Having a system of reading while writing and writing while reading, well, that was always a simple dream from the previous project. I'm old enough to remember that the only way to read through a subject was to be in the university library, or the great hall of the New York Public Library, and call for things as you wrote or as you read, or as you waited and thought, or just waited, or walked to where the catalogue was, or were the book might be.... etc.
About three years ago, having a head that was too full and unable to remember everything, and unable to find a proper tool to do the above... it seemed that my main process and ability was to create archive, rather than remember where things were while writing... which led to my not writing so much... I just gave up and started to print everything out. And I did that... the picture above is about 1/3 of it, at the peak. What did I print?
My internet research... I'd tried bookmarks, I'd tried Zotero, and I just couldn't get past sorting, much less on to remembering. And of course, reviewing links for printing had the good result of leading to new links and thoughts, so the research expanded in the areas that were of interest at that moment. That gave initial feedback and value to this new old somewhat desperate system.
Not printed, but sorted in, at this point, was typical archive material, papers picked up in places of interest [Aum Shinrikyo tracts picked up on the street in Tokyo, specific stuff like that].
Then I printed the script, broken down to a paragraph a page, for reviewing, remembering, thinking, sorting.
Then I printed a visual log of all the shots in my edit, a grid that went on just about forever.
Why did I do this? Because I couldn't write while making video, couldn't cut video while writing, couldn't remember one either well while doing the other, and so wanted a neutral remembering place. Paper and notebooks were familiar, and not invisible ... that was one of the first things noticed about video, so many years ago, that it was basically invisible, unless you were lucky enough to have machines, electricity, the actual videotape, and a place to use them all at once. So this system worked, at least while putting to together.
And it served it's rhetorical purpose, at least, which was to find a place which put everything together, or more simply put, to find a way to read while writing and in reverse. Someplace easy to get to, easy to review, easy to take apart and reassemble. Which is what I'm doing now, first taking out the chaff... I'm throwing things away, as you can see in the picture at the bottom... just as I've gone back to the script in the computer, to review systems in the computer [using evernote at the moment for clipping], and to literal and simple video-writing systems [see post before last]. It was good to get everything out of my head, now it's nice to put it back in there, as needed.
