And what have you done?

Thoughts on incompleteness in lieu of New Year’s Eve resolutions.

I hope you’re having a great holiday. I am, though I am somewhat melancholy. It may be the cloudy skies but I think it’s more than that. I feel this overwhelming sense of incompleteness. That can be tied to the number of loose ends in my life right now, projects in limbo, and projects at the mercy of a worldwide pandemic. It might just be my neurotic personality, but I think it’s more than that as well. And what if it isn’t? My experience of the world right now can only be described as “incomplete”. Doesn’t really matter what caused it. Perhaps I have a combination of imposter syndrome, anxiety, and FOMO, all of it made hyperbad with coronaphobia.

According to my Myers-Briggs indicator results time and again for almost 30 years, I am an ISTJ, which means, among other things that I thrive on closure. That can be a good thing, of course, but creative work thrives on open loops. One has to be patient, adventurous, uncompromising, and yet determined enough to bring the project to fruition when it’s due, or when it’s ready. Open loops are one thing; spinning one’s wheels incessantly is another. And one needs to be wise enough to walk away or put things on ice when the universe just won’t budge.

According to Myers-Briggs language, “People with the Judging preference want things to be neat, orderly and established. The Perceiving preference wants things to be flexible and spontaneous. Judgers want things settled, Perceivers want thing open-ended.” I have learned, with this particular preference of mine, to work against preference, to embrace open loops, incompleteness.

When I finish something, even if I downright hate it at the time, it almost always ages well, for the simple fact of being finished and out in the world. The most infantile of fanzines, quaint posters for quaint events, awkward essays and articles, homely books, and amateur videos - these artifacts become less embarrassing over time and, instead, are reassuring stakes in the ground. Fortunately I have enough of these to battle the entropy of my decaying memory. They remind me, too, to persevere, to get to the finish line.

I’m not just talking here about my various projects, but also books read and not read, films and plays seen and not seen, travel ambitions, purging of stuff, photos scanned and not scanned, digital file management, recipes tried, repairs and renovations, 12 steps taken, community and charitable commitments, and family obligations.

Another part of me refutes this need for tangible completeness. I realize that my character, my imagination, and my overall consciousness is shaped by the journey, the overlapping experiences. This is made abundantly clear by travel. These days when we travel we create photographs and video, buy objects that help us remember the stops along the way, like this Pendleton shirt that I’m wearing is a marker of a brief time in Portland, Oregon. But even my travel experiences when I created or collected very little documentation, shaped my life enormously: I think of camping trips and trips to Montreal, Cape Cod with my parents and sisters; my first trip to Europe - Budapest, 1991; various trips when I was at Bruce Mau that are primarily only marked in my mind (eg, Copenhagen, Rotterdam/The Netherlands, Vienna, Ghent, Paris, Essen, Basel/Weil am Rhein, Atlanta/Cartersville, LA, SF, Chicago, Orlando, and a hundred trips to New York). But in some ways each trip was an act of completion, just as each household chore is an act of completion.

A few Incompletions from the past disturb me to varying degrees:

My film, Music Swims Back to Me, that went off the rails during the pandemic. It’s possible that we will find a way to finish it, but I am in mourning to tell you the truth. The stars are not aligned it seems.

Travelling to Italy, an ambition that goes back 35 years with me, and that I haven’t been able to make happen. The pandemic negated the last such plan (we were supposed to go in May, 2020). I think any significant trip to Europe right now would allow me to let go of the Italy ambition, because I’ve added to it the desire to go to Norway, Finland, Sweden, back to Denmark, maybe Iceland, return to Belgium and the Netherlands, more UK and Ireland, more Germany, and on it goes.

A book I started writing on the filmmaker Dziga Vertov (primarily Man with a Movie Camera, in the early 90s. I think I got about 40,000 words or so into it and then abandoned it. I haven’t had the courage to just throw the manuscript away, but there is no book there.

My website jimsehdden.com is a bit derelict. I know nobody looks at it but when I was updating Linkedin and the profile info on all my social media sites, I thought that it was ridiculous that I didn’t have my own site that reflects my life, projects, writing, and media files. It’s underway, but kind of pathetic.

My 12 step program. I’m clean and sober, but during the pandemic (of maybe even before it) I just drifted away from the fellowship and the structure that is the reason I’m alive today. I have to find my way back.

Never finishing Middlemarch, Bleak House, Infinite Jest, anything by Pynchon,

Walking out of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles when it was shown at the AGO around the time I started working there. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and I thought I was going to die of boredom. Since I have seen several Akerman films that I quite like, and since this is highly regarded by various people that i respect, I’m pretty sure I was just in a pissy mood that day, and that it’s time to Complete watching the film.

Same goes for Tarkovsky’s Andrei Roublev.

Learning another language. I sleepwalked through French in high school, always getting 80s and 90s, but retaining nothing. I wanted to rectify that, and I’ve had ambitions to learn German and Italian. I did take a few Italian classes with a bunch of friends in 1992 or thereabouts. But I abandoned it. I feel like I still need to master another language even though it will now be harder than if I had done so in my 20s or 30s.

Learning to play piano properly. Learning the guitar. Learning to sing.

Becoming a better cook again.

Learning InDesign again. I understood it enough to lay out simple books years ago. When I look at it now I haven’t a clue how to even start. I need to have that skill in my toolkit again.

Reconnecting with friends who have disappeared from my life for one reason or another,

Is it my new year’s resolution to dive back into some of all of these abandoned dreams?

Maybe. But this year I will be launching a major exhibition (I AM HERE: Home Movies and Everyday Masterpieces), with an ambitious accompanying book, and I will produce at least 8 other publications for the AGO. I will be working on another exhibition that opens next December that could not be more exciting to me personally (but that’s all I can say right now). I will be continuing to disseminate and promote my book, Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada (ed. with Barbara Sternberg, and major contributions by Stephan Broomer and Mike Zryd). I will independently publish a book on the painter Mashel Teitelbaum, and help produce a book on Inuit and Sámi culture. I’m going to continue working on improving my neurochemical and mental health. I’m going to make some unexciting but necessary home improvements. I’m going to travel to NY and maybe SF again…. I hope. I’m starting a music salon with Meredith and Shellie (February? At the Dominion tavern). I’m going to get new glasses, orthotics, work boots. I’m going to the dentist. I’m going to spend time with my father and sister. I’m going to get my recovery program back on track. So maybe I’m not going to learn German