April 9, 2025
Is Luke Bryan really huntin’, fishin’ and lovin’ every day?
My production insurance has made an initial payment. I am able to buy a camera. This is both terrifying and exhilarating, trade wars and all. I usually only make big investments when I am actively filming - at the start of something - and we are not on the brink of a recession or in the midst of the fallout of tariffs. Later this morning, I will make a big wire transfer.
While it feels like a huge step in my rebuilding, I haven’t officially started a new project yet. But that’s how insurance coverage works, I’ve learned. Like house insurance: you need to rebuild your home in order to receive the funds to rebuild your home. Step-by-step. You don’t get the money all at once, to spend in some other way. Makes sense. But part of me is still in an “I’m not ready” place. I am being pushed out of my comfort zone into making decisions.
Earlier this week, I actually considered seeing a tarot reader. My questions might include: Am I doing what I am supposed to be doing? Should I do something else? Will “all this” be “behind me” some day and, if so, when?
When I was out with Blaze this weekend, generally trying to keep her distracted from the draw of her dark basement, we ended up in a shop with various religious and spiritual things - very expensive religious and spiritual things. Mostly, we walked around the rooms with Blaze admiring and then reading out the ridiculously expensive price of things, a little too loudly, “Eighteen hundred dollars! For that?”
“Maybe it’s an antique?” I conjectured.
Each area had rocks and flags and books and altars all organized by color. I used to organize my books by color, too. Blaze lingered over the title “The Creative Act: A Way of Being“ by Rick Rubin, which she remembered I had given her for Christmas. “Thirty-five dollars,” she announced. “I don’t want to make you spend seventy dollars for the same book.” Increasingly, I think Rick Rubin is a bit of a poser with his rose colored glasses and long white hair. I would think Blaze would think so, too.
“I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin
Blaze was carrying around a glass jar with butterfly wings - thirty dollars. I said okay to that.
I picked up a card for a tarot reader. I keep my eye out for psychic offerings because Catherine is into that kind of thing. I am not. At least not really. I watched Lana Wilson’s “Look Into My Eyes” last night and came away with the idea that every psychic is basically a frustrated actor with a gift of improv. I wonder how these folks felt when the film was released. Did they walk down the red carpet (or “step and repeat”) and feel ashamed or were they excited to be getting screen time so it didn’t matter that their chosen profession was gently debunked? Suffice it to say, I will NOT be seeing a tarot reader.
When I picked Blaze up from school yesterday, there was a rare traffic jam. We took a long drive to a different part of Santa Barbara to go to Chipotle and the round trip took an hour during which time we listened to Luke Bryan’s “Huntin’, Fishin’ And Lovin’ Every Day.”
Blaze was pretty pointed in her criticism.
“These guys are such liars.”
“What do you mean?”
“These country singers. That guy does NOT go hunting and fishing every day.”
“Sure. But I bet he’d like to.”
“I bet he doesn’t even know how,” Blaze says. “He probably has a personal chef.”
“I mean, maybe NOW,” I say. “But maybe on vacations, that’s something he likes to do?”
Blaze looks him up on her phone and shares that Lake Bryan’s net worth is an estimated $160 million. She adds, “He’s a judge on American Idol. He is NOT hunting and fishing every day.”
“Maybe he’s lovin’?”
My last attempt to open Blaze ’s mind on the general concept of songs and their subject matter is by observing that Taylor Swift writes a lot about breakups but that doesn’t mean every time she sings a breakup song she’s in the midst of a breakup. She is remembering how it felt to break up. So maybe Luke is singing about what he used to like to do, or what he hopes he will do one day when he’s done being rich and having a personal chef. Also, I like the song a lot and I don’t like to do any of it - hunting or fishing. But I do like the idea of living in the country and being “red dirt rich.”
Maybe the Luke Bryan song doesn’t make Blaze feel the way it does me. Maybe she’s too literal and the song is easy for her to dismiss because of that. She is often rigid and dismissive about what she perceives as hypocrisy. For me, it’s more of a pump-up song - a hot yoga song. If only they’d play it there.
Of course, now I have to do a deeper dive into this Luke Bryan guy because I do NOT watch American Idol. I discover there is some controversy about him. He is not Kid Rock but he has done some sketchy things. I hate being “made aware” of things I don’t really want to be “made aware” of. Like learning that something I love is potentially bad for you.
Like when I was using Marriott Bonvoy points for a hotel stay when I was making PLAN C and a person I was interviewing pointed out that Marriott is really an anti-abortion company and I shouldn’t be supporting them. But, at times, using the points I had accumulated were the only way I could afford to keep making the film.
Blaze finishes her burrito bowl. She admits that “Huntin’, Fishin’ And Lovin’ Every Day” is catchy. “But it’s bullshit.” Blaze asks for the “aux” and she plays:
Blaze says the first piano part is a Christmas carol. Do I hear it? Joni Mitchell’s “River” is arguably a much better song overall than “Huntin’, Fishin’ And Lovin’ Every Day.” We don’t discuss the meaning of “River.” We just listen. It’s a breakup song - about being lonely. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. There is no reason to look up Joni Mitchell’s net worth. I get it.