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A total stranger writes about writing, and pretty much whatever else he wants |
| Come on, how much can be written about writing, do you really need a blog for that? We'll see. |
| I received a response to one of my posts regarding music, and the connection a particular member of this community feels to it, akin to that feeling i garnered from the voice of one of my classmates reading her poetry. That reminded me of this: I was interested in screenwriting for some time. Actually, that is how i transitioned from studying film to studying creative writing. There is a man in Hollywood who is known as the Yetti. He is the writer of the screenplays to some of my favorite movies. I did not know that before i went to listen to him speak at a lecture series. I just kind of tagged along one of my friends who tended to attend all of these sorts of things provided by the school. I realize know that it is called taking advantage of an expensive university. Back then i did not realize all the great cultural opportunities that were handed to me, but then that is a part of the process of learning. I sat in the audience taken by this giant of a man. His large head was framed in a thick mane of white hair. His bear was long. He looked like a good storyteller. He filled the auditorium for about an hour, and then it was opened up to questions. Just can't trust me to ask questions. Well this time was not different. So I raised my hand during a lull in the astute pointed questioning session, and asked, "Where do you find your ideas." Now lets face it, there are dumb questions, and that was one. I had insulted about half of the people in that auditorium. They were ashamed to be lumped in with the likes of such an inquiry. Aghast. The yetti looked at me, and I got a "son" out of him. he said, "son, do you listen to music?" I saw. I see. Music had always been a part of my life, ever since i was a small kid and was making mixed tapes of some very bad eighties top 40 music off the radio to play over and over again. I saw the stories and the lives in those songs. I grew up in kind of a rough neighborhood. I couldn't go out to play, and didn't have many friends that i could play with as a result. So a large chunk of my time was spent listening to music, really getting into it. When I was a sophomore in High School, my father had a heart attack. On Monday night, my father was supposed to pick me up after footbal practice. He forgot. I called home, and he came over and picked me up. I had dinner, did some homework and sat down in the family room to watch Monday Night Football with my dad. I cannot remember that night very well, but an image is burned into my mind. I was laying on the floor watching the game, and he was lying on the couch. I looked up at him. The room was dark, just the big tv lighting the room, and he was just a bunch of proken reflections of light. The next morning my mother came in and woke me up. she did that everyday, i never needed an alarm clock. some call me a momma's boy, oh well, why not if you can, I always say. I don't want to go to school. Are you okay, she asked. i don't feel that great. that was not really true. I had stood out in the cold the night before, but i was healthy, and i cannot remember being sick, i just did not go to school. I went back to sleep. An hour later, my mother woke me up again, but this time it was not the peaceful voice that normally wakes me up, it was laced with palpable concern, and worry. something is wrong with your dad. I got out of bed. I walked down the hall to where my fahter sat on the edge of his bed, his arms at his sides, and his head tilted down. He was burping, repeatedly, that wa the only thing, but it would not stop. He looked at me and shook his head, its nothing, i had too many chick peas, and i have gas. go back to sleep. I looked at him, it was not alright though. I remembered somehting from Biology about the how oxygen is transported through the bloodstream, and we learned that yawning occurs when there is a lack of oxygen. And what my father was doing sounded like burping, but it looked like he was short of breath, or out of breath, and it occurred to me that he was having a heart attack. I think we should call an ambulance, i said. Don't be silly, get out of her, go to sleep. he was actin angry, but i don't think he was, i think he was scared, or in denial, because something definitely seemed out of place. Okay, lets at least go to the hospital. After some convincing, and threatening to call the ambulance, he agreed. On the way to the hospital, which was luckily only about five minutes away, it really hit. His arm hurt, badly, he doubled over in pain. I put my hand on his back. he was curled into the fetal position by the time we pulled up to the emergency room door. I ran for a wheelchair and got him into it. I wheeled it down the long corridor, ready to shout. I got into the waiting room, there was no one there. There was a nurse, in one of the adjoining rooms. She was looking into the ear of a little girl. I need help. I'll be right with you, she said, indicating the little girl. he has had heart trouble, i told her. he had had an angioplasty some seven years back. She looked at me to leave. I went back out to my father who looked to me for help. I ran back, i need help now, i think he is having a heart attack. She was irritated, so she jsut sat there for a moment, that was evil. then she got up and went into the back. I loked at the little girl apologetically. Neither her nor her mother really seemed to mind, and really, i didn't pay them that much attention. I was distracted. I a few minutes, a nurse came out and wheeled my father into the back. From there, it was out of my hands. They hooked him up to all the machines, and we knew for sure, he was indeed having a heart attack. His doctor did not get there for another two hours. Finally, when i was told that i would have to look after my mother and sisters, i think i listened, then went outside and sat down and cried. The whole time we were there my mother just stood there, she did not say one word. I cried and cried. Finally, the doctor came and took him away. A nurse showed my mother and i to a waiting room. We were the only two in the room, for hours. My mother did not say a thing, and neither did i. I was just going on and on in my head, i think, about how my father was never going to have to work again, all those long hours. i was going to do this and that... finally she did say something. she said that when my father got up in the morning and asked for some antacids from downstairs, she asked him, can't you get up and get them yourself. she had pulled weeds or something all the previous day and she was tired, and she has a bad back, or developed one since, i cannot remember the timeline of her back, but it was then she suddenly started to cry. up until then she was quiet, stoic, not hard, or unfeeling, just catatonic, in shock. After that incident, my life did not necessarily change, but i did, and the way i heard music did. I did not hear all those things i used to hear. It has been a slow process, coming to terms with that day, made difficult by my father's ever declining health. He has since had a quintuple bypass and other procedures along the way. It is hard to watch your parents get old, but it is harder to watch them suffer as they do it. My life is not unique in the hardships i have face. I have seen tens times worse, ten times too many. In response to all the kicks, we take along the way, we build a shell for protection, we grow numb to certain things. Music and writing together allow me to chip away at all those layers covering over my senses in the interest of self-preservation, and experienced concurrently, they intermix, and just as the "crossed streams" in Ghostbusters, they grow in power exponentially, enough to vanquish the evil spiky-haried lady ghost leader from the top of the building... no just kidding they don't do that, but they do wonders nonetheless. |
| I sat next to a sweet unassuming girl in one of my undergrad poetry classes. She was not conventionally beautiful, nor did she wear the most flattering clothes. I am sure she had more than one outfit, but if I think back to her dress now, I see her in a long drab skirt, old sneakers, and a loose fitting cardigan; like I said, not the most flattering apparel. She had an oval face and long straight hair, brown to black. For our first exercise, and this was the entry level poetry writing class, so after all the careful analysis of meter and blah blah blah, we were trying our hand, we were to craft a poem about someone, anyone. I wrote a poem about my grandmother's brother. He was a tea vendor in India. That is not a very lucrative or well respected position in society. So, he was on the tail end of ribbing, and his nature was such that he was sensitive to these things, and they got to him. He had already had a heart attach and a stroke before I even knew who he was. One weeknight, after everyone in my home had gone to sleep, the phone rang. It was a long distance call from India. I knew right away that it was from India becasue my parents had not yet lost the habit of yelling on the phone, developed in the seventies and early eighties when yelling was necessary to be heard over the bad lines. Now, I think people have just become hard of hearing from all the yelling so that they actually need to yell. Anyway, I digress, as I often do. This particular call was from my grandmother's brother. He had called becasue he wanted to see America, and he wanted my dad to fly him here. So what did my dad say...sure, I'll buy you a ticket. Crazy people. So this strange little man shows up at our home some time later. My dad had suffered a heart attack, and so we had a little electronic blood pressure measuring device. One day we came to measuring this funny old man's BP - 220/195. Holy s***! This guy should be dead. That is a quote from not me but our family physician. One of my good firends, also my age, a senior in high school, had his grandfather in town. So my friend, his father, his grandfather, me, and my granduncle, set off in a minivan to see Niagra Falls. From Chicago that is not a short drive. It turned out to be a hilarious trip. I learned that my granduncle used to play sports, and this man, all 5'2" 100lbs. of him was trying to give me weight lifting advice (I played high school football). It was comical seeing him simulating the proper form for doing squats, he would do the whole thing, facial expressions of extreme exertion and all. My friends dad asked him if he had soiled himself, and I saw him laugh for the first time. He was with us for maybe two months. When he left, he cried, and told us that he had never lived in such peace, that my mother was sweet and caring, and that he was forever thankful, he would never forget. We also measured his BP before he left. 150/90. He returned to India, vending tea, and the rest. He asked me to send pictures of our trip, he wanted to show everyone. By then School had started, and I didn't get around to it before news came that he had suffered another heart attack, and died. Returning to his life, and all the things that had gotten to him before wre just too much for him. I really wish I had sent those pictures. So when I got to college, I wrote a poem about him. It was alright. We had to sit in a large circle, there were about twenty five students, and read our poetry out loud. We went around the circle. Some people wrote about how close they were with their twin, using images of the womb and what not. A guy even wrote about his husky, its not a person he informed us, thanks guy. Then it was the turn of this unlikely, unassuming girl next to me to read her poem. When she started reading, the world simply melted into her voice. She wrote of her mother, I know that her poem was good writing. But she could have read the telephone directory and taken you to a new dimension. She was soft spoken yet confident of her images. And when she had finished the class sat there quietly. But more than that, my mind was quiet. Her poem seemed to just linger there and everyone was trying to hold on to that fleeting feeling. It was consuming. Now I have to follow that act? So i simply asked, "Can she read my poem too?" Everyone laughed, but I know they wanted her to. |
| In the short (too short) time I had in college, I studied film as well as writing. In the famous introduction to film class, we learned of the "sugar coated pill." People often have a message they want to share, a lesson, sometimes we just want to get right up on a soapbox and preach. However, the effectiveness of straight preaching is limited, there needs to be a predisposition to the preacher, a faith in them, and their message. Think of religious institutions. Now the writer does not have that kind of credibility, not at first. And even if they did, to convey their "message" to those that are not receptive, even they need to sugar coat the pill. Practically this means simply, the writer must show through the story that something is so, and allow the reader to come to their own conclusion. Simply taking the character and having them come to a conclusion is not as powerful. And another step down is simply narrating a lesson, i.e. outright preaching. The art of conveying whatever it is that the writer has to say lies in making the reader come to that conclusion entirely on their own. |
| I would like to share an experience I had. As part of the Creative Writing Curriculum as USC, fiction writers were required to take at least two poetry writing classes, a requirement I am greatful for. For the most part I leave poetry writing to the poets; that is, those who are inclined to expression through poetry. Still, the skills one learns in an endeavor to write "good" poetry are vital to fiction writing as well. That includes rythym, word choice, imagery, etc. I think for the most part writers are aware of this, and anyway I digress. In one of my poetry writing classes, the professor, himself a poet, would bring in friends of his, also poets. At one point a very prolific poet came to read from his newest book, and after the reading we were allowed to ask questions. I sat there in my "college years existential crisis mode" and wondered simply...why? Why bother putting all these words down on paper? (Now in my aged wisdom I would simply have enjoyed the moment, a real privilege to have a great poet read you his work) So college me had to ask him, "Why do you write poetry?" I drew the "dumb question" looks from my classmates, however, the poet without being condescending said, "because I have to." He elaborated, "because I could not live, unless I did." If that was not enough to ponder, he turned the tables on me, "Do you feel that you have to write?" Shoot, I didn't know. As far as I was concerned the only think I "had" to do was wear deodarant and change my socks. Someone other than myself said of poetry, "it is the expression of an outpouring...an overflow of emotion." I wonder if I "have to" write, and exactly what that means. |
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