I’ve always been good, exceptional really, at hiding who I was
From twelve years old I’ve been told by dozens of people that I should do stand up, be a comedian, be an actor.
But the funny girl was just a mask. A really strong mask that I wore for a very long
Time.
Inside I was trapped. I was trapped inside of my own head. I was suffocating myself with so much pain, too much that I didn’t know what to do with.
I guess I can say that the things I’ve experienced have brought me into another world and left me there to die alone.
I’ve spent a long time trying to pull myself back out of that world with no success. Then in 2003 I had a son.
He was supposed to be enough to pull me out. He was supposed to be the reason for my existence. Reason enough for me to exist. But he was more than enough and I used that as a reason to end everything. I was convinced that a life without me in it would be far less darker then a life with me in it.
That year I failed. I had to beg to be released so I could see my son on his first birthday. But the cycle continued. Hospital after hospital, medicine after medicine, scar after scar, the cycle continued for six long painful years and I never talked about it. No one did. The things that needed to be said the most were the things that were kept quiet and ignored. I never believed myself to be anything other then something that should be ignored. I had nothing to offer myself or anyone else so I just lived alone with my nightmares.
When I was 27 I had a dream, an actual dream. Inside of it I was making a video. I don’t know of what but I woke from my sleep and a few days later that infinite sadness I felt my whole life hit me again. I thought about escaping one last time, but I made a video instead. I escaped inside of the process of making it and I finally had a cure for myself.
But if you fail at taking your own life, then it’s failure that saves you. I was saved by something I considered to be a weakness and now I’m stronger then ever. I found a way to get out what I felt and what I saw without hurting myself, or those around me.
There are two sides of me when it comes to filmmaking. One side of me is all about meaning. Things have to have meaning and they have to have a purpose. The other side of me says “Just do it because you want to. Not everything has to have rhyme or reason to it. Do it because you feel like it alisha.” But the interesting thing about that side of me, even though I just throw the pieces together randomly, they still always seem to have meaning.
I’m going to present two pieces to you
Two pieces, which I feel, resemble those sides of me.
The first piece I’m showing is called “Static.”
This piece is all about meaning. It has meaning from the images to the audio. It represents something I felt, Something I went through, it showed an existing moment in my life. It’s about a time in my life where I was constantly trying to blend in or become something different according to someone else’s needs. There were so many of me that I felt like I was drowning and I wanted to escape again. But my son was there begging me to stay. So instead of drowning I opened my eyes to see him and I stayed. This piece was my outlet, my way out. This video represents my survival.
The next piece I’m going to show you is “ProjectX.”
All art is subjective. Therefore anybody could find meaning in this. In creating this piece, I filmed random things and through them together randomly without meaning and without purpose. This video represents the part of me that just puts things together because I want to…because I think it looks good, or it feels good. This piece represents the part of me that just is. Even though people can find meaning in this, it was never intentional. But after watching the final project I myself started seeing meaning inside of it, interesting things, mostly about life and death. Things in this world that can bring you life are the same things that can destroy it, like the apples. There is an old couple dying, while a young couple is kissing. There are Birds that are alive that flourish and then a bird that has died. There is a tear, which shows sadness over loss, yet it’s reversed heading back into the eye showing that we’re resilient creatures and our lives go on. Some of my work I make just because I feel like it. I don’t intend on having meaning in everything I create. But for some reason it seems to head that way.
So does that mean my subconscious being has more power over my consciousness or was all of the meaning accidental?
I don’t have the answer for that and I’m not sure that I ever will be able to make that connection.
The things I make now and will continue to make in the future will not be simple to understand. I don’t like to do the easy things because I think that my audience will benefit from it more. I like to experiment with ideas, and techniques, and I like to work in between the lines. Whether it’s understandable or not, what I see in my head, eventually you’ll see through your eyes.
I’m still growing and for the first time I feel like I have something to offer now and I refuse to ruin it for myself with self-doubt. Whether or not I make a film that is extraordinary, grand, small, for personal expression, I know that I’m capable. I love that I’m no longer in hiding and that I can open up about the things I’ve been through. I found a way to express myself without losing anything. If I can make an impact on one person with the things I do that let’s them know that they’re not alone. That let’s them know that they don’t have to live in secret, and hide who they are. That shows them that there are outlets out there like this one to help them, just ONE PERSON, than it’s all worth it.
