Why the need to film myself?

The following video clip is from the very first tape I shot at the start of making FLYING. This was me, six years ago, trying to find a technique in order to film myself. So much had just happened in my life — the attack on the World Trade Center Towers, which I saw unfold from the window of my loft; the diagnoses of my best friend, Pat, with a brain tumor; and the crashing end of a relationship, which I thought was the last one in a line of men — were adding up to make me feel like I had lost my footing in the world. So, after all the time I had spent behind the camera, I felt compelled to point it at myself and make sense of what was going on. Actually filming myself was pretty uncomfortable and made me nervous at first. How the hell can one be honest and real?