Thinking about writing, my writing, my projects, what I need to do, what I want to do, what I have done, what I haven't done, what I should have done, what I could have done.
The Daily Rabbit Hole.
I started writing long ago. I suppose I started writing the day I learned the alphabet and was given a pen and/or pencil. The memory is a little foggy, as it was long ago, before kindergarten. I do remember by kindergarten being able to visualize a notebook in my brain that had information and words I needed. It was like an old fashioned book from Victorian times. Must have seen it in a cartoon or movie. I can still see it in my mind right now. I have, or had, somewhere, an old journal entry from fifth grade where I put down the words "I want to be a writer".
I didn't always think that would be the case. I drifted through a lot of school, at one point wanted to be a minister, which I suppose speaks to me wanting to influence people and how they think, which I believe is part of being a writer.
But I didn't really, truly, think I could say with any sort of conviction "I am a writer" until my first play was written and published. Even though I had been writing all my life, poems and stories and match book poems and part of a novel that still is waiting to be finished- a magic realism extravaganza that will one day make a great anime film when it's adapted.
But I digress.
I am trying to think of why I write.
What do I want?
I think it varies from day to day, hour to hour, year to year, dream to dream.
Mostly, I want to tell stories that make me laugh and cry in equal measure.
Because it feels good. It feels right.
Yes, I want to be paid for it. And have the right people think this is the shit and the new thing and world changing and brilliant.
But more than that, I want to think it is brilliant myself. I want to find a way capture the world as it appears to me in my dreams, to borrow a quote an old friend who no longer speaks to me used to say Chekov said.
I just looked up that quote. It's from The Seagull. "We should show life neither as it is, nor as it should be, but as we see it in our dreams."
I should have known that, seeing as I was in that play in NYC in the late nineties.
And I was pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.
Of course, it was a modern interpretation, put together at Expanded Arts when things were still exciting, before excess and madness led to that troupe's demise.
Sounds dramatic, and it was.
Anyhow, that quote about what to aspire to as one writes is pretty on the mark. I would only add "and it should be either incredibly funny or intense, and make everyone cry at least once."
I am working on two main projects at the moment. Well, maybe three. And when I say I am working on those, that doesn't mean there aren't several other things hovering in the background, waiting for their chance to speak. Those three are just on the front burner.
I'm rambling. I know. Sorry. When I open the door into my own brain, the waters pour out and go where they will and I try to clean up the mess, but what can I say, there's a lot of stuff in me, and the more I write, instead of the clutter going away, I find the palace of my mind expands, sort of like the Winchester Mystery House, getting bigger and weirder as time goes by.
Each experience this life affords also adds to the fun.
So. Yeah. I am a writer. I have stories and jokes and tales of glory and woe. I will try to amuse you. I will try to amuse myself.
I have no choice in the matter.
Here's a song. It's Lonesome Fiddle Blues, by The String Cheese Incident. I chose it because one of my projects was partially inspired by String Theory, by the idea we are connected to many different dimensions, by cosmic strings.
Enjoy.
