I’ve been hearing the rabbits screaming at night. Have you been hearing that? I was told that it’s just the dogs killing them.
As soon as the veil goes down, that’s when I thought I would know something. But then it wasn’t that. I was just pretending, and that was it.
I’m here. I think I know that. I mean, I look back and remember most things. But I remember who I thought I would be. And I’m good. Almost.
Maggie arrived that year, the new head of curriculum planning. She loved meetings because there was food and idle chitchat. Maggie told me that she was very excited about my plan to take a group of teachers to the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) for workshops on film and how to apply media to a variety of curriculae. I enlisted a dozen teachers and was making final arrangements when Maggie emailed me: You will have to cancel. Next time! M.
I went to her office, which could have been a good idea but was not. “You can’t cancel now, Maggie.”
“Well, I am afraid that I already have.”
“You should have spoken to me. I’ve made all of the arrangements.”
“Next time.”
“I’ve booked our workshop. It’s done.”
“Be that as it may, the plans have changed.”
“It’s a reflection of complete incompetence, Maggie.”
She stared back, mouth open, as I left. At least I had stood my ground. That was the thought in my head. Stupid me.
I was never one for the story arc. While well-structured rising action, climax and denouement are certainly to be admired, the essence of story has little to do with craft.
The problem with much of story-telling is a blind adherence to the clever raconteur. In other words, it isn’t what the story is about as much as how it is told. “Stories” on social media have brought that to the fore, demonstrating that immediate gratification isn’t that gratifying in the end.
It’s the characters and dialogue, the little glimpses of what’s what, a truth of sorts, that makes a story worth anything. So what if the start is all wrong, the sequence of memories of the dead father askew, there is no flow and Davis is a jerk?
Yeah, back to the drawing board.
I try to think about who I am and what I know, but I don’t know what any of that means. It’s a thing off in the distance, someplace that I thought I might have been, even convinced myself of that, and have now lost.
I know what I want to be. No, that’s a lie too. Even if I said that I knew what I want, or that I thought that I knew that, I wouldn’t. The more I think that I know the who and what, the more I’m further from it because I think that. It’s a façade.
Confidence is the thing, believing in those lies is what makes you that you in you. The deeper you get, the further you are from the same. A gosh-darned paradox!
And so…something else. Drugs and whores! No confusion there. Or all confusion. Signs of it all gone awry. At least it’s not a façade. Or the façade of facades. Good copy anyway.
I’m in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. I’m sitting at my table, David McCullough’s Wright Brothers biography at my side, and looking out at the clearing skies. It’s beginning to get warmer.
I’m writing now. That’s what I’m doing because I’m a writer. I write. Not that I’ve been feeling clear on that for some time. I know that I’m a writer. I know that is who I am. I know that is how I feel most myself, doing that, writing. As Wilbur Wright said about flying: When you know that the whole mechanism is working perfectly, the sensation is so keenly delightful as to be almost beyond description. More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace, mingled with the excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination. That is the sensation of writing for me.
And yet, given my failure to have anything published in 38 years, I often don’t feel a writer and know that few others consider me as that. I’m a writer. I’m nothing. I’m a writer. I’m a failure. I’m a writer. I’m a loser. I’m a fucking writer. If you say so. This isn’t a series of thoughts, one after the other, but a garble of it all at once, puking through my head. And the idea of failure dominates.
That said, I’m glad to write about that. And I’m happy to be here on the Outer Banks with my view over the dunes of the greening sea and brightening skies, a triangle of pelicans flashing overhead. That’s something to write about. Which is what I did.
My creative writing teacher in college, Viktor Coleman, told me that I obfuscated too much in my writing, meaning that I put up barriers to avoid sharing my genuine voice. His analysis pissed me off. “All this guy cares about is fucking his hot students,” I railed to friends. “He doesn’t give a damn about what makes writing work.”
I don’t shy away from sharing my thoughts and experiences in my writing through my alter egos Buzz, Dee and Davis. They’ve been shamefully drunk, horribly abusive and have fucked whoever and whatever they could, including a bean bag chair. They just don’t dwell on what they’ve done. There are no revelations. These things happened; they accept that and moved on. Like real people do.
Which Coleman and others might argue is where the artifice comes in: the arc, denouement and lessons to follow. I don’t agree, Life isn’t like that. Life is a teacher fucking his student and nobody giving a damn, including the students. There is no Me Too. No clever point of view. It’s just things that happen, and that’s it. The characters are still alive and looking for the answers in all the wrong places.
Things happened and here we are. That’s my narrative. That’s what I see in our world. My heroes – super or otherwise- don’t save the day. They takes care of themselves first and then whoever suits their needs. Nobody’s buying that yet. I just need a couple more years of scrolling and we’ll be there.
I began a script many years ago with the idea of having a chase sequence from very beginning to the end, the very first shot to the last, nothing but a chase.
Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher films and The Safdie Brothers Good Time took a shot at the chase script, as did Ilya Naishuller in Hardcore Henry.
But they all fell short of the concept, getting lost in an excess of violence and drugs, always killing and stoned out of their heads. That’s what the world has raced off to apparently.
But that wasn’t my idea. I just wanted to explore the idea of waking up in a strange place and being chased from then on. Like life, someone always after you.
Nothing in this world can take the place of good old persistence. Talent won’t. Nothing’s more common than unsuccessful men with talent. So is John Lee Hancock’s biopic film of Ray Kroc, The Founder bookended.
You will be surprised to hear, as am I, that I am inspired by Ray Kroc, the fictional one anyway. It’s all I’ve got to go on now.
I’ve been frustrated over these some forty years of fighting to get something published. From my opening book, The Sacred Whore – which actually received brief attention from an agent – through Manitou Island, Black Ice and The Buzz Trilogy to the many Davis films and The Cx Trilogy, I have carried on.
The Cx Trilogy might be finished in a year, maybe Fuck Pedagogy before that. Persevering pathetically, proudly on, that’s me, on the way to…oblivion?
The memories of Sarasota Jungle Gardens are vivid in my head: a macaw on a little bike, another one on my arm, alligators basking, flamingos silhouetted against the bright water in the sun, marvelous things all around.
I don’t remember how I got there. I don’t remember any of the who’s and what’s. It was just the magic of being there.
And so I went back, many years later, and listened to the ponytailed guy’s well-worn bits about his cranky colorful birds, and watched the children watching him, wowed by the birds meows and cackles.
The show went for 15 minutes, me and the other kids getting restless before it was over, and I walked around the zoo, glancing at the snakes and owls and lemurs before getting back to my car. The magic was no more. I had to call my lawyer and start the lawsuit against them for using my image without permission.
Having completed the 9th (or 11th?) draft of Anori, I have no clue what I have written. Some of it flowed just as I remembered. Others parts had to be reworked…to what effect I have no clue. Dee was consistent. I think. As was the tone. On the verge of death or already dead. Something like that. Anyway, I shouldn’t be blogging about this. I am a cotton-headed ninny muggins at present.
Instead I will offer this quote from Ken McGoogan’s book Dead Reckoning on the taste of polar bear cub meat: Apart from its tenderness, the cub’s meat had a particularly piquant taste, and we greatly regretted that the old bear had not had twins.
Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.