The Rube Goldberg Deal

It has been my experience that life is what happens when you're not busily engaged with a digital device. In my case, it's the stuff that happens when I'm not staring blankly at a screen and contemplating the peculiar shimmer of dust motes in a sunbeam.

I've been a moderately successful blogger with some minor yet gratifying recognition, but lately, my well of witty observations has been sputtering off and on like an airplane engine running out of fuel. It's not that the Muse has abandoned me entirely. There's plenty to write about here on the Carolina Coast. The problem is that nothing has been resonating with who I am inside.

The Spark

It was during a moment of reflecting on The Deal, the movie I'd watched the night before, starring William H. Macy and Meg Ryan. In the film, the protagonists decide to produce a major Hollywood movie despite lacking funds, a crew, or any knowledge of how to manage such a large and complex undertaking. Yet they decided to do it anyway—audacity masquerading as a business plan.

Little did I know that watching this movie would set off what I can only describe as a Rube Goldberg machine of ambition. You know, that delightful contraption where a candle burns through a string, causing a lever to fall, which makes a ball roll down a slope, which triggers a line of dominoes... well, you know what I mean.

The Setup

Right on cue, as if summoned by her sense of dramatic timing, Ms. Wonder shimmered into my office with an announcement. She'd been accepted into the Shapes and Colors program, a yearly showcase of prominent artists worldwide, and the whole rigamarole had inspired her to aim higher. 

"I want to get my photography into maritime museums," she declared with the confidence of someone who'd just discovered the secret to perpetual motion.

As a well-known figure in abstract photography who works wonders with her camera—capturing the very souls of ocean-going freighters—her ambition wasn't entirely unreasonable. On first hearing her words, I began comparing maritime museum exhibits with making a major motion picture masterpiece with no resources. And not in a bad way!

If a movie could be produced from nothing, as in The Deal, why not stage a solo photography show in a major museum with similar resourcefulness? And then it hit me—if Wonder could pull off her scheme, I could do similar with my writing--go from blog posts to publication in local media.

I'd continue to blog, of course. Nothing will take me away from The Circular Journey.

The pattern was elegant in its simplicity: The Deal's movie project became Wonder's maritime museum quest, which became my magazine article ambitions.

What started with William H. Macy and Meg Ryan's fictional Hollywood gamble had triggered a real-world chain reaction: Wonder pursuing maritime museums, me pursuing local media recognition, and all of us pursuing something bigger than where we started.

This is precisely my element--on the road to Find Out. Thank you, Cat Stevens, for giving me those inspirational words. Thank you, Ms. Wonder, for joining me in the Rube Goldberg approach to life.

We did it before with travel writing and photography. We'll do it again with art photography and local journalism.