Fault Lines A Nomad Filmmaker’s Journal Memoir by John Knoop 1 Fault Lines A Nomad Filmmaker’s Journal Copyright 2012 John Knoop 2 I’m on the home stretch. Ready for the Reaper, though not expecting him just yet. Still eager to savor the human comedy along with memories of many great adventures. I’ve been sitting here looking out at the San Francisco Bay from my place on the ridge-top in El Cerrito, trying to figure out how to tell my story. I’ve had a full life and the trade-off is that I must live in a wreaked body that wakes me at dawn every day with waves of spasms and soreness. I know I’m lucky that I still have a body that walks and a story to tell. Maybe the challenge will prevent me from mourning over the decay of our republic and keep my mind moving even if my body can’t follow at its old pace. There may not be a publisher ready to take a chance on an oddly structured memoir by a non-celebrity but I hope to publish mine so I can give copies to my grandchildren. First I must write it. I hobble into the kitchen and heat some water in a battered saucepan to pour over a spoonful of Turkish grind. I’ve been making coffee this way since living in Bali years ago while I shot a film there. Maybe a toke of hash to open the memory bin, which contains a kaleidoscope of events from both war and peace. Since I have the best bad luck of anyone I know, there are some narrow escapes in the plot line. I moved over here to escape the dot-com boom surrounding my former South-of- Market loft in San Francisco. It’s a small one-bedroom house that I’ve filled with my books and film equipment. There’s a stone fireplace in the main room. My bed is wedged between it and a big window that has the Golden Gate in the middle with Alcatraz gleaming to the left like a floating medieval castle in the morning light. I’ve torn out a wall, removed the wall-to-wall carpet and asked my brother Rudy to lay down a pine plank floor so I could turn both rooms into a live/work space, like a small loft. A tattered Navaho blanket hangs on the wall behind the bed and there’s a Zapateca weaving I brought back from Oaxaca lying on the bed. A steamer trunk with my grandfather’s initials carved into the lid is against one wall. He probably packed it when 3 he came to San Francisco in 1906 as a young engineer to help rebuild the city after the big quake. There’s a DVD duplicating machine sitting on top. Lighting stands and a square Halliburton case on the floor next to the fireplace. Cobwebs in the corners. Books, DVD and VHS copies of films on every shelf and surface. It’s a mess, but it’s mine and I know where to find everything. The kitchen is dirty but I can’t be bothered with keeping it clean. It hasn’t made me sick. Outside there’s an unkempt herringbone brick terrace under a white Acacia next to a Monterey pine. In the second room I weave my way through a disorderly pile of lights, an SQN mixer, a 16mm Éclair camera and a collapsed Vinton tripod to a drawer stuffed with a dozen battered notebooks and leather bound journals I started writing in my teens. I’ve hung on to them for years to prove to myself that I’m a writer as well as a filmmaker. They have sustained me through more than one identity crisis, and now I’m going to see if I can use them as a skeleton to hang my story on. The journals will serve as ribs and I’ll see if I can flesh out the parts between with some of my thoughts now, sitting here in El Cerrito. Maybe I’ll start with some journals about a motorcycle trip to Argentina, when I decided to drop out and dive into a serious effort to be a writer, after a strange freshman year at Columbia College. Moving to my computer I crack open a musty folder to begin reading the typed-up journal entries I kept from New York to Buenos Aires. Paoli, Indiana, June 27, 1958 Thank god, we’re on the road at last. Our BMW R-69 is parked outside a Main Street café, leaning against the curb, resting on the crash bar that protects its two horizontally opposed cylinders. It’s a bizarre looking load: a surplus duffel bag on each side of the rear wheel and another on the rear luggage carrier with a spare tire draped around it. People slow down to stare as they pass. There are three boys circling it right now with their chins out, pointing at the engine. Who knows? It could be the first of its kind ever seen in these parts. It’s not a Harley or an Indian, so what is it? Naren Bali and I are having a sandwich. This is the first entry 4 in my “Concise Rambling Journal.” I’m developing my own version of shorthand, using keywords and initials so I can jot ideas fast. Sitting with us at the counter are four bib- overhauled farmers talking about anhydrous ammonia prices and their corn crops. Down at the end of the room there’s a plump woman in a wicker chair facing the window. Her body is shaking with soundless laughter. One of the farmers turns and asks where we’re going on that machine, nodding at our bike. “California,’ Naren says. “And after that, we’re headed to Argentina.” “That’s quite a trip.” The man whistles, “So far away I’m not sure where it is.” “Bottom of South America,” his friend says. Naren is from Buenos Aires. He’s a physics major. He’s been studying and working recently at Columbia as a computer programmer and now he’s going home and I’m going with him. We left New York three days ago and pulled away from my parent’s farm east of Cincinnati this morning, after a heartwarming send off. Who knows where we’ll be tonight. Sleeping next to a wheat field in Kansas I hope. It was at the beginning of my freshman year at Columbia College that I showed the bursar a bogus letter from my uncle saying I was living with them so I could move off campus. That’s when I met Naren in the funky kitchen of a jazz musician’s apartment on 116th street where I rented a room. I noticed a slight accent and his wry sense of humor. He wears a short beard and has the look of a smart pirate. Soon we were cooking what we called ‘tuna fish shit’: rice and canned tuna with some frozen beans or peas thrown in for color. There was nothing but expensive bistro style food in our neighborhood, so we formed a cooking pact to save money and just ate sandwiches, eggs and things like the tuna slop. It resulted in getting to know each other and hatching this escape plan. My latest; I’ve actually been trying to escape all my life. Escape what? Authority and myself. I remember listening to a program on WQXR that played a lot of music from the Andes. I wanted to see where it comes from. Mostly, though, I was eager to break free of the academic world to see if I could make it as a writer. Naren’s been talking to the farmers but he’s tired of waiting for me to finish scribbling. Time to pay the waitress and bid the farmers good afternoon. Once this steno notebook goes to the inside pocket of my leather jacket I’m ready to hit the road. It’s my turn to drive. 5 Colorado, June 30 We alternate the driving, switching every hour or so. There are only a few positions you can sit in with two on a cycle, although when I’m the passenger I’m working out a way to stretch by leaning back against the load and raising one knee and then the other to cup it between my hands. The cycle is running beautifully, even with the load and windage of the three duffel bags. Coming down quiet two-lane highways at high speed, we are a forbidding sight, especially with Naren at the helm. He wears a surplus aircraft-carrier flagman’s cap, which resembles an executioner’s hood. His fierce beard merges with huge, bug-like goggles. Dogs rise from peaceful repose in clipped yards to howl in amazement and flee tail tight under porches. Children playing happy games look up smiling to see us approaching and are transfixed by stark terror. We ride until we’re cold. About forty miles past St Louis we run the cycle off the road, through a little creek and up a hill in the moonlight overlooking highway 40. I fell asleep talking to the big dipper. We dozed a couple of hours past sunrise. Taking a break next to a stream somewhere in the Rockies. Naren’s gone for a walk and the R-69’s engine is cooling so it’ll be ready for the next climb on this 90 degree afternoon.