—by Lauralee Farrer
For those who follow us on twitter @praythehours, you know that we tweet at the Hour of prayer on which we are currently working. Our “Terce” tweets ended a week or so ago because we’ve finished shooting it and we’re entering a month’s worth of assembly cuts, scriptwriting, perfecting our shooting experience, and finance-juggling. In July we hope to start shooting again, but in the meantime, we’ll be tweeting on Compline into July.
Editor Greg King is finishing an assembly cut on “Compline,” Patrick Duff is working on “None,” and Dan Long will be taking a whack at Terce. Writer Jonathan Foster is working on the script for “Sext,” Wes Halula is working on a script draft for “Prime,” and I am working on “Lauds” and “Vespers.” I still find a strange kind of encouragement realizing how many have made this project their own, and are working with enthusiasm to bring it about. Tony, Wes, producer/writer Rob Bethke and I talked today at lunch about the Prime story of a man rushing through his own life. It’s the story that has had the most resonance with the men I know, who fight to be present in their own lives, and to remain human, while wresting that life into existence in the first place. A hard balance faced not only by men. Nevertheless, it’s an hour that has room for the unintended humor that often accompanies the idea that we are in control of our own lives, and we laughed as much during lunch as we talked or ate.
As of June 1, 2012, we started tweeting Compline. Compline takes place at bedtime, whenever that happens for you. For one inclined to symmetry in praying the hours, Compline might take place around 9p.m. to mirror the hour of Prime at 9 a.m.; however, no one I know goes to bed at that hour. I chose 11p.m. not because I go to bed by then either, but I to leave room for Vigils to occur somewhere between midnight and 3 a.m. The tweets of Compline ponder the mystery of sleep, and how we enter that world of absurdity nearly every night of our lives only to return hours later without knowing where our minds have gone or for how long. This we rarely question, but it’s bizarre when you think about it.
These are good days, summer days, days with fans in the window at night and the sizzle of heat remaining on the concrete long after the sun sets late in the evening. If you live in Southern California, they are bright days of outdoor movies, visits to the beach, and groggy afternoons at your computer desk. Our dreams during the summer are different than those of winter: they smell of night-blooming jasmine, sticky watermelon rinds in the trash, and the musk of desire—for love, for adventure, for something extraordinary to happen.