I'm a pilgrim on the edge,
on the edge of my perception
we are travellers at the edge.
We are always at the edge of our perception.
- Scott Mutter
This is the opposite of yesterday's post. This will be long. The formatting will likely be off, I noticed in other posts that my Blogspot app makes weird decisions about where paragraphs start and end so.... I don't know, try to imagine where I might place spaces.
Like here...good luck...
Today was very eventful. We started by waking up in Myles' grandma's house, having breakfast and trying to make plans for the day. We had eggs and toast and discussed getting interviews and what equipment we didn't have and would have to build that day. The latter turned out to be a slider, Softbox/lighting rig, and a shoulder mount for our camera. Building these items took us most of the day, between trips to the local hardware store and scrounging materials from Myles' Grandma's shed and garage we got them built with the help of Myles little brother, Ryan. We made a slider out of a skateboard and a 2x6, the soft box out of a lamp, a dog cone and a pillow case and the shoulder mount out of a bunch of plywood a shower rail, duct tape and half a set of free weights. All together, its one of the most makeshift batches of camera accessories I've ever encountered, let alone made. We used duct tape and mis-matched screws broken drill bits and whatever else we could find to slap together what we needed for our 10 day shoot. I didn't think to take any pictures of the results for the blog, but rest assured I will have some on tomorrow's post.
After completing all three objects ( nicknamed Superman, Tony Hawk and "The Peddy") we hit the road for Digby, Nova Scotia and the house of Carl Jenkins, an ex-CBC producer, who had agreed to put us up for the night. Being in Digby is essential for us as it's one of the best fishing areas in the world and we have three interviews and a union event to cover that all need to be filmed here tomorrow, so staying here with Carl is ideal. Carl himself is a joy to be around, in just a few hours of talking to him and his son Justin and we have been given more to think about than we ever have before. Carl is a gem of a man, his house is a treasure trove of artifacts from both his years at the CBC and his elaborate and, frankly, badass personal life. Paintings, large picture prints, swords and stacks of literature are only a few of the things that adorn the partially finished house of this aging intellectual. I say partially finished because Carl is in the midst of rebuilding the extreme fixer-upper he purchased some years ago. It may not be a finished house but it defiantly is this man's complete home. His style of story telling is enthralling, he totally gets the fact that we hang on his every word because of the quality and brevity of his tales and he milks that for all its worth, literally making the three of us beg him to finish stories that I cannot divulge the details of (they include, but are not limited to, the Fraggle Rock Set, the Big Friendly Giants personal life and the whereabouts of a Canadian children's TV icon's most prized possession).
Carl is more than a retired CBC worker, he's an all out man's man. He speaks with conviction, fights with gusto, romances all the ladies and cooks a mean fish'n'potatoes (an amazing meal the he tells us only cost him 4 dollars, but I think would be worth ten times that if it was cooked at a restaurant here in Ontario). He and his son (himself a fisherman) grilled us about the subject matter of our doc and really made us call into question our motivations and ideas about what was happening to the lobster fisherman in Nova Scotia. And we came to the conclusion that we cannot, will not, and should not draw a conclusion for the audience, all we do is raise an issue, a question for them to answer themselves.
Carl challenged us, sang with us and drank with us as we talked about life, death, fish and the universe. We jammed out original songs on a guitar that was missing a string and discovered Carl is also a gifted musician and singer. He is a man of many talents, stories and opinions and, he put us up tonight. He let three random Ontarian kids stay with him, in his house while they make their cooky movie. What a boss.
To really understand Carl you have to meet him. He's a unique individual and completely unapologetic about it. Brad said it best: "All I want to do is stay here and write this man's biography." Me too Brad, me too. But I don't think that's what Carl would want us to do. Carl wants us to go and do, and be, and live and not to worry about an old guy like him, surrounded by books and tools and memories.
He's living the dream. And he doesn't even know it.
I could write for hours about Carl and what we've talked about with him today, but I already have spent one hour and I haven't even told you about all of today's major developments, so I will do that now, briefly.
Tomorrow we will be interviewing a boat captain and maybe one or two of his deckhands here in Digby. After that we will be at a Sixteen-Eighty-Eight meeting. The Sixteen-Eighty-Eight is a organization that represents 1688 individual fishermen that fish lobster in two specific Lobster Fishing Areas in NS. They are one of the loudest voices in the region speaking out against big businesses taking over the Lobster fisheries and tomorrows meeting revolves around the 1688 trying to organize a strike of the fishermen, to make themselves heard by the government and to let the big companies know that they can't just take over the industry without some push back. But, not all of these fisherman can afford a strike, because with a strike on, they have no means to feed their families. However if they don't strike they will continue to be exploited out of the money they should be earning.
So you can see why it's important we be there.
The 1688 is a lead by a man named James Mood, who I will be letting you know more about as we get to known him better over the next couple days, as he's also agreed to let us stay with him for a night or two.
Big things are on the horizon. We're about to take then plunge.
Hold your breath. We take the big dive tomorrow.
-Matt
P.s. Below are some of the pictures from today, mostly from Carls house. As well as one of our makeshift softbox- "The Peddy"
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