It’s a fairly safe bet that if things go quiet on the blogging front, i’m wrapped up in something i’m enjoying. And yes, i am happy. I write more when i need to get things out of my system, typically bad stuff that has no other constructive outlet. I’ve been so deeply engrossed in writing scripts and stories for movies and TV that nothing else really matters. I have all the things i wanted and although it’s not a matter of feeling unstoppable, there is a certain peace that comes from understanding who you are and what you were born to do. It’s strange that when you do what you were meant to, everything else seems superfluous. I’m in love with many things (and people) and when that happens, i just want to lap it up rather than blast it to the world.
I’ve learnt in the last few weeks that i think in dialogue. 2 weeks ago i had never even seen a script, let alone write one. It’s supposed to take a minimum of 12 weeks but with the help of the most talented young screenwriters around, we put together one of the best in less than 7 days. I get people telling me they are feeling like Michael, or how they can’t get the movie out of their head from thinking of all the things that could make it better. They want to know his background and feel like he is real. What was one film is now a series with a template. Tomorrow i will release the next one, entitled “Salvation For April”.
Prophecy is secretly being built in the City completely organically, and will be available on fiber-optics next year.
We have 68 writers (with more registering every day), 38 scenes, 1040+ edits and a script of 87 pages containing more than 20,000 words. And it just keeps pouring out. The way it has inspired those around it is amazing. Just having the freedom to get it wrong has opened up a Pandora’s box of possibilities for those who didn’t have the confidence beforehand. We’re now thinking of ditching the commercial soundtrack and helping musicians too by holding a MySpace contest to get unsigned tracks onto the film. Incredibly talented young people (even Edward, who is 16) have a chance when no-one else is prepared to give them one.
Helping one person isn’t good enough for me anymore. I’m batching it into large groups so we can help crowds en masse. The more people we help, the more successful we will be.
Joby inspires me massively simply as he thinks so similarly to me. He hates people telling him what can be done or how it should be done, and he shares my vision. I’ve seen his excitement grow with everyone else’s from all over the world. He knows exactly what to do and has already shot the film in his head, and we both chose identical-looking actresses for Sarah’s part, which is just spooky. We sat in the Royal Festival Hall talking through how great it would be to have a launch of the movie there. And i guarantee you, we will. Him and i are going to enjoy a very long and successful partnership making a long list of films that are critically acclaimed.
Joby also taught me something else this week because of his problems with hypoglycaemia. One of its symptoms is nosebleeds. If you have starved yourself and are running down low on blood sugar, your nose will often start bleeding as a warning.
I have no idea how most people live. I look back on this year and i have this list of things i’ve gone nuts with - a cerebral haze of creativity that keeps getting more prolific. We did the Killstream demos, published Rockstar 2.0, i wrote 2 books, designed over 20 TV programs, dated famous glamour models and now am on a new series of 1hr drama movies. There were millions of little things in between of course as well and there is still more to come (including my autobiographical movie of the first 30 years of my life). Next year we embark on 21CC, which is a massive project.
Without wanting to sound harsh as we all have our own parts to play, when i ask myself what others have done in their lives, the answer is absolutely nothing. A year has gone by and they are still in the same jobs, visiting the same places and sitting in the shit of their own mistakes – this tedious routine of unbearable monotony. They are just there, getting up every day and living on coma auto-pilot. Maybe that’s OK for a lot of people but it’s a short route to madness for me. It’s not that i have to crazy busy every moment of the day, but i have to be creating, sifting ideas, exploring the world and revel in meaning to feel happy and content. I’m in great haste to enjoy my life and do as much as i can before i’m called home.
Maybe i need to design a board game next. How hard can it be?
Everywhere i go and everything i do is a documentary. Everything counts towards a film. My sis said to me that i was “full of films”, and she’s right. I am bursting with movies for every second of every person’s day everywhere. The process is extraordinary, but most importantly, movies change people’s minds and hearts, and you can get away with things in film that TV would never allow on its most liberal of scheduling times. We get to go up in a helicopter and blow things up, and get paid for it. Not only is this “work”, it’s worth billions and will make us all very wealthy indeed, very quickly.
But there’s a wonderful irony – none of us give a shit about the money. It’s nice, but it’s not the motivator. Passion for bringing ideas and points to life through dramatic visualisation is. The magic of doing it doesn’t have a price. It’s just conveniently something that makes a hell of a lot of money, so if you love doing it and do it very well because you’re very passionate, the money crashes in like a continuous barrage of low-flying silver clouds.
I’ve turned the rants in my head into script dialogue, and when i write stories and scripts now i am simply describing the movie as i pause, rewind and play it in my head that i pieced together in logical sequences. All things are created twice, as Stephen Covey so rightly observed. Getting it out theatrically is totally fulfilling and cathartic exercise with a very uncomfortable by-product – it leaves me with no desire to write on my fucking blog. I can speak through characters and illustrate points and things i learn through situations and story morals as they are actually more powerful than simple prose.
There’s no doubt that the last 2 weeks have been some of the most negative in a long time, with my mum’s biggest client terminating her contract, my sister surviving a nasty car accident and the violence i was involved in recently that left my attackers with shattered arms and ligaments. Somehow i escaped with barely a scratch, as if i had a shield. I wish i could say more on it but until the legal ramifications are clear it’s wiser for me to stay away from it. Everyone who i care about got a private blog explaining the chaos anyway. Until then, dear reader who i don’t know, you unfortunately shall have to wait.
The sheer positivity around me is also inspiring, and i’ve noticed that it is even more infectious than others’ misery. Thankfully i’m now almost allergic to victims and naysayers and can barely stand their company. People like Caroline, Vikki (who is in this week’s Nuts as Bedroom Babe), Vanessa, Sapphira, and the hilariously gorgeous and uber-special Chloe are a joy to speak to. You make them feel positive, they make you feel positive, and the whole world just seems easy, even when it’s hard. You speak faith into each other’s lives and there is nothing you can’t do or achieve when there is encouragement all around you.
Caroline’s positivity is so overwhelming and electrifying – i don’t think i’ve ever known a chick who is so driven and enthusiastic. Watching Chloe drunkenly doing martial arts at 3am with Piers has got to rate as one of the most absurd and bizarre things i’ve been privy to for a long time.
That kind of positive and wilful attitude is such a tiny and short leap of discipline but most people just can’t grasp it. They are so entranced and focused on problems that they never see the other 350 degrees of the rest of the circle. Their perspective on things is so narrow that they can’t see any other side to it. When they wake up they get on their own constructed carousel – the daily routine they drag themselves through that is only broken up by arguments, cheating, cheap holidays or a tawdry and soulless Saturday night drowning themselves in alcohol desperately trying to feel special.
What really touched me is that Virgilio came all the way down from our home turf in Clapham to Liphook just to see me and my sister play. We spent the hours after talking over how we were going to go about producing Chloe’s brother’s band and many other spiritual topics like Mentalism and the natural magic of music. He showed me a perspective whilst i was ranting about sheeple and people who do mindlessly stupid things and are too proud to admit it. I called them dumb.
He corrected me. He said “no, not dumb. Vulnerable.”
And he is entirely right. I’ve got too used to criticising and haven’t seen the real story – that most people are not into self-governing and are fundamentally lost. They say a leader without followers is just a guy going for a walk. I am so hard-headed, and as i learned recently, able to withstand massive physical, mental and emotional assault that i assume everyone is the same. Rejection never, ever phases me, and i forget how devastating it can be. Conflict makes me salivate when it scares the life out of most people. When you only have your own frame of reference to guide you it can be easy to lost track expect everyone to have the same resistance as you.
You have to make your choices, and mine are solidifying. When you grow up through your teens and 20s, you are brainwashed into trying to fit in with everyone and everything else, and into respecting everyone’s right to believe what they want. A few more years and you begin to realise that a considerable majority of people in this world, a hardcore minority, have already chosen sides whether you like it or not. Staying on the fence only benefits them, so of course they, and the other cowards around you, insist you must be tolerant.
But the truth is that this planet will never be at peace. There will always be those who choose to do evil or just plainly fuck things up because they are incompetent. They will always exist and they will triumph if not challenged. They have already chosen, and you need to make your own choice and decide who you are and where you stand. Some people’s beliefs are just simply wrong – do you agree we should tolerate everyone’s? Is it ok for paedophiles to believe children lead them on, or for leaders like Robert Mugabe to torture political opponents?
Well the first step in your recovery program is to accept that it is not right to outrightly respect everyone’s “right” to hold their own opinions and beliefs.
There is too much wrong is this world for you to give up and sit around doing nothing. You have to stand up and sort it out. There is too much evil in this world for you not to get up and fight it. You can stand in the middle trying to make peace with everyone – if we did that in World War II, we’d all be speaking German. There will always be those who do evil and who fuck up the things that need to be right. They stay that way until we take responsibility and kick ass to deal with it. That means enforcing your will and beliefs on others. Get over it. We’re right, they’re wrong.
It’s childish to live your life expecting everyone to just get along. You have no control over the bad choices of others, but you can oppose and limit the damage they do.
And that goes for the way people think, just as much as it does for how they act. I can’t get over how negative the vast majority are. It’s so utterly pointless. If only they could hear themselves. The excuses and reasoning is so corrupt and nonsensical that you can’t help but feel sorry for the endless muddle they always end up in. Add pride and stubbornness into the mix, and you have a very nasty stew.
It comes down to a simple principle: you can’t expect to live a happy, positive and fulfilled life if you maintain a negative mindset.
It seems so simple. If that’s the case, how you haven’t got it yet? That plasma Tv you bought on your credit card isn’t going to bring you happiness if the person watching it is as dull and as dishwater or the proverbial second coat of paint. Don’t expect to find emotional or spiritual fire in cheap throwaway magazines or pathetic material conquests like seducing unavailable men. When you think about it, it’s a little short-sighted and ridiculous, isn’t it? And there’s no reason or rhyme not to choose to see the positive sides of a situation, as it doesn’t mean you are naively ignoring the bad. Choice means seeing them both, and deciding which to go with. Only seeing the bad is not a choice, it is a compulsion.
And i guess that is what fascinates me - we choose our beliefs. We choose what to belief. Most people act as if beliefs and attitudes are enforced on them somehow and circumstances demand their thoughts and feelings are under the control of anyone but themselves. We choose. We see the sides and we choose what we believe and think. It’s a great wisdom and powerful insight once you reason it, and also extremely liberating.
Which side of a situation do you choose to let occupy your thoughts and heart? What do you believe, and what controls that belief? Do you choose to fixate on only the tiny slither representing the bad, the frightening, the painful and the limiting, or do you see the rest of the circle and the big picture? Do you choose to seek out the good, and block out the bad? Thoughts become strongholds, that live like cancerous toxic growths holding us down and keeping us ill. Do you choose your condemnation for yourself, or do you fight for your mind and heart by deliberately centring on the good in any situation?
As Shakespeare so rightly wrote, there is no good or bad, only thinking makes it so.
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