Following Sean

    

    The other evening while scrolling for movies to watch I came across Following Sean, a documentary about filmmaker Ralph Arlyck, reconnecting with Sean Farrell, his subject from a short documentary he had made thirty years before in 1969, when Sean was 4 years old. The premise of that documentary, called Sean, was following and interviewing Sean in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1969. In that documentary we see the camera following a barefoot Sean walking around the Haight with intercuts of an interview with Sean where he admits, among other things, to smoking and eating grass. Sean and his family had lived a few floors above Mr. Arlyck and he thought Sean would be a great subject for his film thesis at San Francisco State University. In Following Sean, released in 2005, we meet up with Sean in his early 30’s and get some background on his family's history and where they are today as well as Ralph’s family history and present day life. I did not expect that Following Sean would have had a very profound effect on me.

Seattle to Austin 2.0

My former residence at 684 W Olympic Way in Seattle

    Back in September of 2017, I came back to Seattle after living in Austin for only a year. I won’t go into why I made that decision at the time, I’ll just say some it was due to a few circumstances.  About a year after coming back to Seattle, I thought about going back to Austin. I know, make up your damn mind already Paul. Anyway I thought about it now and then until the beginning of 2020 when I put some serious thought into moving back and decided I would do so in late spring or early summer. Of course COVID happened which changed everyone's plans.

Moving Music 2: "Wishful Sinful"

  

John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison of The Doors

    This is the second installment of my Moving Music series. You can read the first one I did on “Blue Sky” by the Allman Brothers Band. I explain in the first paragraph of that post how I want to write about these different songs that have affected me in very profound ways. The song I will feature in this post is “Wishful Sinful” by The Doors.

Greenwich Village 1984

Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village
(photo by Jean Christophe Benoist)

    I was thinking recently of my teenage years. It seems so long ago that it doesn’t even seem like it was my life. I was thinking specifically of a time when I had this idea that I didn’t need any more information about how to live. I felt like I was an adult even though in reality I didn’t have much of a clue of what being an adult meant. Did you have a time like that when you were a teenager? Well for me that time was in the summer of 1984 in Greenwich Village.

Infinite Video

    My friend posted a video of her 3 year old daughter the other day. She was making different faces, an angry face , a surprised face, a happy face. It was absolutely adorable. As I watched, I realized that my friend probably has tons of pictures and videos of her daughter since the day she was born. And so does everyone else who has kids born in the past 10 years. I often wonder how this constant video will affect how children of that generation will perceive themselves as they grow up.