundings.  From time to time, you will come across two comedians who have strikingly similar material.  It’s not that one stole from the other, but simply drew similar conclusions from the observations of their daily lives.

Can I explain how J.J. Abrahms stole a script that my crew deemed unworthy of producing?  Nope.  It’s purely coincidence.  The creative minds saw an opening for a particular niche in a particular genre and made a stab at it.  He just was further along in his career and had more money to do so.  Whereas, we had the means to do it, but chose not to… most likely because I can trust no one else to do some of the legwork involved in filmmaking… and I would have been running all of the viral videos and process myself, bogging myself down in an endless cause.

That is not the first time this has happened.  Take for example, exhibit A.  Lance Manly.  Lance Manly is a series of shorts that we filmed between filming “Two Days with Juliet” and “Cold Winter”  It was mind-blowingly simple.  Kind of dumb, but a whole lot of fun and really just a series of inside jokes from the films my friends and I loved the most.  Lance Manly:  Kung-Fu Cowboy.

Three years later.  After our videos hang around youtube and various other hosts; a Fox television show called “The Winner” shows up on the scene and in it’s fourth episode; an episode entitled “What happens in Albany, Stays in Albany” the main character (Rob Cordry) dons a toupee and a checkered shirt very similar to that of our fallen hero Lance… and takes on the moniker “Lance Manly”  This was a bit much to swallow.  We were proud of our stupid little project and from a show produced by Seth MacFarlane… famed for stealing shit from other people it hit a little close to home… being that Albany is a bit close to home.

Had the show survived past episode 6, maybe we would have done something.

Again, I am not laying claim to any of these ideas.  I am simply fascinated by the cosmic coincidences of the collective being of the human mind, how thousands of miles away, similar thinkers can deduce the same concept.

It’s no wonder things like Avatar are so popular and strike such a chord within the human spirit.  they are stories we all know, in our collective minds… and knowing what we know brings us comfort and keeps us at ease.  It’s like mashed potatoes from mom.  Comfort food for the mind.