Godfrey

I was doing some walking and I was doing some looking and then I was doing some Googling, and I discovered that Godfrey Reggio, one of my heros, used to live in the Christian Brother's Residence, which is guarded by a secular cousin of the stolen saints, two buildings down from my studio, here on the snowy campus of the College of Santa Fe.

Reggio spent fourteen years in a Roman Catholic religious order of men, dedicated to fasting, silence, and prayer, training to become a Christian monk. Then he left the order and went to make movies. From 1975–1982 he made Koyaanisqatsi, a Hopi word meaning "life out of balance".

Some people carry Bibles to guard against bullets. When he went to war, Alexander the Great carried a copy of The Iliad in a gold chest, because it contained so many lessons. Koyaanisqatsi travels with me wherever I go, in a blue leather case with a few other movies.

Godfrey Reggio was the first director of Fabrica, where I spent a transformational year in 2004.

When he was there he made Evidence, a short film scored by Philip Glass that pictures young kids watching TV.

It is unbelievably beautiful too, and when I watch it today I think how it's like looking at myself as a kid in the mirror, how as adults we're all just kids with different screens, and how I never really changed, as no one ever really does.