Saturday night, Nothing to do, Log House in Sweden

[Christian Williams]

Well they say 90 minutes of nothing to do wants company, and here it is: A young fella from outer space who builds his own log cabin in the woods, swims in frozen streams, bores holes with auger, and never says a word for three years.

I am not recommending this video, that would be an awful thing to do to anybody. I just dangle it. Avoid if possible. But listen, it is Saturday night, my wife is laid up by her second shingles inoculation, I am shell-shocked from Tom Ricks's The Day of Battle (#2 of his trilogy on WW II), and although lucky to find the Bills/Dolphins game on TV, that only occupies an hour (record, FF between plays and all commercials), and, well, I don't think I could have done what this youthful Swede did, who says he wished to avoid citification.

Yeah but there's a party at the end. Swedes, though. No idea what they were saying. Probably they were saying, "so, Erik Grankvist, what are you going to do next?" I may not have actually discovered him. He has nearly a million YouTube subscribers. Well, he's no Beyonce, of course. She has 25 million subscribers. But has she built a log cabin? I don't think so.

On a tech note, his shooting and editing is excellent and the audio superb. Natural light throughout is a challenge, but lends authenticity. He says he did it all himself. I believe, and try not to think how he charges batteries for the cameras.

 

[Frank Langer]

Although not much to do with sailing, this was quite incredible! The skill he showed throughout in building this cabin and surviving there is amazing!
Frank

 

[Prairie Schooner]

Can't. Stop. Watching.
Excellent. Questions as well. How'd the anvil, oxy-acetylene, and IPA get there? Still, I believe. Too much confidence swinging that ax to be a dilettante. So, I don't begrudge him some help hauling in supplies.
I also wonder when he edits a/v. Christian, on your long sails do you edit? How much time per day?

 

[Christian Williams]

My guess is he edits in a modern studio, perhaps his own. The gear is not expensive nowadays. I edit at home, afterwards, since last time there were nearly 400 gigs of video clips. A typical editing ratio for me is 1 minute/1 hour, which includes downloading, clip naming and rendering time (but not, of course, shooting). My recent Hawaii video, 80 minutes, was 250 hours of editing. It takes a while because the possibilities are infinite and editing is discovering what works.

 

[Prairie Schooner]

. . .

I've done a very little crude editing. A swirling rabbit hole for sure. Do you write in any kind of sustained, regular pattern on your Hawaii trips? I recently finished listening to 'Raratonga'. I really enjoyed it.
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This guy's video reminds me of 'Into Great Silence'.

 

[Christian Williams]

Interest may lag fast on this topic, but I'll go on a bit: there is little writing per se in my video world. Mostly it's trying the capture the surprises, that is, the unplanned. Or creating an essay, an observation of a theme, out of discovered elements. It's notable to me that most YouTube videos in the class of log cabin-building, or primitive metal casting in Asia, or How I fixed My Waterpik, or all the sailing videos, are essentially documentaries, no matter how bad or ill-informed or amateur.

Documentaries begin with images, to which a script is added. Unlike drama. I mean, if you write a script first and then shoot it, it is preconceived. If you expose the camera to the world and then, subsequently, try to figure out what story the camera saw, the participation of the creator is altered. (My professional doc friends disagree violently with me on this topic. They go to Darfur to look for outrage and reveal it, or into the rain forest to save it. That sells and Cousteau started it. But starting out to reveal something isn't the same as just...starting out. )

Video/film is of course a bunch of lies in all cases, it being impossible not to impose a point of view, although the best ones hide it skillfully. Writing fiction is more real, in the sense that it confesses to being made up. The contradiction in all of that that has fascinated me a long time.

Young Herr Grankvist of the Log Cabin, what was he up to, really? Perhaps a story of escape, or of challenge (like running a marathon), or subtle commentary on the evils of city life, or simply a celebration of himself? Was his motivation ego, desperation, fame, or hope for employment? Or is he a prophet? Or is he in it to sell merch? The work exists outside of its motivation, I think. I still admire Woody Allen movies despite the ban on him in my neighborhood (but I have to keep it quiet).

Anyhow, it would be hard to write out a script for Grankvist's saga. He watched himself happen and recorded it. That used to be called autobiography, for which a script also can't be written in advance. Or can it? Surely Churchill and Caesar and Napoleon scripted their lives. But as in all successful documentaries, the ending still came as a surprise, even to them.

 

[Prairie Schooner]

I was more imagining you working on a novel or prose (or poetry?) unrelated to the trip. Interesting observations and ruminations. I wrote a lame blog as crew on an easy transport from Bermuda to Maine. We'd upload via satellite once a day. It started to feel somewhat like a hall of mirrors. Plus, there was precious little time to sleep, eat, and write when off watch.
As you say, where you put cameras and record is a decision, a kind of writing. Or do you run a camera 24/7?
I once read a book covering a composer, Bach perhaps. It was just historical documents, presented chronologically. A kind of raw feed. With my ADD, I'm surprised I finished it.
Do your novels start with mental pictures? Snippets of dialogue? Smells? A broad outline? A title? Is it different for a commissioned fiction work, such as a screenplay?
If this is getting too tedious, or a repetition of questions you've been asked a thousand times before, or too far afield, feel free to disregard.

 

[Christian Williams]

I've asked many writers the origination question, and they don't know. I see it as an impulse, like hunger. Then the tech part of story, finding a way to tell it. I once was handed a piece of secret paper by a minion of a studio head. He said, "Michael feels strongly about this one. Let's meet four times and work out a story." The hand-written scrap of paper from the chief said, "Good cop, bad cop." There were probably a half dozen other Hollywood writers given that assignment that day. A movie got made 5 years later. So sometimes the origin of the impulse is just...money.

 

[Prairie Schooner]

The secret-paper story is hilarious, Christian. A designer friend told of a boss who would say, "Augie, I got a idea. Draw me a pikcha!" Here, I was thinking of the works you do without an assignment, more as a result of that hunger. I've never heard a good explanation for where the ideas come from either. But I am interested in artists' descriptions of the forms the ideas arrive in.

 

[Bepi]

(Since we are here) The ancients gave credit for inspiration to Clio, Calliope and company. As my favorite philosopher says, 'People don't have Ideas, Ideas have people." The author of "Ragtime" says the story was like a stream of information, the complete work dictated to him.

 

[Christian Williams]

Author of "Ragtime," E.L. "Ed "Doctorow, good example. He offered me his cabin in the woods if I needed to be free of distractions. As if possible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/01/17/el-doctorow-from-ragtime-to-riches/da5da542-71e8-4de5-a308-7daf83fcd05b/

In rereading this piece I recall it being somewhat controversial, because I made some of it up, I guess satirizing him, and some of the traditional editors at the paper disapproved, harrumphing a bit. But it appeared in the Style section, at the time a bastion of experimentation. Doctorow, interestingly, came to my defense. He loved it, he said. Not particularly a compliment because in the writing of such stories, which are always enabled by a publicity tour and have advertising value, the subject is not supposed to like it (if so, it's a puff piece.). But times have moved on and such distinctions no longer exist.

This all pushes "The Raftup" forum a bit off sailboats, but as I understand it that is not a crime, only possibly an indulgence, as long as it ain't politics.

 

[Bepi]

Author of "Ragtime," E.L. "Ed "Doctorow, good example. He offered me his cabin in the woods if I needed to be free of distractions. As if possible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/01/17/el-doctorow-from-ragtime-to-riches/da5da542-71e8-4de5-a308-7daf83fcd05b/

In rereading this piece I recall it being somewhat controversial, because I made some of it up, I guess satirizing him, and some of the traditional editors at the paper disapproved, harrumphing a bit. But it appeared in the Style section, at the time a bastion of experimentation. Doctorow, interestingly, came to my defense. He loved it, he said. Not particularly a compliment because in the writing of such stories, which are always enabled by a publicity tour and have advertising value, the subject is not supposed to like it (if so, it's a puff piece.). But times have moved on and such distinctions no longer exist.

This all pushes "The Raftup" forum a bit off sailboats, but as I understand it that is not a crime, only possibly an indulgence, as long as it ain't politics.

Good Gravy! Do you ever feel like an intelligent Chauncey Gardner? Next it will be cigars with Vonnegut. Hmmmmm.... google search...... aaaaand....Jemeny Christmas!, Is it possible to admire someone and be simultaneously galled by them? It appears so.

 

[Loren Beach]

This all pushes "The Raftup" forum a bit off sailboats, but as I understand it that is not a crime, only possibly an indulgence, as long as it ain't politics.

An astute observation, as normal !

 

[Prairie Schooner]

Author of "Ragtime," E.L. "Ed "Doctorow, good example. He offered me his cabin in the woods if I needed to be free of distractions. As if possible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/01/17/el-doctorow-from-ragtime-to-riches/da5da542-71e8-4de5-a308-7daf83fcd05b/

In rereading this piece I recall it being someone controversial, because I made some of it up, I guess satirizing him, and some of the traditional editors at the paper disapproved, harrumphing a bit. But it appeared in the Style section, at the time a bastion of experimentation. Doctorow, interestingly, came to my defense. He loved it, he said. Not particularly a compliment because in the writing of such stories, which are always enabled by a publicity tour and have advertising value, the subject is not supposed to like it (if so, it's a puff piece.). But times have moved on and such distinctions no longer exist.

This all pushes "The Raftup" forum a bit off sailboats, but as I understand it that is not a crime, only possibly an indulgence, as long as it ain't politics.

Thanks for indulging me.
Now, I'll just move over a few seats, put my pink sport coat in the overhead bin, and enjoy the show.