Holiday Message, 2023
As I write this end-of-year Holiday Message, I am sitting at the airport in South Africa. I have completed a year’s long journey of shooting a feature film about the Climate Crisis that took us to six countries all over the world.
It’s been an incredible adventure of meeting new people, immersing in different cultures, coming together with crews from all over the world to share in our mutual love for making films and telling stories, and getting new perspectives on life, art and where we come from.
It’s been such a challenging year for so many. Right off the heels of Covid, a necessary – but brutally long – strike changed the landscape of our industry and probably the future of a career in Show Business, once again.
At some level, artists have always been faced with conditions that make them adapt and change course, find new ways to persevere and innovate, and expand to a new level that our art form continues to evolve into – or because of these fluctuations – creates the need for itself.
The strike, for instance, has become a sort-of foreshadowing of the future of our industry with decision makers becoming Big Tech companies who are influenced by, and want to create with, AI; use algorithms to make creative choices and are run by out-of-touch Billionaires. Perhaps this turn is not that far removed from the late 1920’s when the Silent Film Era was coming to an end and all of those artists who were accustomed to telling story silently one way (and making a living doing so), had to adapt and reconfigure their work to survive in a talking cinema landscape that ushered in a whole new way of working. The Talkies.
Today, throw in the influence of Tik Tok and how viewing habits are drastically changing, the emphasis on big corporations’ wanting to pay artists less and less money, the corporatization of most things creative and voilà! artists are faced with new challenges to forge a career.
But it’s not all doom-and-gloom. As new situations give birth to new forms, they force us to reconsider why we create, who we are creating for, what really matters and how to make the most of our very short time on this rogue planet spinning in the middle of dark space.
Origins.
That word kept popping into my mind as I filmed a metaphorical Origin story in the Namibian desert.
Partly, it was an actual Origin story because Mother Africa is the birthplace of us all. We come from here. We emerged from our original homo sapiens ancestors in the grassland savannahs to migrate everywhere.
So our home, for all of us, is an Origin. Where did we start?
When working on this climate piece I wanted to finish the film in a location that not only is coincidentally on the front lines of the Climate Crisis, and also one of the regions most likely to be dramatically and horribly affected by it – but I also thought in terms of new beginnings that a future new climate is going to inevitably generate.
Origins.
If we think about the meaning of the word – it’s not just about where someone comes from or a place or destination to return to. To me, it also signifies a reason.
The why of something. The reason to do something. The meaning of something that keeps us going when a lot of other things might change. Or when we want to give up. Or have to step bravely into the unknown.
And this brings me back to the challenges and changes we have all faced this year and the uncertainty that a new year brings.
What is the origin of our wanting to tell stories? What is the origin of our existence and creativity? What is the origin that inspires us to explore, be curious, go on an adventure, take risks and share ourselves?
If the origin of something is a birthplace, certainly that place also resides within you.
I was chatting with a student here at our Cape Town studio and she had a thunderous realization that, “We are Nature.”
Nature is us. Try, as some people might, you can’t separate yourself from that which you are.
The Origin, then, of all things, also resides within us. It’s a knowing of what to do – a tiny voice or seed planted within us that encourages us to be fully, committedly an expression of the potential of what it means to be human. (We are doing that anyway, just by being here, but to be more conscious of it all certainly changes our purpose and meaning.)
I know unpredictability and change is hard. I know uncertainty and impermanence can be scary.
What we can tap into when we feel unmoored is our own personal Origin story to weather the storm. What insight and assistance can it provide? What inspiration and hope can it help glean for you to make decisions about your life and the art you wish to create? How can we use it to chart a course for us that keeps us in the artful expression of who we each are and the best way to share that to help benefit others?
Marvel Studios loves Origin stories. I know now why they do it. It is a tracing back to the beginning to help their protagonists live more powerfully as themselves now. (Oh, and also save humanity and all that stuff!) But it’s basically a key to discovering more deeply who they actually are. I guess one could say it unleashes our super powers.
That’s what an Origin does. Brings us back to ourselves and helps us acknowledge and embrace our own hero within. We discover we are on our journey that is heroic because, though it can sometimes lead us to a physical place, it most certainly, always leads us to the places within ourselves that shows us who we are.
I hope the close of this year and the exciting opportunities that lay ahead in 2024 keep you tethered to your own unique Origin story always unfolding. You can’t get it wrong, really, because all beginnings and all endings abide within you. Just like the history of life on planet Earth.
The Origin of us all.
Happy Holidays and a Blessed New Year! Love, Tony
