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July 12, 2011

Location Scout (2011 version)

We went driving all over Southwest Texas last week looking for new locations. For now let's just pretend the entire movie takes place in fields of wheat. Will there be hands passing plaintively through the willowy grain? I hope we can avoid the temptation.

That one there is me taking a piss in the sorghum. James took it.

I've read some things about birdwatching lately. Jonathan Franzen had a lot to say about it, and I know Terrence Malick is a fan. As a hobby, I never quite got it. It always seemed to me a somewhat unfulfilling pastime. But then there came the point last Friday where we were driving offroad down by the banks of the Blanco River (in whose waters I nearly drowned when I was ten but which this summer is too dried up to even engulf its own bed). I was in the back of a pickup truck, and there was a pair of binoculars there, and when the driver pointed out a blue heron perched on a limestone rock in the middle of the river I grabbed them and sized up that bird to take a gander. Looking at it, fleetingly, shakily through those twin lenses before it alit from its perch and flew off was thrilling in the most peculiar and liberating way. I felt an untapped primal instinct swell within me, something akin to the urge to collect but freed of all the proprietary and fetishistic trappings of ownership. An abstract transaction occurred in that moment, a proofless deed declared and filed away. It was completely impermanent, and completely out of my control and in its wake I detected another unexpected sensation: I was grateful.

So I get birdwatching now.

Posted by David Lowery at July 12, 2011 1:22 PM