From Sea to Shining Sea

While falling asleep last night (and thrashing around, trying desperately to do so) I had a vision. A few moments later, and it would have been a dream...but that's neither here nor there.

A documentary: "From Sea to Shining Sea." I'll explain the idea in a second, but I think it's interesting to note that this is not my first itch to make a documentary. Right after I went into teaching, I joked with my wife that I wanted to change occupations again, this time to be a documentarian. My idea then was called something like "Threads." That can't be right; it seems like it was snappier. That's how it always starts--with a snappy title. Like blogging or teaching a Bible lesson: it's not really important or a good idea unless it has a snappy title, and no ideas come without the title first. Anyway, the idea was to chronicle the lives of apartment dwellers and observe the interconnectedness of man. "No man is an island" and all that jazz. We would throw away a piece of furniture (and of course, when I say throw away, I mean put it in front of the dumpster) and observe who came to claim it. In my experience, this is inevitable. Dumpster diving is asuch a reasonable pasttime among those living in apartments that furntiture is rarely discarded. Hence the idea for the documentary. The threads of the upholstery weave together like the threads of the various families lives. So once the furniture is aquired by a new family, we would ask the family's permission to film them and so on. An alternate take on the idea would be to track the lives of thrift store t-shirts. Maybe it will happen one day. Until then, if you happen upon this site and read this, don't rip off my idea.

"From Sea to Shining Sea" would not be a politically motivated movie as the allusion to the patriotic song might suggest. It would deal with the USA, but in a more intimate way as it is viewed through the eyes of one man (me). Borrowing from the film about the life of Che Guevarra, "The Motorcycle Diaries," I would buy a beat up, realiable old motorcycle--with a sidecar--and explore a land I've only read about. The goal would be to travel the perimeter of the United States. Now I haven't done any research, so I have no idea how many miles this is or how long it would take, but what an awesome road trip! I think I'd like to take my son(s) and add some personal interest for the viewer. It would also make it a more beautiful experience in my life. I'd get to share the exploration of our country (our world) with my boys. A coming of age story, maybe. I'd travel south on 377 to 281, and then run the majority of Texas on this same road, all the way down to close to Brownsville. As far as I can tell, there is no coastal route along the Gulf of Mexico, so I've hit a snag in production already, but I'll figure it out. Heading east from Brownsville, I would then outline all of of America, sticking to the coast, no matter how tiny and painstakingly slow the route might be. I'd see the Gulf, the Atlantic, weave across the northern boarders formed by the Great Lakes, hug the boarder of Canada, travel the Pacific, and then race by Mexico on my way home. I just took a break to check the distance and I found a plan laid out (starting in CA) to bike the perimeter. I found it on 43 Things, submitted by Apollo Lee. He states it would be 16,000 miles, and that, if he could bike 100 miles a day, it could be accomplished in 6 months.
This epic road trip would encompass one of my dream road trips: travelling Route 1/101, The Pacific Coastal Highway. I might try to also cover my second dream trip, Route 66, but since that cuts diagonally across the states, from Chicago to LA, it might not fit the vision for the film. Listen to me talk like this might actually happen! Still, I would love to do it.
All of this makes me think of a conversation I had with a fellow art teacher recently. She suggested that I might be a conceptual artist. When I asked her for her definition of the term, she said the purest definition would be an artist who comes up with ideas. At this point of my "career," yup, that's what I am.