Are you OK? Cause I'm OK
Rivka Rivera’s ARE YOU OK? CAUSE I”M OK is an exploration of what it means to be a mother and daughter and how we cope with love and death with the person who gave us life.
By Sophia Quinn
Would you take mushrooms with your mother? Three years ago, filmmaker Rivka Rivera and her mother, Amy, did.
This is their story.
What was initially an energetic impulse of an idea for Rivera evolved into a long-term project of exploring themes of mortality, aging, and the ever-changing relationship of mother and daughter that never ends.
The first time Rivera saw her mother do any kind of drug was at a funeral. She remembers sitting in her mother’s best friends’ upper-west side apartment in New York City, watching television. Like a memory frozen in time, she remembers walking to the bedroom and seeing the two women smoking pot - and her world just transformed. Rivera re-tells this visceral sensory memory with a chuckle, as she were still that young girl listening to her mother explain, “I just didn’t know what to tell you”, as they descended in the elevator. As an only child, Rivera never understood lying to her mother and the two of them shared a close and open relationship. And yet, “the idea of tripping is very different than smoking weed” together.
For Rivera, the film was “generated out of this impatient, cusp of 30, Saturn return, anxious energy”. Rather than going into the trip with a fully formed plan for the story, she believed it “would create itself” and for her, this “initial energy [was] an important aspect to the documentary”. Rivera’s dad was a documentary film maker so in many ways she inherited the practice of exploring feelings via film; it’s “how [she] processes”. Her film with her mom became a “processing piece of [their] relationship”. After having a transformative trip on her own with mushrooms, Rivera considered the experience “such an expansive way to connect”. She wondered what her and her mother could learn by doing it together, and she wanted to film it.
Rivera’s intuitive orientation towards film as a medium to capture the expansive and shifting mother-daughter relationship becomes a main theme in the film. Through the psychedelic experience and in its aftermath, the two women explore and work through their roles as mother and daughter and investigate how tied their “selves” really are. The capacity of this plant medicine to draw each other closer, to open up and enhance their relationship was the motivation for the film; Rivera wanted to unpack this experience with her mother. She explains:
“Yes, we bicker like sisters, but it is also evident that we can say some of the cruelest things to each other, be really mean, have bad fights but still to this day a part of that is us negotiating our roles to each other, as we get older”.
Rivera combines documentary footage taken during their original trip with recreated and improvised footage filmed the following two summers to really hone in on ideas of mortality, aging and inheritance. Throughout the film, these affective themes weave in subtle ways: the book on dying held by her mother, the focus on grey hair, and the camera’s quick flipping between bodies where the two women seem to mold into each other. Rivka explains that the experience of tripping was captured more authentically cinematically; that it was somehow "closer on film to the experiences [they] had emotionally".
The camera asks – is Rivka becoming her mom? Or becoming more herself as she ages?
In an intimate sense, the film reveals how Rivka is “allowing [her] mom to be [her] mom, even as [she is] still trying to be an adult…and navigating that”. It was through the trip and in wrestling with the experience afterwards that Rivera and her mother were able to explore their shifting roles as mother and daughter, and really explore an expansive understanding of their individualiity; while continuing to be inescapably intertwined.
Leading from a place of intuitive feeling instead of pre-determined story, Rivera expertly takes up the challenge of capturing the universal and yet singular nature of the mother-daughter relationships. The end has no end, as the mushrooms reveal – “there are infinite ways for a moment to go” – and both mother and daughter will continue to dance with the beautiful and ever-changing nature of their relationship for the rest of their lives.
FULL INTERVIEW
Sophia Quinn: Have you and your mom ever done drugs together before this experience?
Rivka Rivera: the first time I saw my mom doing drugs, and by that I mean smoking pot…I am a millennial, a child of the D.A.R.E. era, I remember being told early on, drugs are bad, it was this binary, all drugs are bad. All drugs you are going to fry your brain, there was no nuance, weed and heroin were the same thing, no nuanced conversations. It was just this black and white childhood experience until of course you smoke pot for the first time, and everything was a lie, paradigm shift. Growing up, the first time I smelt pot, I remember finding my dad’s pot in the bathroom, it looked like a cigarette. I remember smelling it, and thinking I love this smell. I would take it to the playground, and hanging out under the slide, smelling it. I like this smell - visceral sensory memory. Then I remember my mom’s best friend’s mother, who was like an aunt to me, upper-west side apartment, I would sit and watch TV…Funerals are such a weird time – I remember walking to the bedroom and saying my mom and her friend smoking pot. The world just transforms. That is the thing. Frozen in time. Us standing by the elevator, ‘I didn’t know what to tell you’. Cut to – I didn’t actually smoke pot until my senior year of high school. NY upbringing, being an only child – I didn’t understand lying to my mom, that sounds unsafe, like you should probably know where I am…if you get kidnapped, they wouldn’t know where you were. She was really cool with that. No psychedelics beforehand. The idea of tripping is very different than recreationally taking drugs. We have experiences like that together. But what was most influential and what prepared us, having lived in LA, and going through my own, growing up – I went through a recovery from an eating disorder, I was bulimic – the star to my recovery from that addiction – put me on that path towards, we have to work through our relationship because it is so tied to all of it. Tied to doing a lot of heavy work together, prior to this experience. So I moved back to NY, part of what became – you see in the film – it was really generated out of this impatient, cusp of 30, Saturn return, anxious energy – I did not want to do the work of thinking about sotry, I just want to do it, it will create itself – mom, we’re just going to do it. The aftermath of that – no, hahaha, the universe says you will take three years to creat this short- nothing fast about it, but that energy important for the documentary part – energetically between my mom and I – we are very okay – last min, we both push each other off cliffs in a good way. She will be my biggest support. We will push each other on to do it do it do it. That is what I tried to explore in the film, looking back – I did not have any real care, “Are you ready to do this mom?” What is it going to bring up for you mom? Or I had care for it, but I also had care to film it. I think it’s our generation, my father is also a documentary film maker – I was filmed all the time, so it’s how I process. This is my processing a piece of our relationship in this way. I had a really amazing trip on my own with shrooms. So, what can we learn doing this together? Especially for women – it is just such an expansive way to connect. I wanted that with my mom. I wanted to film it.
SQ: Was it your suggestion then? How did she take that suggestion?
RR: The vibe was like, I would say it, then I’ve decided as I said it. There wasn’t too much thinking through. The time leading up to the trip, I had to get the mushrooms. So, she said yes but between the trip and then, there was a lot of her being anxious and me being more pedal to the medal, we can’t stop, we’re certain, my obsession with how to capture this, and for her, how will I not go into this dark hole, not fall into the abyss, she’s reading that book in the beginning about death. She was worried about thinking about negative things, having a bad trip. And I was preoccupied with the filming of it, and so I wasn’t thinking about that. I had more scary moments than she had, I took more than she did. She had processed more of that fear prior…
SQ: You had so many more layers to your experience as a film maker
RR: I just think that the paradox that always is the truth is that yes and we bicker like sisters, also it is evident that we can say some of the cruelest things to each other, be really mean, have bad fights but still to this day a part of that is us negotiating our roles to each other. I didn’t know what I was exploring this film, but in post-production I was wrestling with – what are our roles, as I get older. We still had fights, leading up to it, the dinner table thing was really real – we can be really close, but also, we fight.
SQ: “are you trying to get an emotional response for the camera” What was your choice to include this raw/intense part of the film, uncomfortable…what did it mean to you to include that part in the film, so real, not scary but a different view into mother/daughter relationship
RR: So important going back, we have this, what is the story we are telling – that was hard too. God, I look like an asshole. It can be triggering dynamic, but it was also – real. That scene was improvised but sort of scripted. We had the trip, filmed it, went back following summer with DP Meredith, same place. My mom has a history – she was a dancer. We had to communicate differently. We rented a studio, a white room, and it was fun for us – we would do things…how do we keep it from talking analytically, we’ve been in therapy together since I was a kid, we would set a timer and do a viewpoints exercise, what are we getting from that – if we were to track ourselves as characters, what is the arc? There were lines scripted – as in we rehearsed that, we rehearse certain scenes in life, any mother and daughter – okay perform a fight, you know the lines. So those lines – I thought she was shockingly amazing in the film, recreating something is harder. That choice – that is where the conflict was. The tricky part about doing a film about a trip – the conflict was relieved in the drugs. To find that arc too – most of the conflict was prior, it was understanding and unraveling that. Lean into the trip – and that really helped.
SQ: The editing process is almost a completely different beast to tackle.
RR: It was crazy, I had never done it. I didn’t know that it would make my life really hard to have 10 hours of footage for 17 minutes, and to find the right people to work with. I worked with 3 different editors. I tried to find my confidence in telling the story and learning what the story was and having patience in letting it teach me, what it was meant to be, because it was so personal – I felt like the trip lasted in some ways, 3 years. My mom loved it so much, she is experimenting with micro-dosing now, and she wants to have more trip experiences, but I feel like I’ve been in same trip for so long, back into artistic process - I didn’t have the room to go through it again.
SQ: The repetition of some things in film: like the crystal, larger theme or reason why you included it? On and off screen – she has it, you have it, centering you in some way.
RR: We got the crystal in a retreat we’d gone to, from Brazil. My mom is also a healer…part of the reason, we’re very close, intimacy can be hard for me, more than her, because sometimes it is an allowing your mom to be your mom even as you are still trying to be an adult and navigating that. I shut down and be frustrated when she is the mother I knew as a child because I don’t want to be a child, negotiating that. In our capitalist culture, we struggle for how to become an adult with your parents, we are taught and what we see – you go off and become a family, and come back and your parents are babies, crazy, irrational paradigm. On the real trip – we took the mushrooms, we go to the beach, it is awesome – some of my favourite footage is the tripping footage – looking at the cloud, I know what’s happening, I’m in charge, - but I’ve never been here before, oh shit. Having to have my mom come back with me, even though she wanted to stay out in nature, we ended up on the bed, cool with the crystals , she gave me this experience where I got to leave my body, and how profound is that, where the fuck do we come from – my mom’s body is the space ship through which I arrived, and to have this person put your hands on you, in spiritual experience where I left through some portals and I touched this place before, I was talking to some kind of spiritual being/realm – like you are through a birth cannel, coming back to her, her hands on me allowed me this experience. The crystal was a piece of that. And we used it – DP filmed through the crystal. The challenge was how do you show on film this crazy thing that is happening, and people do it in so many dif ways, but we used as many organic materials as possible. Also, physically there for the trip.
SQ: Part of camera technique, but also a thing grounding you.
RR: Special crystal, amazing the energy it holds…my mom – no I would never leave you, but I knew she wanted to, so in the film – what would happen if you did go? And that was closer on film, to the experiences we had emotionally – but we are just sitting on a porch, how do you express those emotional experiences cinematically. That storytelling was organic. There was this moment when she wanted to leave, we had this revelation – oh that would actually, you dying is not so scary. That laughter. From both of us. I get it, you will go when I am ready for you to go, but she goes anyways. From this – many pieces, it is so intimate that it has to be me, my mom and someone she would be comfortable with. When you meet someone, oh – that’s the one, on a soul level. (story on Meredith) they connected. She happens to be a brilliant cinematographer etc. would you come down, rent same house and film this part of it – days were we would go out and do this, out in public mom and you are tripping. And then editing process. Talk about kill your darlings. What story am I trying to tell? And that took a long time to figure out. But I was so happy with it. It was about trusting people, trusting myself – everything shifted, from the start I had a sense, I knew my inspiration for the soundtrack was Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson – I wanted a vocal viewpoint sound-collage so we started recording different things that were more intuitive responses, and then I finally – I don’t know how to find a sound composer, how does this work….my hope is every summer to go back, and edit in – when you are tripping – what is time? It is not a thing! So how do you express that on Film? Improvising vocally.
SQ: soundtrack makes you feel like you are on a trip too. In and out of sync. Creeping in feeling at the beginning pre-trip. Sound off/on etc.
RR: One piece – it was always intuitive. Listening to Meredith Monk stuff early on, and didn’t know how to tie that in later, finding Kevin, and he pulled out sounds, intuitive in that sense; part of it doing sounds that felt like the trip for my mom and then what I learned was that when you have the right people, it gets to be this intuitive process…it creeps in, because you know it’s coming, in spiritual context; it continues after the trip…I knew I wanted this things, it was in the ether. This is the paint, how we can collage it. Like finger painting.
SQ: What particular shots in sync and what not, visual vs audio focus – the play between the two things…importance of sounds
RR: Shout out to Mathew, my sound mixer. Trust my aesthetic sense. Subtle things like camera noises in certain place. Tie in more laughter here, and even in it, everyone would see different things. A lesson of the trip/what was freeing – there can be infinite versions of this film, we are probably living different dimensions, infinite ways for a moment to go, so part of it just throwing it out, as this version, why I am holding onto idea of having a version for every year…but I am interested in the long term – what that will look like 10 years from now
SQ: Curious about how DP how some shots were taken by her, some by you, how did you choose which shots would go where
RR: Shots by me were the sequences were it really works in particular places, part of editor’s eye. Most important shot for me personally, the POV looking at my mom, there is a lens flare, that is where I was really leaving my body, that to me, I remember looking at that tripping and thinking duh – of course – it was so silly how profound and obvious it was – and why cinema is the metaphor for life that it is, why we love this craft. That is one of my favourite moments, and that stuff on the beach, when we got that cloud, 15 years from now, 10 years from now, 10 years ago, and present all at one – conversing with future selves – I knew I was going to love that shot when I wasn’t tripping too.
SQ: sense of knowing on a deep level, that this is it. Her reading the death of meaning – she is reading this, portraying anxieties prior to the trip, did you expect that anxiety before – was that a major part of what you wanted to include, real anxieties and fear towards it or was it something that came naturally?
RR: that happened for her, how do we address that in the shorter version of this. That book is actually my book, but it felt like this is the prop that best portrays this – we had a whole part where she was worried about her heart – but too confusing so left out – her fear of the death vortex
SQ: This theme of death, mortality, of aging – weaves in subtle ways, book, grey hair, flipping between bodies, molding into each other, going through birth experience and connecting with the person – play of death, and life – what do you think about that
RR: These images are coming; some of my favourite images came via editing, ex the crystal – this moment with it, we discovered that – and that I would be coming into her, vision in the white dress, happened – we were writing it as it was going, learning the film as we were going – a lot of it improvised on the spot
SQ: that is better in some ways , this is what I felt – and it is cool that you can translate that feeling you have into film, to what degree do you have to plan that, and to what degree does it just happen – the technique of expressing those bodily knowledges – is so nuanced, and you can try and fail
RR: because it was our story we had more permission and understanding and knowing – and because it ended up being a short. We didn’t go in with structure and let go. Those moment were my favourites, storyboarding as you go – interesting journey for my mom – her leaving, didn’t know before.
SQ: that role of mother but also person; she wants to be there and take care fo you as a mother, her positionality, but also her self experiencing this trip on her own as an aging person, you also by yourself becoming a person – aging too – are you becoming her, are you becoming yourself – we don’t really know – theme that you had going into it?
RR: I don’t think I had any of the themes going into it – which is why the mushrooms were so important. It was the year unpacking it, between us and making certain decisions – there is so much there. Our relationship has evolved past then – not representative of us today; interesting about film, it is not living, you make a choice on order of things – all the frames happening at once, make it live – brings a lot of anxiety, I am excited for inheritance workshop on unpacking death – one of my first understandings as a kid of death – Asep of Fables – thinking – stories were movies on film, Asep flattened, death is a stilled frame
SQ: That plays into the whole – photography and film are so different; photography is a still of person and they cannot breathe or be alive, stuck in spot. But film – you are still about to make it fictitious, it tricks you into thinking that they are alive, a beating person somewhere
RR: In editing process – oh, you have to make a decision and then it is dead after that in some ways, only alive because other people are relating to it. Something scary about letting go, but also part of my journey – the decision I had to make, now look at yourself as a protagonist, and choices telling story. Obsession to film everything at the beginning – for myself; my journey is letting go of camera at end, not filming myself, let go of need to capture – that is an artist’s journey, we have this need to create out of nostalgia, a desire to grasp onto the beauty of life and that is not possible and it hurts every time and you see everyone go through it – the joy of creating and pain of letting it go
SQ: Expectation because you lived this beauty, and you want to show and share, but it fails every time
RR: at least for me, that is what I saw as my character’s arc, paralleled with relationships and other people, there is no way to hold onto a moment…my wanting to film things, not a vanity thing, but wanting to capture a feeling, obsessively, but it is not possible. Film-making, beautiful flip end of that – you look through and there are all these prisms and ways of seeing; anyone witnessing this film, I think it is a stagnant 1D version, but we all see it in different ways – beautiful and frustrating
SQ: Giving it new lives that you are not a part of.
RR: this stigma. That is important too, it wasn’t until after making this and getting to know communities more, Jake and Ashley on panel, that introduced me to different ways mushrooms are used medicinally, which is why death/anxiety issue is important, used for people with terminal illness, cure PTSD etc – that was really amazing, and my mom really had an experience like that, because she does have a lot of anxiety about dying, and so do I, and to know that helped her is amazing. One of the things I was most vulnerable about – scene naked on bed with my mom, stigma, film this scene like this – female body sexualized in USA, naked with mom
SQ: I thought of that scene as connecting on a bodily level, mother daughter bodies, you are so open and vulnerable with her because she’s your mom and she loves you. Stripping away clothes is getting to base, grounding yourself in moment with her
RR: Female eye, gaze, film making – that is a female gaze – through male gaze, women’s body is sexualized – where we know, we wouldn’t inherited think it was that. In a broader sense, breaking stigmas, understanding culturally where the female body lies in American cinema – interesting to recognize and stigma about drugs. Divine timing with themes of dying, relationship, that we premiered this year, not sooner, audiences feel there is a need for it, and yet, not having an in person screening – nice to have this event, releasing it, but not community around it, purpose is to discuss it……