day 47 | ‘second person’

1994. New York City

erica and i were newly engaged and were about to move to berkeley. i was
excited, but also conflicted; i hadn’t accomplished what i’d hoped to in new york,
namely getting a recording contract, so in some ways leaving felt like defeat.
i wanted to change that before we left. resolve things somehow
i also wanted to capture something about my experience there.
something visual and visceral

i’d been experimenting with a camera i bought, filming in my apartment and around
the neighborhood. i was a big fan of the jim jarmusch film ‘stranger than paradise’
and godard’s ‘breathless’. i loved the mood of those films – the feeling i got when i
watched them

i knew an italian bellydancer named lola that had done some acting. i decided to try
filming some scenes with her. see what happened.
i had an idea for a story about a writer whose girlfriend disappears one day. two
years later she returns – with no explanation – and moves back in with him.
they never discuss what happened.

the first scenes i shot went well so i recruited two other friends, and then i was
making a movie. i shot mostly on weekends. i edited it using the camera and a vhs
deck.

when it was done, right before we moved, i screened it at the anthology film
archive. afterwards we all walked to erica’s place on the bowery for a going away
party.