On the shoot of Migrul, I was way behind.
It was a marathon film, written and shot in a few days during the Off Courts festival.
We were shooting the next day – a single day – and everything was missing.
In particular: an important wig for my character. Pieces of costume. And the materials to build a fake train window.
So that afternoon, I'd planned to drive to Caen and back to pick it all up.
An hour there, an hour back, with no idea which shops to target.
And rush back for the rehearsals with the actors, which we hadn't even started.
Running late, then. I should have left right away.
Except that before lunch, rather than keep grinding through a to-do list that wouldn't stop growing, I made the following call:
I'm going to take 20 minutes for a spoon nap.
A spoon nap is when you doze off for a moment holding a spoon. If you fall asleep too deeply, the spoon drops and wakes you up.
Supposedly invented by Dalí, it's meant to help you step back and make better connections between ideas.
For example: studies apparently had subjects solve complex puzzles with or without a spoon nap. And apparently, the nap helps enormously.
So I gave it a try. First time.
What I quickly realized: it's really a kind of meditation (something I already do every day) disguised as a micro-nap, without the New Age vibe.
The difference is that I'm used to meditating right after waking up, not in the middle of a rush, not when I'm about to hit the road to solve a hundred problems.
But I played along.
I lay down, relaxed. As often happens, images came up, ideas, a calmer awareness.
Then within ten minutes, one by one, all my problems solved themselves.
The wig? I'll use a mop, it'll be funnier.
The train window? I'll use the curtains from my bedroom, they'll be perfect.
The costumes? I just remembered I have the ones from my previous shoot in a cellar – they'll work fine.
When I got up, everything was sorted.
The trek to the other end of the world was no longer needed.
The solutions I'd found were better than the ones I had in mind before.
I took a lesson from that experience:
When I feel resistance to an action, something I don't want to do, it often means I shouldn't do it.
There's another solution, more personal, more aligned, more creative, within reach.
That I don't see because I'm not present enough.
So presence isn't just some beatnik idea about picking flowers and chanting Hare Krishna.
It's also what lets you align your actions and become more productive.
For shooting vampire films, say.
But probably for everything else too.