A middle-aged woman looks directly
into the camera and matter-of-factly says: “There’s been a hit put on me.” She
explains that a man at her gym, whom she believes to be the head of the “gay
mafia,” ordered the hit.
The woman, Elida
— the central subject of Rochester
native and independent filmmaker Katie Adamides’
documentary Wake Me Up — is not
actually being pursued by professional assassins. But she lives in a
near-constant state of agitation and paranoia.
Fear and pleading creep into her
voice as she says, “I don’t want to be killed.”
Other segments show Adamides approaching Elida with
compassion but also willingness to challenge and confront her. At times you
even laugh, but never at the subject’s expense. That’s because Adamides has a strong sense of mission. She’s trying to
combat the stigmas associated with mental illness and convey how often its
victims go untreated.
Local musician Gregory Paul, who
contributed music to the film’s soundtrack, says Adamides
“is really trying to do a great thing.”
“She’s trying to expose some truth
behind this topic and debunk a lot of the myths,” Paul says. “This is something
she just fell into. She didn’t set out to go to L.A.
to make this film. She was already there, and it turns out she had a neighbor
that she had kind of a weird experience with. I think she had a gradual
revelation.”
Adamides’
first contact with Elida was being woken up by Elida’s outbursts of rage towards passersby and other
neighbors. The film chronicles Adamides’ own journey
of discovery as she begins to grasp the severity of Elida’s
situation.
“I ended up calling the police to
find out what California state
law is when it comes to mental health arrests,” Adamides says. “After doing some research, I found out that
their code is a ‘5150.’ In order to be considered a 5150, you need to be
considered a threat to yourself or others. She really didn’t fit that criteria.”
Realizing Elida
was not likely to have her needs addressed, Adamides
felt a growing desire to educate the public as she educated herself.
When
Adamides and Gregory Paul were introduced by
former BER local show DJ Katrina Walter, the timing was auspicious. Adamides was actively looking for music for her film and
Paul was seeking new venues for his music after taking a step back from his
longtime band the Autumdivers.
Adamides
and Paul soon found their work fit. Well suited to visuals, Paul’s writing
heavily reflects his drone and ambient influences. And, though it is often
built upon upbeat rhythms, Paul’s music echoes collective sensations of
isolation and anxiety, of the individual being overwhelmed by the outside world
and feeling paralyzed within it.
“I grew up out in the country,” Paul
explains. “Always being outside and being on my bike, the landscape really
affected me. I was really into old blues music as well. There was this really
almost historical mysticism to the blues. These people, it was like they
rendered the music out of the land.”
On Saturday, Paul releases his new
solo album, Awake from the Flash,
which contains recordings that span the 20 years he’s been playing.
“I got a guitar around 14 or 15,” he
says. “I didn’t know how to tune the thing for about a year, but I immediately
started recording. It seemed like right off the bat I wanted to create albums
— I was an album-maker before I was even a songwriter. I think that’s what
led me into wanting to make soundtrack music. That’s the one thread that runs
through everything that I’ve done, extended tonalities and creating a mood.”
The new album retraces Paul’s
trajectory from straight-ahead folk and pop-rock to his trademark blend of
acoustic guitar with minimalist repetition, improvisation, and
electronically-induced noise. Paul says he relates to composer La Monte Young,
who also grew up in a rural setting and claims to have been able to hear the
buzzing of distant power lines as a child.
In an abstract sense, Paul’s work
also buzzes.
“People are distracted,” he says.
“When you think about the amount of stimulus that’s just drilled into a person
in a single day, the society we live in is in a form of spiritual decay. I see
that it’s grasping at finding meaning and not really finding it and instead
it’s being replaced with products and consumerism. Why are we so unhappy even
though we’re this supposedly abundant society? There’s something wrong, but we
don’t know what it is, exactly.”
Paul sees mental illness as an
inevitable by-product of our lifestyle. “I almost feel like, if you’re not
depressed in this country, then you’re in some kind of denial.”
Meanwhile, Adamides
has moved to Hoboken, where she’ll
immerse herself in Wake Me Up‘s
editing process. She expects to complete the film almost entirely at her own
expense. Once finished, the uphill climb for distribution begins.
“I’m willing to give the movie away,”
she insists. “I’ll shop it to schools, community organizations, anywhere that
there’s a possibility. I’ll project the thing on the side of a building if it
will get people watching and, hopefully, thinking.”
Gregory
Paul, Hinkley,
Footage, and Old Sweethearts play Saturday, December 10, at the Bug Jar, 219
Monroe Avenue, at 9
p.m. $5. 454-2966. 21+. For more
information on the film Wake Me Upvisit www.wakemeupmovie.com.
This article appears in Dec 7-13, 2005.
