Directors in Person

Special Guest: Michael Loggins

Michael Loggins, the principal artist in Life Itself, is not weird. While an infant, his thyroid malfunctioned, disrupting the way Loggins's noggin works. Now a full-bore adult, he sees the world as a remarkable and scary place, and renders this vision in sheaves of tremulous poems. Much of Michael's life is centered around San Francisco's Creativity Explored, an unusual art studio for adults with disabilities. Here, Life Itself offers up quiescent vignettes of Michael and other artists, like Sue Chan and Allura Fong. Michael's vision tends toward the troubled. His most notable collection, Fears of Your Life, is a shopping list of anxieties about everyday life. "I write down my fears, my scariness, my frightfulness. It helps me focus on what's bothering me." Toward the end of Life Itself, Michael imagines an idyllic world, free from loneliness, from ridicule, from want. There's nothing weird about that.