You will remember from the last entry that I drove into Orlando early on June 25th. Then I had one day to sort things out in my room before work started. On Sunday the 26th, I drove over to the Plaza Theatre, just a few miles from my house, to help set up for the first week of TCS.
TCS stands for âText. Context. Soul.â Or, âText, Context, Soul,â if you prefer less trendy punctuation. Itâs essentially a learning/teaching/training/equipping seminar series that Excelsis (the company I work for), in partnership with GCM (some vaguely-defined missions-and/or-church-planting organization), puts on. This summer marked the second annual TCS (I talked about last yearâs earlierâit was a good bit of the reason I decided to work for Excelsis).
Anyway, The trade between Excelsis and GCM seems to be (and Iâm not a part of any of this so itâs just my guess) that in return for some financial (and other) backing, Excelsis gives a sort of priority admittance to the seminars to GCM staff (who together comprise probably around or over 95% of those who do attend).
The basic idea behind TCS is, as I mentioned, equipping (which is another trendy word in my circles that just means teaching/preparation/training/etc). Who are we trying to equip? Essentially, Christians. With what are we trying to equip them? Essentially, better (sometimes newer, sometimes not) ideas about a variety of issues pertaining to Christian life, spirituality, and philosophy. Or at least, better than the ones they now have. Ideas armed with which they will be more prepared to live successfully in, and have more fruitful interaction with, the world. How are we trying to do this? Well, we take a bunch of possibly full-time Christian service-people, i.e., missionaries or college ministers or church planters or pastors or seminary students, which role has thus far been filled by the GCM staff who have attended. Then we take a highly-trained academic, say a theologian from Oxford or a philosopher from USC, who supposedly has some of these good ideas or research. Then we say, have at it! Teach, learn, share, interact, discuss, and hopefully create a unique environment where true learning (this equipping we want) happens.
Meanwhile, us Excelsis folks worry about providing the venue for these seminar events, making it look pretty, and ultimately filming it with enough equipment to make a feature film. The idea is that we can then use this footage, together with the interactive transcript of the seminar plus a huge research library we are building, to create a new breed of e-learning products.
And thatâs more or less exactly what happened for 3 weeks. The first week-long seminar was, as I said, in Orlando. We took over a large theater and installed tons of lights, various pieces of artwork, tables, chairs, candles, and whatever trendy little things were around. Then we (well not me personally, of course, butâ¦) set up 3 or 4 full camera rigs, including one huge boom camera operated by a burly guy with a mullet.
Our speaker for most of that week was Bill Edgar, an apologist from a seminary which Iâve forgotten. Maybe Westminster or something? He talked about the art of Christian persuasion, in the style of Francis Schaeffer (he was a student of Schaefferâs). On the whole his presentation was well-done, and helpful I think to many there, but I found that it didnât really connect to my experience in a meaningful way.
On the other hand, his use of film, art, and music to point out the progression of society since however long ago was quite intriguing. Iâve always loved art and art history for that reason (not that I know anything about it).
During these days, my job was to run media such as powerpoint, music, and video. So I sat in a little booth back with the live-edit video crew, fiddling with the new Powerbook G4 Iâd got. Lunch was catered for the crew and myself, so while everyone else went out, we ate Quiznoâs and threw DVDs on the big projection screen weâd set up. I finally saw Spirited Away which was excellent.
Bill Edgar concluded on Thursday with a jazz piano recital which was frankly amazing; I wish I had anything like that kind of technical skill with a musical instrument. Friday, the first week of TCS concluded with a mini-seminar by Gordon Pennington, former marketing director for Tommy Hilfiger and other New York-type companies, on culture. So there was a lot of stuff about media and TV and mind control and so forth; generally good, though his style was fairly abrasive to me. But donât listen to me; obviously Iâm just a critic.
One of the downsides to the week was that the workday went from 8am to 9pm, affording me no time to unpack in the evenings. And on Saturday, I flew along with some other Excelsis folk to LA for 2 more weeks of TCSâso my stuff continued to reside in various boxes.
The flight to LA was unremarkable, and when we got there we were chauffeured minivan-style to Kairos, a church near the Hollywood, Sunset blvd area, where we accompanied a rather large crew in getting the place ready for filming. We effected a pretty total transformation, drawing on the skills of various interior-decorator-inclined folk, and by the end of Saturday things looked pretty good.
That Sunday we did a sort of test drive of the cameras, lights, and all the rest, by filming the Kairos church service. I spent the rest of the day hanging out with Chad, the film/media guy for Excelsis and the director for the seminars. We were to be roommates for those two weeks in the illustrious Ramada Hollywood, just a few blocks from where we were filming, and conveniently located by the headquarters of the Church of Scientology, where we saw no end of interesting goings-on whenever passers-by we became (of it). So anyway, Chad and I walked around Sunset Blvd and had a few beers at one of those touristy, overpriced LA bars.
Then, I had the good fortune to run into my friend from school Chris Haughey, who Iâd known was in LA and wanted to connect with. It happened, also quite opportunely, to be the 4th of July, so I went along with Chris to a party he knew about over in Santa Monica (I think it was). It was good to catch up with him and jointly ignore the rest of the people at this party (and drink all his donated rum, which no one else seemed to want).
Then the weeks began in earnest, with Graham Tomlin kicking off TCS week 2. My official job was no longer media guy, since the church had employed some volunteers for that purpose. Instead, I ran the dolly cam. That is, I pushed an expensive camera and camera operator on a little trolley up and down a 12-foot track. And I did it hundreds and thousands of times a day, whenever I got the word from Chad over the ClearCom headsets the whole crew was wearing.
At first it was fun, and since the quality of the picture depended on how smooth the dolly op could control the vehicle, I felt kind of important. Moreover, there was definitely a âtrickâ or two to getting it to run smoothly, so I felt like I was learning a somewhat valuable skill. For a while. Then, after about 5 minutes, it got incredibly monotonous. âGo to 1, Go to 2, Go to 1, Go to 2ââthis is what I heard for 2 weeks. So, to break some of that monotony, I and the camera ops availed ourselves of every opportunity to crack a joke or say something funny in the headsets. Because of that things were actually bearable.
Well, that and the fact that I was getting to hear Graham teach, which is something I deeply enjoy. Again, Graham was just right on and I wanted to write down everything he said and digest it more slowly. Well, I got what I wanted later on when I did end up transcribing every single word of that weekâs seminar. Iâm still digesting much of it, and reaping many benefits of that reflection.
Graham Tomlin teaching in LA
The nights were mostly spent hanging out in the hotel and reading, or hanging out with the camera crew, who I grew to be pretty good short-while friends with (most were from LA, but one had come from Orlando, and weâd hung out the previous week). On Thursday, it was a short seminar day, so a bunch of us went over to the Getty art museumâitâs rockin.
Friday was a bit crazy. At around 9pm I had someone take me to the airport where I boarded a plane for Indianapolis for my good friend (and Eastwood Posse dude) Andy Wolfeâs wedding. I got in around midday on Saturday after some flight shenanigans in Chicago OâHare (an airport no one should choose to fly through, ever), then Mark and Christian drove me to Bloomington for the wedding. It was pretty short and sweet, and I was an usher. Ushering is awesome. Plus it was really weird to see Andy get marriedâa feeling Iâd experience twice more in a month and a half. But thatâs later.
The highlight of the trip was definitely the reception and after-party thing. Free beer and wine, good food, crazy fun people that I knew and crazy fun people that Iâd just met, dancing, much defacing of the newlywedsâ vehicle, inappropriate comments in shoe-polish on the window, and so forth. All the Posse was there except Josh, so we counted it as Altimar V.
But the trip was shortâat 4am I was driven back to Indianapolis after not having slept due to partying, and then I was flying back to LA, where I was met by some film crew guys, who took me out to Roscoeâs Chicken and Waffles for breakfast. An excellent Hollywood restaurant if you ever get the chance. From there we went to the LA Dodgeball League, which was co-founded by Rob, who was co-directing the TCS event with Chad. Apparently a lot of people from that dodgeball league were in the dodgeball movie, including Rob. So I played a bunch of rounds, doing alright for myself. It was fun, and brought back great memories of childhood, except for the fact that large men can throw considerably harder than young children.
That night a bunch of us went to the LA House of Blues, where Mark Pontius, the camera op who I pushed back and forth all day, was playing with his band Malbec. Iâd had a chance to listen to their demo CD, and it was really good, as was their live show. The beer was very expensive, howeverâsomething I was growing to dislike LA greatly for.
The next weekâs seminar was lead by Dallas Willard, a philosophy prof from USC. He talked about Spiritual Formation, which is basically the issue of what it means to, how one can, and what processes allow one to grow in order to, most completely live (as a Christian).
For me, it was once again edifying to hear what I recognized as desirable wisdom during the course of that week. Or at least, what I could catch while pushing the camera around and making jokes.
And thatâs really all there is to say about it. Of course, I did more things in LAâI went to Amoeba, shopped at various bookstores, patronized various Thai eating establishments, and sat in deadlocked traffic jams on various highways. But Saturday, July 17 came soon enough, and then I was on a plane home. The airline lost my bag for a few days upon return, which was inconvenient, but it all got worked out like it usually does, and so I set myself to the task of moving in.
