it was a completely organic process based on these unusual, psychological experiences i've had in my adult life—these strange, trancelike experiences, similar to sensations i remember from childhood when i had a very high fever. where i'm half asleep and half awake, just on the cusp of dreamland. and right as i'm about to conk out, this whole plethora of information comes from my own awareness and rushes into my mind's eye. it's like a story, or a poem, or a series of images…it only makes sense for a moment and then it dissipates. it's like this weird waking dream. i wanted to lucidly mimic that in the form of a film and transpose it cinematically. soon after i met john cameron mitchell and i had auditioned for his film "shortbus". i had to break away from everything in new york to go rescue my mother in texas where my grandfather was, one could say, inadvertently allowing her to overdose on lithium. i had to go out there to be their saving grace. after i nursed her to health. i brought her back to new york with me, documenting everything. when i came back, i met this guy who was an intern at the mix film festival. i showed him about 45 minutes of the film i had been making, which had three working titles at the time. "lucid," "the day i disappeared" and "tarnation," and he said, "whatever this is, you should finish it because there's a deadline for this film festival coming up in three weeks." so i took my vacation from mikimotos, where i was working as a door-man, and i went on this crazy editing marathon and got the film in right in the nick of time. i got it into the hands of the then festival director, stephen winter, who is also really good friends with john cameron mitchell, and that's how everything exploded.