I Never Wanted to Direct

I never wanted to direct. It's too cliché. Next to being an actor. Or a famous singer. I didn't go to film school or study every movie ever made or even picture myself giving an Oscar's speech. George Lucas was not my hero. I'm not sure what I wanted to do, actually. Somehow I never believed I could dare to be anything. Why is this? So many people told me I'd go far. So many people supported and loved all my crazy ideas. And, yet, I never really thought I could dare to be anything.

I had many, many jobs as a young person - tripping through life from one thing to the next in an effort to find an occupation that would hold my attention. Challenge me. From Capitol Hill in DC to a middle school lacrosse coach, a private investigator to an ice-cream scooper, I flowed from one job into another. I acted in theatre and film, worked as a photographer's assistant, wrote skits for public access shows, and prepared exchange students to go abroad. I accomplished more than one person should in a lifetime and gathered up bucketfuls of film, photography and collaboration experience and vision. But I never dared to be a director.

I finally found my way behind the scenes of the film industry as an assistant director - someone who plans when and how scenes are filmed, but not the what. So close, and, still, I never deigned to imagine it - not for a single moment. That's for people who know way more than I do and are clearly very smart. See...I didn't even say "intelligent", a four-syllable word. I only used a one-syllable word with little description and effort...so not director material.

Then, I had kids. Three wonder-filled and eclectic, crazed monkeys that roam the earth searching only for identity and Nutella. Many years of my life drained away to homeschooling and heart-breaking cries of children's pain, an insane amount of coffee and living in a school bus to keep moving and prevent them from annoying too many people for far too long. My solace became writing stories. Poems, short stories, scripts and screenplays - all the ways writing pours from a soul onto a page. In my mind, I'd bring the characters to life, watch them walk and talk and tell about the reality that I knew.

My children wrote things too. Together we created ideas and characters and values and messy human antics and the meaning of life. I began to consider if I could be more than a "mere mother", a "mere wife". I wondered if I could breathe energy and mass into the universe I'd created and became elated at the notion of setting things visually and emotionally in motion. For a time I swam happily in this ocean of indulgence. I dreamed a little dream and, finally, I tried to share what I'd written. But it wasn't ever fast enough, loud enough, violent enough, shocking or scary enough. I lost the strength my children had handed me in all our time carving out a world of our own, felt embarrassed by my voice and buried my ideas. I could, in fact, never dare to direct.

Recently, I regarded my 14 year-old as she gazed in the mirror. I saw her flip through every image her mind held of women and girls and the physical and mental shape they cast in the world - particularly a world created by media. I watched her own view of herself distort and blur until she no longer could see the amazing girl she had become. My blossom was coming undone. The infinite space we had chosen and woven, the place that existed to hold our ideas and our dreams and our very identity, painted painstakingly by us, was being demolished by the pixels and sound bites and bits and frames of others. Those who were faster and louder and more violent, shocking and scary. Those who were daring enough to be a director.

I am my children's protector and conscientious objector. The guardian of their dreams and attitudes and faith in a life they are free to imagine, envision and trumpet to the rest of those hiding beneath the canopy of not-good-enough. I MUST be the person I am meant to be. For me. For them. For us all. I have heard the call.

I MUST dare to be a director.