A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Calm Before, contriving conditions for happiness.

Hello, Hi, Howdy! You and you and you and you and you and ME! Takes a village to make a movie. Daughter of Godcast is on the cusp of our 19th episode, 19 weeks of telling the stories of the Daughter of God and not so tangentially me, your hardly humble host. Episode 019, The Calm Before.

The strategy for bringing Daughter of God to the known universe is trust. I’ve talked about the evolving purpose of this podcast, from building an audience to discovering why I movie. This is such a cool question, and such a powerful reason to get in front of a camera and microphone each week, not to mention writing these episodes, to explore why I am here and perhaps why we’re all here.

I feel in some sense I am podcasting for all of us. This experience of weekly remembering and reflection is one that I would highly recommend, but pragmatically speaking, if everyone had their own podcast, who would have time to listen?

I get to yammer on, I’m vanity publishing. This is both an amazing opportunity and a gift. All this technology and history has conspired to help me OUT myself on a weekly basis, to be worth listening to, which means pushing the envelope of my experience, mentally and emotionally. That’s the part I recommend, specifically. To practice being fully alive.

Seems pretty clear that we get to choose whether we feel more or less alive. Happiness is just a feeling in the body, yet some folks define arbitrary external conditions that must be met before they’ll allow themselves

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Apocalyptic laughter beyond loss or gain.

Welcome and hello planet Earth, this is episode 018 of the Daughter of Godcast and i am still Dan Kelly, writer director with stories from the making of the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, 11 years in the making and by the end of this episode we’ll have covered roughly two years, leaving just 9 to go. I trust your having as much fun as me, even if your having only half as much fun as I am, you’re having a lot of fun. Because I having way lots of fun!

Last week, just before I was ready to record episode 017, I accidentally saved over most of what I had scripted. I tried brute forcing my way through a rewrite, but that wasn’t feeling fun. In finding my way back to fun, I was given a story to tell instead, the wise woman. I didn’t have this story before the episode went south, so did I experience a loss or a gain?

If you break your leg and discover a whole new level of self sufficiency and confidence, is that a loss or gain? Anastasia, who read us excerpts from Ursula K. Le Guin’s introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness in Episode 017 recently had this very experience. Maybe we’ll be seeing and hearing more from her.

The variability of loss or gain seems to depend entirely on creative participation. Wanna make anything feel like a big win? Decide. There’s libraries of self help books that say much the same. Summing up my acid days in the east village, reality is whatever you believe. Here’s an addendum, believing on purpose or by default. If I am going a little to fast, feel free to ask questions anytime.

Every episode I seem to be telling you this podcast is actually something other than what I said it was the episode before, or the episode before that. It’s a model airplane, it’s organic french fries, it’s a pack of lies, it’s your grandmothers kiss. It’s all people everywhere.

Well, all the above AND we’ve made / are making a movie here, you can count on that. Each episode has at least a little something about movie making and specifically making the Daughter of God.

We’re ready to revisit the start of 2007, which feels resonant, as we are about to begin another new year, 2017. I’m steadily radiating, in spite of bites defying propriety, technical vexations and aesthetic compromises. 18 weeks feels mildly shocking, yet here we are, again.

You are listening to me tell stories of the making of Daughter of God, AND maybe just as intriguing,  you’re listening to me groping in the dark – learning how to podcast, how to establish a sustainable production schedule and still have a life AND figuring out why I am podcasting.

I am also hearing back from you, the royal you that is, all you all. Friends old and new calling and writing to prod and encourage, and that’s super fun. No one has yet told me to shut the fuck up, though I’m sure a few people have sampled my ramblings and moved on.

This podcast is made possible by a generous grant from the universe, with additional support provided by the cosmos, the spooky tribe of energy allies, gorgeous Gaia herself and you who listen, contributing your time and attention, translating the pops and burrs and squeaks of my voice into beauty upon your canvas of cognition.

You are responsible for this podcast. Without you, Daughter of Godcast is just binary patterns on whirling hard drives, hidden away in the secret server farms, tended by men and women we’ll never meet. Mystery upon mystery makes our connection possible. You, me and mystery.

This episode is already mostly introduction, so without fu

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Glasses of grandfather are talismanic.

Welcome to the Daughter of Godcast, Episode 017 Christmas 2006. This is recorded in 2016, and in the story of the making of Daughter of God, we’re almost clear of 2006 and about to head full steam into 2007. Momentum folks, that warm tingle in your chest and belly, spreading out down your thighs and into your shoulders, down your biceps and calves and now everywhere, electric spooky waves… of pleasure? Getting more so. That’s momentum, and the ghosts of 10 Christmases past.

I’m post Catholic, wild hybrid Hindu, Taoist, Pagan, Vortexan, but you know, Christmas? Still love Christmas. Today is winter solstice, so if your listening on Wednesday, December 21, 2016 HAPPY SOLSTICE! Believe it or not light will now be increasing, especially here in the United States of America. I know, many people feel like we’re descending into the dark ages, but go talk to a tree, like Melonie did. Calmed her right down.

Or listen to me, and here’s what I’d say. These are exciting times. Just like in the movies, when all seems lost, the heroine saves the day. We are the Joseph Campbells that Joseph Campbell talked about.\

Here’s Anastasia reading from the intro to Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Why do I make movies? Because I want to lie to you like Ursula K Le Guin, I want to tell you the cosmic lie, what you already know but keep forgetting. Why do you forget what you really are? Theme park Earth has automated forgetting routines built in so our divine aspects won’t kick in too soon and spoil the tension, the drama. If you are only focused on the happy ending, where’s the fun in that?

We’ve called out a mess of contrast, we’ve gotten things to be super scary and that means we’ll have to remember way more than we’re used to. Time to get divine and shine. Marianne Williamson’s language might be heavy on the god thing, but she’s pretty much got the jist, far as I’m concerned.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

That last sentence is a like a blueprint to me. “our presence automatically liberates others.

And this from Ghandiji

All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.

I won’t ask others for freedom, beg for better conditions. I notice and embrace whatever feels authentic and enlivening right now. As I walk this world as free as I can be, I’ll find others who also are ready to be in the moment and together we will incarn

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Editorial – Deeper through 2006.

Welcome to the Daughter of Godcast, here we are cozy together at last! we could be halfway through the story of the making of Daughter of God  or maybe just 1/3 of the way. We’re a ways, that’s for sure, episode 016, and there’s still so much to tell, you lucky people. Of course, I am the luckiest of all, since all I’m required to do is ramble on, while you might have to be doing dishes or changing diapers while your listening, unless you’re watching me too in which case, hi! Let’s see if we can blow through 2006.

2006 was a eventful year. I’d been living in Brooklyn for two years and had a pretty sweet groove going. A great place to live, creative friends and had started my first featurette, although I initially thought I was making a short. Of the many friends that have croaked while I’ve been making DOG, the first one died in 2006.

I kept a trickle of cash and beaucoup inspiration flowing documenting live performance, I co-hosted dance parties and music jams at the United Gardens, repeatedly struck out romantically and went way beyond the Daughter of God rough cut, as I gradually found answers to why I wanted to make movies.

A rough cut is an assembly of shots roughly corresponding to the screenplay, with perhaps some placeholder media, like music. The June 2006 rough cut starts with simple music I whipped up and opening shots of Gerry, Christina and the big boat. Christina boards the boat, walks down the passage and climbs the stairs to her cabin. Uncle Joe shows up, he and Christina talk, then he’s gone. Christina changes, sped up footage with some cross fades

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). Editorial – the rough cut flops at first wave festivals.

Episode 015 of the Daughter of Godcast, Dan Kelly here again with you, here in the lovely Artist house, Inc. studio in beautiful Beulah, Michigan. Want to shout out to our listeners around the world in Nigeria, China, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Australia, France, Puerto Rico and the Russian Federation, as well as Traverse City and Ann Arbor Michigan. I see you out there listening and I thank you so much.

Today’s word is polymath, or “many learnings” from the latin. I’d prefer, “many likes” which would be polyphile, I suppose. I could make that word up, but it would wreck havoc with my SEO, or search engine optimization. That’s a blast from the right now, because along with weekly episodes of Daughter of Godcast, I’m teaching myself how to make dog.movie more findable in the world, via the poly prescient Google.

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). A new why clarifies the podcast, why make movies?

Greetings wide world, we’re deep into the Daughter of Godcast, with me Dan Kelly, writer director and maybe much more, this is the story of the making of the featurette Daughter of God, all about making movies generally and becoming magic and digging this wild ride around the sun and into the future aboard this beautiful Earth, together. Most of us have no idea we’re wandering in the deep empty, destination unknown. Probably better that way, bigger surprise when we arrive.

Episode 014 Why Make Movies?

I am lucky to have very strong and servicable feet, I’ve walked up canyons and down mountains. swam across lakes and danced for hours in the moonlight. How silly I might be to think of my feet as components, like the shoes I wear, for I am my feet. That which I am feels like feet.

I am feeling the blood moving in my feet. Not a booming, throbbing like I have in my abdomen or chest, more like easy waves on a beach, a gentle surge and then receding.

This would make sense, as the feet and hands are extremities, at the end of the long hoses connected to the heart, that steady drum in my personal percussive ensemble.

Just take a moment and check out the feelings of your feet. Pull off your shoes and socks and have a look at your feet, or if your driving, then keep your eyes on the road while noticing you’re feet on the pedals, their weight and how sweetly your connected to the vehicle you’re in, through your feet and hands on the steering wheel. How is it that we can extend our awareness into steel and rubber and be one with a car? These are all clues should we dare follow them.

I’m telling a little story now about feet. I can’t help myself. Is there a plot? A hero? A quest? Maybe just inviting you the audience to think about feet is enough. Hey, imagine… that’s the smallest story we can tell.

Feet are incredible, and forgotten. I run barefoot on trails and so I know something about excellent feet and what they are capable of. I think the most I’ve run barefoot is 18 miles, on a combination of trails and beaches. So I didn’t get this next bit from Wikipedia. Unless I’m lying and I might not be.

Feet are optimized to make the most of terrain. If step up on a tree branch across a trail, the shape of my foot changes, wrapping around the cylindrical shape of the branch. If the branch is thin, I receive how much energy the branch absorbs from my weight and I adjust to leverage the branch’s rebound when I push off.

There are roots on the trail, and rocks. I was worried about these when I first tried running barefoot, but it turns out feet are smart and know where to go. They just know. Yes I have tripped and stepped on pointy things over the 30 years of running barefoot, but that’s been rare. Again, I’m talking about running here, not jogging. Things are whipping by rather quickly. Is it possible to even see all the tiny details of happy foot placement on the trail? My sense is that I’m not so much seeing with my eyes as a I am seeing with my feet.

Running barefoot was my first clue that there might be senses beyond the five I was told about in school.

A couple years into Daughter of God’s production, I solo camped on North Manitou Island for about a week, which I’ve done many times around

A podcast about movie making and the scifi featurette, Daughter of God, with Director Shri Fugi Spilt, (Dan Kelly). A few totally naked truths about indy film, inspired by kidhood in the 70’s. Wrapping production aboard the big boat in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Hello, out there, Haloooo! Haloooo! echo, echo! I’m talking with you again. Yet another episode of Daughter of Godcast and the vagaries of movie making. Did you ever wonder how podcasting actually feels? Every week, I belly up to the microphone, and the camera too now and I imagine listeners. Here in my studio, no other humans or mega fauna nearby, staring into the black crystal cavern of a Canon lens. I’m just talking to myself over here, yet at the same time, I can feel myself talking to the whole world. Only crazy people talk to themselves, ESPECIALLY if they imagine crowds raptly attending, (crowd roars). Do this in front of a camera for money and maybe they’ll give you an Oscar. We live in a sublime topsy turvy universe. Wonder is so available, so easy to allow.

These podcasts are about movie making, yet we’re exploring topics that might not immediately recognized as strictly relevant. Tonight while doing dishes I reveled in some clarity. I am drafting a manifesto.

For sure these podcasts are supposed to be entertaining, fun to listen to and watch. Fun to make! They are also essay drafts, destined to be condensed down into an extended documentary which I’ll release close behind Daughter of God. If you check the FAQ, a making of documentary is one of my deliverables in the gentle release, originally conceived as a DVD extra, whatever that looks like in distribution. These podcasts have helped to coalesce an exciting premise for the doc – my artist’s manifesto. I’ve been involved in movie making for decades and while I’m totally unknown as a director, I feel poised to transform the medium.

I wanted to say throwing down the gauntlet, but that sounds like I am challenging adversaries, and I don’t really give a shit what the rest of the industry is doing. A Daughter of God documentary would both sketch a map for myself of what’s possible and energize a beacon that other’s of my ilk can see. That’s what I got doing the dishes tonight. Whoa, right?

At first I started generating all this movie making content because I wanted to inspire curiosity about the Daughter of God prior to screening, because I mean what’s the point of a release without an audience? In episode 001, I mentioned that even the cast has kind of written the project off. Which was fine with me, because the project had to find it’s own flowering, as do I. Now the bloom gets brighter and so worthy of sharing.

After my fictional vs real apocalypse quandry in 2009 from episode 012, I stopped working on Daughter of God, shifted gears and decided to make a documentary about artifacts of the future sustainable civilization. Every filmmaker has an unfinished project but only a truly exceptional filmmaker would dare have two.

So screw all that claptrap about building an audience. Yes, I’d love more discerning participants resonating with the crazy transmissions from the Crystal Lake stewardship center. To have a massive amount of people as excited to see my movie as I am to show them. The goal of building an audience doesn’t inspire, but clarifying a really kick ass ILLUSTRATED vision of what’s worth doing? Now we’re talking.

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We’re back! Together! Episode 012 of the Daughter of Godcast, I’m still unapologetically, Dan Kelly, writer and director and you’re guide across the river to the dead and forgotten past, 11 years to be exact, though after 12 weeks we’ve whittled away almost a year, so now there’s only 10 years between the here and NOW. Whether your streaming this from India, China, the Pleiades or just plain old Beulah, Michigan, USA. Welcome.

Meanwhile, here in the time capsule, the tiny treasure that unlocks the utopian yearning, glints and fascinates.

Dan Kelly, how can you, of all people, continue to fixate on this bauble from the past while right now, America is quaking with transformation? Shouldn’t you be out in the streets? Friends, I’ve been there and yes, I might go into the streets again, to revel in the energy and exhilaration of shared, strong desire. I do love a powerful focused gathering.  Check out the links on Episode 002 for  in Arrest of TC 8 and 500k in 10 minutes.

By the time you watch or listen to this episode, re-released Episode 010 with the new introduction. I talk about, “history and present events as the playing out of an epic clash between occluded forces.” We may not be able to know what’s really going on by following news links on the www. For me, the American political experience is grand theater staged to either lull citizens into complacency or set us at each others throats. Because I am adept at hiding in plain sight, a scruffy angel sporting a hefty bag poncho, or maybe less metaphorically, a cosmic commando presenting as a straight white male trust fund baby, I notice what others just can’t

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Welcome to or back to the Daughter of Godcast, episode 011. Dan Kelly here with the whispers from the wonderful, hints and portents, the handbook for humanity masquerading as a podcast about movie making. This probably has already got you rocked back in your control consoles, but buckle up, there’s a worm hole ahead.

Dorothy Gale walks out of her aunt and uncle’s house post twister and from a black and white world she emerges into another dimension, color. We’ll here we go, upping the dimensionality of the Daughter of Godcast. We’re now offering both an audio and video version! (Available 11-11-16)

This is a big step. I was recording Daughter of Godcast in my studio’s sound booth, where I do voice acting and narration, for other podcasts like StarshipSofa or Clarkesworld. Kind of a cool environment, isolated, dark and very quiet, except when there’s a cricket invasion. The crickets! That was the clue, 10 weeks back. If am narrating a story about traveling to a distant galaxy for a science fiction podcast, crickets kinda break the suspension of disbelief. But Daughter of Godcast doesn’t require carefully controlled conditions. In fact, the actual conditions here and now are relevant to the story! They are fun. So I am moving the recording out of the booth and into the various other creation spaces.

So another new dimension is not only being able to see me, but to peek at the places where much of the magic happens. A remote studio tour, every week! Yay!

For me this means my life is even more available, more public. But hell, why not? I’m an artist, and artists create for fun and to share. So now I’ll be creating even

Hello friends, Welcome to Episode 010 of the Daughter of Godcast. Yes, you heard that right, we’re trashing that whacky numbering system and getting in accord with the podcast accumulators. This is actually the 10th consecutive week of podcasting, the 10th episode, so welcome to Episode 010. 009 is now officially the lost episode, until we reissue the entire Daughter of Godcast series for the platinum anniversary edition.

April 2006. Aboard the Alexander Henry, 200 foot Canadian Ice Breaker repurposed as a bed and breakfast, a hybrid preservation and income project for the Maritime Museum of Great Lakes in Kingston. Daughter of God rented this big boat for 10 days.

In episode 008, we heard from Ann Loeding and her impressions of the production aboard the Alexander Henry. The crew complaining about my brusque manner because I was over wrought, overwhelmed, trying to accomplish way to much with a finite amount of me.

What did I do right? Well, first and foremost, I sprouted. Me, a wild force of nature, a divine creator, dropped into the best sandbox yet deployed in all the cosmos and then what? 43 years of waiting. Of hesitating. Of barely even scratching the surface of my power. Lots of Americans are dead by 60 or 70. Three quarters of my time on earth frittered away being almost happy.

A patient seed at last twisting out a root and unfurling a green leaflet. Making a movie, my movie, my script. Taking on way more than my current instantiantion could hope to accomplish. More-ing myself through sheer will. Taking on the same amount of work that usually requires at least 2-3 people, if not 10. A 100 watt bulb burning at 240. Making up for lost time, for missing crew. Supposedly.

Just getting on location was a huge gift I gave myself. Back then, hard work was THE way to blow through beliefs… beliefs about myself I had reinforced for 4 decades and the ONLY way I knew how to do that was to rally and rally and rally. Sacred effort, back then. The only way to get unstuck was to work harder than I ever had. To remember as I dragged myself out of bed at 4:00 am to prep for the day’s production, that this is the new me, that this was MY movie and everything I was doing was for a brighter and more delicious me. I had decided, for sure, but back then deciding wasn’t enough. Heroic struggle against all odds was what made the gods smile.

That’s an amazing perspective on why I was pissing people off.

Going on location was a shift, a new experimental me. I wanted trusted friends along for sure, because somewhere inside I knew that I needed poeple who could follow me to the edges of myself. When I was looking for people to bring, I cared less for their cinematic experience and more for their quality of heart. This comes from my friend and teacher Swami Bua.

One night after a big p