Tuesday, December 15, 2009

hollywood moment addendum

Hollywood Moment #2:
I’ll just tell her it’s good. But I won’t read it.
I don't remember if I posted this yet. I think it is a good time to do so because it should be evident that my perspective on the world has nothing to do with my working in Cyberdyne. It makes no difference. The Talmud says "You see the world not as it is but as YOU are." I agree with this. The world just is. Whether the snow is a bother or a blessing is up to you. See? Check it out...

I should add that there have been some rare moments when things work, when I see the world as I am and it's not awful. Like playing piano on the boardwalk in Venice...or boogieboarding in Florida...or a campfire in Mexico on the beach...or a bluegrass jam in Mexico with a couple from Oregon. The lovely woman, an angelic lithe choreographer looked at me and said, "Your a Pisces. You swim in circles." She played the mandolin and knew all my favorite songs. Her husband is a potter and guitarist and plays at old age homes. I wanted to play a Hank Williams Sr. song, Jambalaya, and he says, "Let me get my accordion." My mouth just dropped. He asked, "do you want to sing high harmony or the melody?"
It's just incredibly rare I'm on the same page as people and when it happens I don't write about it because it isn't interesting. Conflict is interesting and these rare moments are like dreams without conflict. Maybe that's the problem. My desire to write makes me seek out problems because if I were content then I would have no topics to write about. I would just be content somewhere in an RV park with a dog and an accordion playing neighbor. Contentment is death to a writer. I'm not going to resurrect conflict if I'm content. So I avoid contentment and pay the price for conflict, which makes better writing. I can invent conflict but it never rings true. The books I read...I can see through them. I know who paid their dues and who is inventing it based on something they saw through their car window. You ever sit down with a crack addict in a rainy Frisco alley? If you haven't then don't bother writing about it. And even if you do you have to be attentive. It's my church, these wasted people with a story and I listen. There's a story behind the story and I hear that too. Then I combine them and try to tell the whole thing along with my story. Conflict makes good drama but it comes at a price.

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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.