Its said everyone has one story to tell in a lifetime.
Not any old story, but one that intoxicates them and the audience; the defining story.
Whatever Spielberg does, he'll always have ET in his first sentence. For Car Bernstein and Bob Woodward, it is of course Watergate.
But they don't have to be epochal stories witnessed first hand by the public. A wedding, a birth, a break up - the resonance of the event is what becomes momentous.
Heiddeger came up with the word: Dassein, to define something special. I like that word.
For the last couple of years I have been trying to unpick a number of locks within the field I so love. For a brief while, it was chemistry - the science of making up things. Today it still is the science of making up things but within a social science of the moving image.
It's been a laborious passion. One of discovery; of nakedness, when I hear myself say I don't understand that; or that those who support me say, it's there - as if they were zen masters and I the little cricket.
I'm winding down now; not because the total end is in sight, but an aspect of building knowledge is drawing to a close. Like the brush strokes on a painting when the painter has to decide - "enough", the main body of my questions is coming to a close.
Doctorate programmes are akin, at least mine is, to an infantry soldier scaling high terrain for a sight advantage, only to find the rain or other impediment has caused them to slip, and they must try again.
Or not!
But you keep going because every small step reveals more, every new author you read is a new discovery, every new thread enables you to assemble thoughts you previously did not have, or even possess the capacity to explore.
The sacrifices you make mean whilst I would want to devote myself to making more films, at this stage I am unable to. But that hopefully will soon change. Soon, being months away.
For the next couple of months, the ideas will be fashioned, the argument honed, and the theory that becomes knowledge hopefully make sense.
A friend who is set to become my penultimate interviewee said today: "Well done. I wish I did mine after my Masters".
I talked her down. There is no well done. There is no gloating, no celebrations, but a matter of factness to reach the end and make a strong case.
That is the state of play. And the one story? Not quite yet. Not quite yet!
