Water Tattoos

I watched Il Postino and fell in love with it. I then decided to watch it again but with the commentary by the director Michael Radford turned on. In a number of key scenes, Radford explains that he used a handheld camera to shoot a long master shot and then did not edit it. To the audience a shot like this seems very simple. Imagine two characters, framed beautifully by pinkish, white washed walls, an overbearing volcano in the distance, the blue ocean in the background, and a conversation that goes on for 2 minutes without a cut. How simple does that seem? According to Radford it is not. It is very difficult to time two actors talking that long, to entertain an audience that long, to setup the lighting with gauzes and filters, and to shoot the long shot with a handheld camera. So many intricate details! This is great cinema.

Yesterday, I had my first experience learning how to dive off a springboard. Watching my friend perform acrobatic, gymnastics in the air before cutting into the water was simplicity in motion. People at the pool stopped and watched him perform. It looked effortless. When I stepped up to the front of the board (nope, no-one was watching me perform), I was trying to remember all the instructions as I attempted my first dive: 3 step-approach, arms back, right knee up, point toes, tighten the glutes, and so on. As I made dive after dive, I was awkward; I received water tattoos as I hit the water in less than elegant ways; there was water in places... well let's just say I was water logged!! It was a challenge to work so many muscles and time the moves, just like there are so many things to set up for and then film a master shot.


As Radford explains, the more the actors worked together, the more the lighting and the cameraman worked with the set, the more mastery they had. The same with diving. The more I practiced each part the less complex it seemed. It became more fluid.


Diving off a spring board is something that I have feared. I remember as a kid stepping onto the board and being so scared of high it appeared from the water. I was pushed off, hit the water painfully, swallowed a tonne of water, and I never went back. This is amazing considering how I love the water. So now I get to master my fear. I had made my fear more complex than it was. And the simplicity of the fear was that I didn't dive. How simple is that? Fear is so simple really. And while it is complex to face fear, it is in the practice of mastering that fear that it becomes simple and effortless. Oh, I'll get water tattoos and feel awkward, but the reward is in the mastery of the complexity that simplicity is born.