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July 24, 2006

Gracefully Sidestepping Disaster

When you throw in the gas, the hotel room (somehow I ended up with a double), the parking and more gas (but not food), it probably would have been cheaper for me to just fly in to San Francisco for a day. But the coastal drive was nice. Time to think, to breathe the ocean, to listen to lots and lots of music (more on that momentarily). I had exactly one mental breakthrough regarding my current script: I finally realized exactly what the main character had been taking pictures of before deciding he wanted to photograph cadavers. It's a simple but vital detail, and it's something that I've been hung up on for ages. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier.

But what I was about to say was that I almost didn't take this weekend trip, for a single reason: on Friday, I thought my iPod had died. Or not died, really, but somehow erased itself. I turned it on in the car as I was driving to the movie theater, and it wouldn't play anything. At first I thought it was frozen, but a quick spin of the click-wheel revealed: there was nothing on it to play. I almost had a panic attack. That was the end of the story; there was absolutely no way I was going to take a six hour drive without my musical archives. I paused briefly to recognize my addiction, and then noticed that the clock on the device was still set correctly, and that the SXSW schedule from last March was still stored in the Notes folder. Thinking that it might be playing tricks on me, I went home and I tried plugging the thing into my computer. Music issued forth; everything was recovered; I was not about to be cured of my dependency.

The SFMOMA may be the best modern art museum I've been to yet, although I'll admit I might be biased by its current exhibition.

I have quite a bit more to write here, but first I'm going to bed.

Posted by David Lowery at July 24, 2006 6:13 AM