34: How to make your Documentary Journey exciting

​Ithaka - By C. P. Cavafy - Translated by Edmund Keeley

Lesson 34 from my Online Documentary Course How to Kickstart your First Documentary is how we look at your documentary as a magical journey. Let's take out our magic wands, throw some fairy dust around us, fill our hearts with joy and adventure . . .

​For your documentary journey is exactly that.
An adventure

You have no idea where you will go, how you will go, and sometimes why you will go to where you will go. What can you expect, how to plan?

Sometimes it really takes some mythical magic. And it should. We can look at our creativity as if delving into the unknown; it is a quest, a crusade. 
​
​I was reading Ithaka by C. P. Cavafy the Greek, Egyptian-born poet. You can hear Sean Connery reading it above; please do, it is stirring.

There are lines which are so deeply powerful, such as: as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body... Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. 

Take Cavafy's words with you on your journey, keep them close to your soul, and you will find the magic is there.

​Thank you so much.

And ​have a wonderful Christmas.

Ithaka
By C. P. Cavafy
Translated by Edmund Keeley
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind--
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.


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Vintage fantasy rainbow land 1920 public domain