Less Huck, more "Chuck"

It's been years since I read "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" but a passage is flowing through my mind, at the moment. It's as Huck and Jim are drifting down the Mississippi on a raft in the aftermath of a flood and see a house wandering by in the middle of it. Jim explores it as best he can, since it could sink at any moment, and tells Huck it's got nothing of concern inside. (Later it turns out there was actually a dead man in the house, and as fiction would have it, this man was supposedly Huck's father...which made me frown in disbelief, at the time.)

What struck me was how Mark Twain built this image of a beautiful, silent, massive body of water whispering along and taking everything in its wake without a thought -- house, tree, man, didn't matter. The Mississippi was so completely in control, it could let itself appear to be gentle even as quick deadly currents raged underneath.

Last night I dreamed something like this -- me in the middle of water in a half-sunk boat being carried somewhere and completely unconcerned. Which is weird because I can't swim. Can barely even float and then only if I'm in water shallow enough to where I know I can touch bottom without my head having to dip below the surface. If I can't, I freak. And this is after years of swimming lessons. Maybe I drowned in a previous life.

Which segues into me wondering if Brendan can swim and how exactly did he learn if he can? My feeling is, he can't. When he's in the pool in the back of his aunt's house in Houston, he stays in the shallow end. But as I was writing that, something happened and he drove himself into the deeper part and remained underwater until his lungs were about to burst. I'm not sure why, yet. I've never seen him as suicidal or prone to making grand gestures...well, aside from getting a tattoo of Joanna's name on his left shoulder.

Only...that actually was a sort of spur-of-the-moment way of proving his love for her. I'm branding myself for you kind of thing. And other little moments have cropped up where he can be just as impetuous as his brothers and friends, even as he knows it's pointless nonsense when he's doing it.

God, I wish I knew what all of this meant, already! Just as I think I've got a clue, something happens to mess with me and my inner workings.

Of course, I could just have ADD on top of the dyslexia I exhibit when I'm typing too quickly and the general psychoses I let out of their cage when I get too deeply into my writing.

Hmph, they should have an emoticon for flipping a finger quickly over your lips with a blubbering sound.

Moody and blue

I
am
not
in
the
mood
to
fill
blank
spaces
at this time.

My heart wants to sleep
In a pool less than deep
To let cool water seep
Softly into my dreams.

It's no joy to fake
Hours passed while awake.
Wasting them's no mistake
'Cause it's not what it seems.

Fashion Week!

It begins tomorrow, September 8-15, and I'll be right in the middle of it since I'm flying down to NYC the morning of the 12th. No wonder it was hard finding a hotel room in the city. I'll actually be staying in New Jersey, just across the river by the Meadowlands. Something tells me this will be the epitome of desolation.

I've been rethinking a few things about Brendan. Mainly because I found this --

Alice Cooper in their Glam Rock period, not long before David Bowie came out with "Life on Mars". I can't see my guy ever actually dressing like this, not even for Hallowe'en. It'd take too much time and effort for something that doesn't really mean anything to him.

No writing done on POS but some reading. I couldn't get my head around laying down words on a page in any meaningful way, today; too much crap at the job...half of which is just me getting back into the groove of going to work for 8 hours after having been away from it for nearly 7 weeks during a difficult time.

I spoke with a friend who lives in Austin, today, and apparently not only is the city almost circled by fires, there isn't enough water in Travis Lake to even go boating let alone fight the blazes. There are some real concerns the city will run out of water in a few months if there isn't rain of a goodly amount. And where is Rick Perry? In California bullshitting along with the rest of the GOP crowd after making a ten minute stop to look like he gave a damn. Now bear in mind, this is the same man who helped slash state assistance to fire departments from $39 million a year to $7 million in the middle of the worst drought in Texas history. To call him a snake would be an insult to reptiles.

Oh, and they started this news broadcast off with, "It's eleven o'clock; do you know where your children are?" I remember hearing that on WOAI in San Antonio forty years ago and even then I thought it rather condescending. Not at all what a TV News station ought to be doing.

This is why I don't watch the news, anymore -- it just pisses me off or irritates me. But I wanted to see about the rain in NYC since some of the books I'm dealing with next week are being picked up at 10:30 am...and I got butkis. Back to the interweb for my info.

And they wonder why no one pays attention to old form media, anymore.

"I Wanna Be Your Dog"

Good Old Iggy Pop...who looked old twenty years ago. He kicks my inner punk into gear, sometimes, and has me wondering if Brendan would ever wear a Trevira polyester shirt. They're a bit pretentious (I know; I had one and have a photo of me in it), but they didn't really become the rage till 1976 and the explosion of disco. I remember dancing "The Hustle" with some friends in a bar on the north side of San Antonio wearing that friggin' shirt. I think it fell apart after six washings.

No...Brendan's more an unpretentious t-shirt kind of guy who has fun watching trends come and go as he just keeps on keeping on. Or maybe not. If he's out to get a girl to notice him. I dunno. That may not be decided until later.

I'm wondering this because he just got laid for the first time, and the woman he was with is making cheese toast in the morning. He's never had it before so she smirks he's about to be deflowered twice in 12 hours...and rather than take offense at it like most guys would (the "I've been with girls before" kind of bullshit), he laughs.

And Iggy'd be there in the background, thinking about it. He was still with The Stooges and had a lot of serious counter-culture cred. But I can't figure out how to introduce Brendan to his music. He's working in a bar where the bartender/manager is more of a Dead Head than a punk. And the Houston family is too conventional to even know about him, especially since Texas was anything but a welcoming place to the likes of Punk. So I need other people around him to do that...like maybe Everett, this gay man he knows. Would Jeremy, a friend of his cousin's?

I suppose he could slip into it via David Bowie during his "Ziggy Stardust..." phase.

Shit, why am I focusing on this superficial crap? Avoidance, maybe? I'm really good at that.

Laborless Day...not

I worked on a list for one of my packing jobs in NYC next week and shredded another 2 bags of old financial records (amazing how a short stack of papers can expand so much) while watching a decent enough documentary on TCM about the film biz up to 1970. It was a bit lumpy in parts but did a good job of connecting the direction of film with the times they were caught in.

I also did some more notes on POS. Rereading them a moment ago they seem trite and wordy, but again I'm laying a foundation for (hopefully) better work later. Brendan had some fun with me over this, and I'd like to keep that lightness. It'll come in handy as this section nears his return to Derry.

One nice thing about going down to NYC next week is, I'll get to see some movies I'm interested in. Like "Weekend", a new British film about two guys who hook up just as one is about to leave the country. It's been WAY too long since I've seen a movie in an actual theater instead of just DVDing it at home and I want to get back to that. Jeez, I used to go to 2-3 movies a week, on average...but that was when I was still pushing to work in film. Some of them were freebies I got through being a member of Film Independent, the West Coast ex of the IFP. Some were big releases. Some were revivals at one of the few remaining theaters that showed old films in LA. Half the time they were foreign -- French, German, Spanish and Japanese being my favorites. I feel like I can do that, again, and I don't know why, exactly.

Any suggestions on other films about to come out? NYC usually gets things first, in the US, even before LA...not to mention Buffalo. Just keep in mind -- I'm NOT interested in "Spy Kids" or "Transformers" or crap like that. I'm the kind of guy who knows that "The 400 Blows" is not a porn film, that Pedro Almodovar used to make porn films and that his new one, "The Skin I Live In", is not a new commercial for Loreal.

Do I sound condescending yet? If not, just give me time to work up my inner film connoisseur. I can be a mean little bastard about that.

Nice and cool, today. Breezy. Right now it's 57. All very nice. Maybe I was an Eskimo in a former life. Hm...how does one reconcile that with being a vampire in a former death? Dunno. Maybe I'll work that into "Blood Angel."

Back in the saddle

I just finished adding 8 pages to POS and feel good. They aren't the best work I've done, yet, but they're a solid beginning for the shift in Brendan's character while in Houston. And once again, we went wandering into some surprising areas. It's weird but I almost felt like I hadn't stopped writing on it. We'll see how long this lasts.

Something else I found was Van Morrison was big in Northern Ireland because he was born in Belfast, and his "Astral Weeks" album came out in 1968. I thought it was later. I haven't paid much attention to what pop music was preferred in the area because so much else has to be gleaned from the details I'm jamming into my brain. I'm already beginning to feel the need for a serious de-fragging.

Anyway, I saw some old clips of him singing "Gloria" and "Baby Please Don't Go" on some British version of "American Bandstand" (thanks to YouTube) and thought he'd be interesting to use as background music for my characters. For instance, Joanna would probably love these two songs but not be crazy about the music on "Astral Weeks" because it's so experimental and moody and elegant, while Brendan...he'd be intrigued...maybe...no, no, he's telling me that's the kind of thing his older brother, Eamonn, would like, to make him feel even cooler than he already seemed to Bren. And Brendan would listen to it to be close to Eamonn but not get it. That's why he's so into the Johnstons.

I've also verified in my own mind that half the reason Irish Catholics are so bound up in their history and lineage is because they were made to feel inferior, even though they had their own Earls and Lords and such, some of whom were even at court in London back in the 16th and 17th centuries. Because of that and the massive focus on being of your clan, many will trace themselves back to an O'Neill or O'Donohue member of Irish royalty to counter the condescension. Like anyone who's been made to feel like nothing.

I don't think I have all of it down, yet, but I'm getting...well...SOMEplace with it. Step by baby step.

What to do, what to do?

Shredding makes the world go around, but damn, it's tedious. So I watched the Criterion "Seven Samurai" as I did it. I've seen the movie half a dozen times and it's still overwhelming in parts, and Kurosawa's directing was just plain phenomenal. I can't imagine how much work went into just the final battle in the rainstorm.

It seems my creativity comes in...well, I honestly don't know how it comes. I like to think it's as I'm writing the stories and my characters begin talking to me and guiding me to existences I'd never known. And the truth is, that does happen. I honestly have no idea how else I was able to write HTRASG or BC. And it does seem to be kicking in, once more, now that my focus is shifting back to POS. Hell, it even happened during my incessant rewrites of LD. So maybe that's all creativity is is focusing on something and working at it till you can't do anything more to it.

I wish I'd been able to do that in film, but the truth is I was much too conventional in my cinematic vision for someone who's supposed to have been a visual person. Looking back over my storyboards, they're all functional. Period. Rarely are they exciting or artistic or anything more than exactly what was needed to get through the moment and cover the scene. Doesn't help when you're trying to tell a story with some pictorial power.

Oh, it's not like I'm sitting here going over all my old storyboards. I used copies I'd made of them as scrap paper to print on, occasionally, and as I shred my bank and credit card statements, I'm seeing them, again. I'd gone as paperless as soon as I could years ago and just did printouts of things I needed. Still do. And now I have a lot more scrap paper to print on.

Y'know, I think the only way I've really been self-reflective is in my writing...and I mean more the narrative and less the screenplay. Narrative fiction is all on the writer's back, so I have to pay more attention to the wholeness of the piece. The consistency. The characters and their inner workings. I didn't do that nearly enough with scripts, mainly because I thought the actors wanted room to explore and play with who they were becoming. I've had actors tell me they love my work after reading it because it gave them that freedom. But...and this a biggie...actors aren't the only ones involved in making a movie (much as they'd like to think they are) and the truth is, I was just being lazy. I was lazy in the rest of the structure, too, putting in way more than was necessary to tell the story. I think that's why I was told by a number of people my scripts read more like books, at times. Guess that is what I was meant to write.

Ah, the joy of learning. I'm glad I never gave that up. Now if I could just figure out German, I'd be a lot happier.

Recycled and reborn

Boxes and boxes of old papers will soon become other forms of paper and will be happier than if they'd wound up at the bottom of a landfill. I still have a box to shred and more boxes to decimate, but I'm finally back to seeing the rug in my apartment. Happiness encompasses me...until I look at my desk and table and see what a mess they are. And don't get me started on my bookshelves; I need at least two more, but those'll have to wait till I'm solvent, again.

POS is beginning to whisper around my mind, again, nudging me to notice and keep its newest indications in my mind. Like a stew simmering on a back burner and sending out whiffs of flavor while still warning, "Not done yet, not quite." For example, reading "The Catholics of Ulster" has increased my awareness of how wrong the character of Brendan's mother is, right now. Which isn't saying much because I don't have her in a lot of what's been written, except in the background. But she was trending one way and she's begun to shift her direction to a better one. A more honest and less overtly symbolic one.

It's the same for Brendan. He's becoming more real, more human in my thoughts. I'm already itching a little to make some changes to reflect this. Like how I was going to have him in the typical long hair and mustache and such of the 70s and 80s, but he doesn't like his hair long. "Too much bother," is his comment. So he's going to have it short. Which messes with my plan to  have him unrecognizable when he returns to Derry as a man. We'll have to see how that goes.

I'm back to not knowing for sure how this will turn out. My characters are finding themselves and insisting they each be heard through their own voice. I love it when that happens.

Quick Sharing

"However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." Stanley Kubrick

Almost broke again

It's the bane of anyone artistic -- having to figure out how to pay such mundane bills as rent, food, utilities and the like. Money runs like sand through our fingers, to put it mildly, and I am no exception. I have maybe enough to take me through the end of the month, when I start getting paid, again, but it'll be rough catching up after that.

I'm not saying I wish I hadn't done all that I did. Fact is, if I hadn't come down early and been with mom her last two weeks, I'd have ripped myself up for it. And you can't put a price tag on that. The same for going down to visit my aunt in Carbondale; it's worth the money for the peace of mind in knowing you've done what you should.

This also fits in with the way I protect my stories. That's hurt me when it comes to making a living at it. If I'd been willing to change them to fit what people wanted, I'd have felt like I betrayed them. Betrayed my characters and their willingness to trust me. I have to be their rock, and I can't be that if I worry about money too much. So I usually just scrape by and wonder what might have been.

This is backed up by my experience with "Bugzters", when I was trying to conform it to what others wanted. I felt like shit the whole time and had headaches and became way too self-indulgent in the food department. My nails, which are already pretty well-gnawed, were all but non-existent and I was not nice about how uncompromising people were. Finally I just hit the wall of, "That's it, not one damn thing more." But it was too late. By that point the story was ruined for me and I signed it over to them. And even though they've done exactly what various animation producers tell them they should have done, it still hasn't sold.

I don't know if that means I was right or we had bad timing or the people backing it were incapable of getting it made or if the story was a bad idea from the outset or if I just suck as a screenwriter...though I tend to give that last thought short-shrift because I did hit 2nd place in a serious writer's competition (in its pre-animation form); exterior validation helps keep things in perspective. I just know it's dead in the water, last I heard, and I have no idea what will be done with it next.

Well...it's nice to know I've got some kind of backbone in me, other than the one required to live this life. Wish I could use it in other ways.