Time Travel

Denver Film Festival

It happens every year. A theme emerges from the week’s immersion in film. Denver’s 48th Film Festival paid homage to time travel. Back to the Future wasn’t featured, but nirvanna the band the show the movie from Canada knelt at Christopher Lloyd’s feet for a hilarious ride on the Flux Convertor. The animated movie Argo from France depicted a near future and a far off future that shows human resiliency. Nevada Rose, filmed on the Cornwall coast cast me adrift. It was an artful film with dramatic noteworthy performances.

Film Fest is less of an excuse for not writing and more like going to a museum to fill my creative vessel that I drain regularly with revision-work. Clearly, the universe wanted me to pay attention to time and the warning, Be Careful what you Wish For. Though nightmares and man’s inventions attempt to rewire our present thinking to believe the past was sweeter, that the past could be short-circuited for a different outcome. These filmmakers confirmed my belief there’s no going backwards. No redos. You cannot reverse yesterday’s sunrise and sunset. Day was done. Don’t go back.

Gary Lightbody in The Forest is the Path writes “it was not a place I was running from, it was myself.” So this human inclination to look back with nostalgia at the past, is linked with believing we were our better selves then. We are guilty of dreaming up our past and our future. Expansive at times, we reshape our present obstacles as impassable. We forget the paths of boulders and brambles. They’re behind us and perhaps they embolden us for the future. To encounter the remains of our lives, dreaming may be our most important skill.

My novel follows a woman who acts without reconciling with the consequences. She cannot go back. Cannot undo what she has done. She must face the outcomes of her actions. Only then can a cathartic conclusion work. The three films were successful because the central characters buckled with hindsight. Relationships, not money, not prestige, helped each find their way back to the present with a kinder view of those they love and an extraordinary acceptance of their frailty. While the characters were uniquely crafted by the writers, they shared universality. Humans dream. They hope. They want better.

My revision will take as long as it takes. I hesitated around a big scene and accepted how time is a fragile framework for remembering and dreaming.

I took a week off from the project to travel. I hope the distance, while it isn’t time travel, will permit me to approach those final scenes with clear insights.