Brown-and-orange colored glasses

This will have to be quick, since I'm in Rochester, didn't get enough sleep and need to get on with my day.

Last night's alumni career program at R.I.T. got me thinking about how I market my self. I'll write more about that later after I've processed some things and had time to sleep and get my ideas coherent.

Right now, though, I want to focus on what happened after the program. We let out around 7:30, and I stayed for a few minutes to speak to one of the panelists, who was very interesting and had some good insights to share. From there, I walked the short distance under the pine trees to the Gannett building, which houses the School of Film and Animation. This is where I spent 4 years of my life - 3 as an MFA student and 1 as an adjunct professor.

I'd heard that the Fourth Floor, which was the center of production and editing back in my day, and still seems to be, has changed a lot. It most certainly has. Gone are the 16 mil flatbed editing rooms and the large 16 mil editing room for non-sync editing. It's all been replaced by digital editing suites with Apple logos as far as the eye can see. Gone also is The Purple Couch, which coordinated with the bright purple paint on that end of the hallway (which is also gone). That entire end of the floor seemed very antiseptic, in fact. I strolled down to the classrooms and studios, and here is where I felt a rush of nostalgia.

The classroom where I spent the first three academic quarters (the first year) of film school had not changed whatsoever. Oh, I'm sure inside the projection booth the equipment was different, but the appearance of the room, the chairs, everything else was exactly the same. I sat for a moment in the darkened room, letting people's faces and names come to me. Some I've lost touch with forever, some I've recently reconnected with in L.A. Many of them were young 'uns back then (being undergrads), and now they are working professionals. It made me smile to think of the crazy cocktail parties we'd have, the intense emotional bonds that would form from night after night of late-night editing sessions, the Cagers (student workers in the equipment Cage) watching Brazil on a monitor for the umteenth time.

Back then, there was no MFA in production, only in animation, so I co-created my degree program with faculty and my committee chair, Erik Timmerman. Erik was an immense man in many ways, not the least of which was his intensity. He taught advanced screenwriting classes, and I both admired and feared him. He wore these huge glasses, often pushed up on his forehead, and when he wanted to make a point, he'd tilt his head down so that the glasses fell into place low on his nose, then he'd look over those rims at you with a look that could decalcify bones. Ah, but he new the score with me. He knew I was afraid of success, not of failure. He was right. Erik passed away a couple years after I graduated. I miss him still.

Who was I 13 years ago that I had this experience, this incredible creative focus for three years, and then let it just slide away after leaving the area? It's important not to judge the person I was back then, but rather to recognize that the intervening years have provided opportunity for me to create, write, and come to terms with a great many things. I'm ready now, like I couldn't be ready back then, to pursue the dream.

I think if Erik were here, he'd smile at me over his desk with the Virgin Mary nightlight plugged in (he was an Atheist), and say, "About time, Cambio."