Voyage - at Story Vault - with Louis Gourmeau

I will be presenting a work-in-progress that I'm calling Voyage at Story Vault - The Great Grandfather Club - tomorrow night, Saturday, June 16th in San Francisco.

Voyage shows how older and younger generations connect through the retelling of stories. World travelers perceive the world in a way that you can only get when you leave it all behind to plant your feet down in a foreign land. This is an experience that the narrator of this project and I share.

Louis Gourmeau is an octogenarian from Brittany, France. He is a World War II veteran, our dear family friend, and a natural storyteller.

I first met Louis when I was an exchange student living in France in the 1990s. My great-aunt and cousins encouraged me to meet him, and when I did, I knew they were not mistaken.

Louis loved telling his stories about how he met my great-uncle during World War II, and how he then found his way to New York where he met the love of his life at the Air France counter on Fifth Avenue.

It wasn’t until recently that I thought about documenting Louis’ storytelling. Regretfully, I planned my trip to France too late, as his wonderful wife, Jeanine passed away in October 2011. So I knew that I had to quickly travel to France to capture his oral histories.

In January 2012, I spent over a week in Louis’ country home in Provence filming his stories of World War II, New York in the 1940s, Fifth Avenue, love-at-first-sight, and anecdotes of my very large and eccentric Irish-American family. Feeling devastated and alone by the loss of his wife, Louis came alive again by reliving his happiest moments.

Listening to his stories, I realized how our lives are similar, how I met close friends and created memories when I lived abroad. I remembered that we are all on a similar journey. By listening to Louis’ life, I understood that one day I, too, will be looking back on life, trying to reconnect with its meaning, just like him.

Here's a clip:

i thought i was over this... but alas

I don't know what to say about this except for "watch it now"

something happened a little bit early this year

Scott Olsen speaks from Occupy Oakland

I am working on a film about warriors for peace, including Vietnam Vet for Peace Brian Willson, who lost both his legs during a non-violent protest here in the U.S. when he was run over by a train. It is easy to make the connection between Brian Willson and Iraq War Vet for Peace Scott Olsen of Occupy Oakland, who was knocked unconscious during a police raid on October 25th. It is very ironic that both Brian and Scott came home from fighting in wars on foreign soil with no physical injuries and were consequently brutally injured while practicing their democratic freedoms at home.

excerpt from my short story, Bad Faith

That night I dreamt I was with him. We were in a strange city at night, maybe Florence, walking hand-in-hand down cobblestone streets. He led me down a narrow passageway that was lined with marble statues of naked Romanesque women. There were so many of them that I started feeling unsettled by the thought of having to compete with these stone beauties. Morris stopped at one in particular. Gazing at her, he said to me, “You are my favorite.” It was a statue of a young woman, draping a sheet of billowing fabric over her front side, her back exposed and naked, save for the long curls of hair that hung there loosely. He reached up and fondly touched the curve in her lower back, the part that merged into her plump bottom. “Isn’t she exquisite?” he asked. And then he leaned down and gently kissed my lips. I awoke, flushed, still tasting the flavor of Morris’s lips on mine, floating in an ethereal space high above my body. It took a few seconds for me to come down, back to my bed and the emptiness of my bland bedroom.

The Kiss

I went on a walk last weekend, and serendipitously, these were the two things that I filmed. Coincidence? I think not.

The City

Whitey's got skillz!

"People call me crazy and I think they're right."

Here is an outtake from my behind the scenes interview for my film, Forms of Identification - an experimental dance film about identity crisis resulting from debilitating loss.

F*CK YOU Mike, I WILL NOT JOIN YOUR CULT!

I made the BIG LEAGUES!

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