I went to Max’s place ready to finally get the ball rolling, camera in tow and all. It was around 8pm that I arrived at his place, whether or not that influenced the fact that we ultimately filmed nothing, I have no idea.

We sat in his room and began talking about the idea for the film. We are really close, so we spend a lot of time talking and our conversations are always comfortable. In fact, he is probably one of the few people I experience this so purely with, and I realised too late that this is something I need to take advantage of for the film. That is the very thing I’m trying to capture and I didn’t capture it, because I was so caught up in it.

At one point during the conversation I considered opening up voice memos on my phone and recording at least some of it but I didn’t because I knew if it was introduced it would affect the nature of the conversation. This was probably the wrong decision but it was what I figured at the time and next time the first thing I plan to do is hit record.

The conversation was grounded in the present in that it never really suffered from any sort of pull; it was something greater than us that we were participating in. It was informed by our recent experience and aspirations but not consumed or guided by them. It was malleable. The longer it continued, it became increasingly clear; the moment was in higher definition than any other I’d been a part of that day and it seemed to be the only thing we really embodied.

A conversation between two people is possibly the most intense sort of conversation if it reaches this point. Increasing the amount of people increases the amount of clutter because there are just too many permutations of how the conversation and its participants are being interpreted. I think of it like a venn diagram, where the mutual space is made biggest when no more than two circles are involved. The mutual space is important, because it is unique to the two circles creating it. That connection is so distinct and collaborative, and when something like a state of flow engulfs the conversation that is the vessel for that connection, it is brought to its fullest potential in the same way that a single mind is perfectly concentrated in this state.

I felt that my conversation with Max reached this state and it was a valuable experience. It validated the premise of the film for me, while also broadening what the film could be. At its core, I want to communicate the essence of that embodiment of the present, and I will need to approach it from different angles to get a comprehensive portrait of it. I need to record conversations and let them evolve naturally.