BRIAN LIBBY

The Big Plunge

Fifteen years ago today I took the biggest plunge of my life: I left my tiny rural hometown of McMinnville, Oregon for college in New York City -- sight unseen.

Looking back, what interests me the most is that I made a very bold decision without having all the facts, without really having any idea what I was getting myself into. And it turned out to be the best thing for me.

Normally I'm someone who likes to deliberate a lot before embracing change. I'm cautious by nature, and I'm a creature of habit. Moving somewhere I've never even visited, let alone going from McMinnville to Manhattan, does not usually seem a very prudent way of doing things.

Yet if I had visited New York before potentially enrolling at NYU, I probably would have changed my mind and gone with the safe option: the University of Oregon. When I first arrived in New York City with my mom in the late afternoon of August 25, 1990, it made for a horrible culture shock.

Even before we had gone from our gate at LaGuardia Airport to baggage claim, I was unnerved by the crass pushiness of people around me, as a middle-aged woman with a thick New York accent walking a few feet behind us scolded us for not walking fast enough: "Yuh godda keep moovin', people!" Then, as we stepped outside to hail a cab, the smell of urine and carbon monoxide felt like punch in the face. Everything in the city seemed to be decaying, and the late-August heat and humidity were mercilessly stifling. (To be fair, the city got a lot nicer over the five years I was there; I arrived as a difficult era was ending and a prosperous one was beginning.)

Had I visited New York during my senior year of high school, it's the small and none-too-positive details that I would have come home thinking about. As it happened, not visiting New York before matriculating, I was able to subsist wholly on my romantic notion of the city in its picture-postcard glory, complete with Sinatra's "New York New York" on the soundtrack. This impression was of course ridiculously narrow and naive, yet it actually turned out in the long run to be as valid a decision making factor as my initial horror at the city's rough edges, probably more.

Yes, New York could be a real shit-hole sometimes. I remember my mom's only point of reference when we first arrived that afternoon was her trip to Ecuador several years prior to visit my Aunt serving in the Peace Corps. To her New York, for all its sophistication, seemed like a Third World country more than anywhere she had visited in America.

But ultimately New York is a great city. The people, the art and culture, the architecture: all of it influenced me greatly. Because of my time there, today I think I'm more intellectual, more cultured and more open minded than I would have ever become staying in Oregon.

So even 15 years later, I'm still trying to sort this all out. What is the logic of taking a plunge without all the relevant information? Contrary to everything my instincts tell me, sometimes being foolhardy makes for a surprising brand of wisdom.

The Edited Version

For years I’ve been shooting video footage with the hope of someday learning how to edit it together, be it from my Tokyo trip last year or a few minutes of raindrops on the front steps. But I never knew how to use Final Cut Pro, i-Movie, Premiere, or any of the other digital software platforms. And I've never been satisfied with a collection of footage in its own right. Just like writing, I don't think the work is complete until it's been edited, until it's been made sense of.

Over time, I’ve watched as filmmaker friends churn out short films on their home computers, particularly with Final Cut Pro software. Slowly, I've picked up tidbits of technique: loading footage from camera to computer, cross-fading between two shots, or dillydallying with maxed-out memory banks. And recently, I finally got the nudge I needed to take the plunge and really to do it myself: My friend Rob gave me his old Apple G-3 with the appropriate editing software. Other friends, Ned and Andy, patiently taught me the way with a few additional FCP pointers. And suddenly...I can do this!

After just a week or two at my makeshift editing table in the basement, I’ve got five different short films in the works. One is a travelogue of Tokyo’s neon-filled Shinjuku area. Another condenses a 35-minute ride through London atop a double-decker bus into about four minutes. An Amsterdam canal boat tour has produced ten and three-minute video versions. Some impromptu video I shot of a blimp in the Central Eastside, if I edit it right and choose the right music, could be equally whimsical and haunting. And additional footage of electric stove-burners turning on and off in the dark at ten times the normal speed amounts to, hopefully, a kind of abstract version of the electronic Simon childhood game.

What’s been most surprising about the fun I’ve had editing all this footage is that I’ve decided the intended audience is really only me. As a movie writer, I’ve always focused on a filmmaker’s work finding public audience. If a good film didn’t get seen, I counted it as, at least on some level, a tragedy. But now that I’m on the other end making films of my own, it doesn’t necessarily seem so crucial to seek out people to watch my work, aside from the occasional friend or relative. Mainly, just playing it on my own television is enough. It's not that I lack confidence about how an audience would react. Rather, I feel like their feelings are secondary. I'm still very experienced at editing, but for one reason or another I trust my instincts. I know what I want to see, and I sense that that's different from other people. I gravitate more and more to a sparing, meditative style that I know others find boring. Freed from the expectation of pleasing others, I can follow my own instincts. That feels tremendously liberating.

Today, because cameras and editing software are so affordable and easy to use, anybody can make a movie. That proclamation in and of itself has become a cliché, but I mean it a little differently. It’s not just that anyone with consumer-grade equipment and desktop software has the opportunity to make a feature that gets picked up at a film festival by a studio for millions of people to see. What I find most fascinating is that cinema—until very recently a visual language only a few lucky people with the resources of producers and studios could employ—is now a part of everyday lives. I know people have already been shooting video for more than a generation. But when you start editing, it’s not just a meaningless succession of footage. It’s a whole other level of visual expression.

When I finished the first cut of my Shinjuku video, I honestly felt like that ape in 2001: A Space Odyssey who joyously heaves the bone into the air. I suppose that kind of euphoria never lasts, but hopefully the reverberation will continue indefinitely.

Don't Worry: I've Got Your Bach

For the last few weeks I’ve been listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos almost nonstop. And when I'm not literally playing the six pieces on a CD player or iPod, they're playing in my head - on repeat.

Although before this Bach binge I certainly appreciated the legendary Baroque composer's place in history at the top of the classical class with Mozart and Beethooven, I had never considered myself a particularly rabid fan per se. I’m still a relative novice when it comes to classical recordings, but so far I have gravitated mostly to Shostakovic, with Beethoven, Debussy, Johan Strauss, Richard Strauss, Brahms, and Steve Reich following behind.

And it’s not as if I’d never heard Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos before. In a way, you wind up hearing at least snippets of them all your life, on movie soundtracks or even sampled in hip-hop (the first Handsome Boy Modeling School album comes to mind). But I think this societal/musical ubiquity is precisely why I had never, until recently, just sat down and listened to the Brandenburg Concertos from start to finish. (That and the fact that I’ve previously listened to mostly rock and jazz.)

And suddenly I understand certain other composers' influences  more clearly, and not just the old classical guys. I’ve become a huge fan of the scores for Wes Anderson's last three films, for example, which are composed by Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame. Only recently did it hit me how much that signature harpsichord-laden Wes Anderson sound is a kind of reworked Brandenburg. Freedom of Choice indeed. (Or, "Crack that baton!")

None of this, by the way, is to imply I know a lot about classical music. I unequivocally don’t. But I think that’s part of the allure: The supply of interesting, compelling music seems limitless.

Anyway, what first amazed me about the Concertos, which were written on commission for the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721 and forgotten for several years afterward (Bach never even got paid), is an extraordinary precision and velocity of notes being played. I describe the sound as (and I'm not sure this makes any sense) mathematical. They say certain classical music can improve IQ, temporarily in adults (about 10-15 minutes) and permanently in children if repeated enough. Listening to the Brandenburg Concertos, I get a very palpable data zigzagging through my synapses.

And yet that mathematic sound, as I call it, is so inherently delicate. In this intimate chamber-music setting, the individual instruments are allowed to shine: violins, cellos, harpsichord.

A week ago our neighbors across the street threw their latest in a series of loud parties highlighted by a live rock band jamming in the living room. The sound was almost impossible to escape, but finally I disappeared into the basement with Valarie’s i-Pod. Drowning out the racket with Bach, of all things, gave me my greatest satisfaction of the evening.