The First Line

I just got off the phone talking to a good friend. We spoke of life and then movie scripts. She convinced me to adapt a novel into a screenplay. She agreed to manage me for deadlines and collaborative conversation.

I got off the phone and allowed my mind to race through the dream of what I could do, trying desperatly to ignore the nagging fear that I'm not good enough. That I've wasted too much time, written too little, not read enough or the right books. Am I any good at this? Can I write natural dialogue?

Before I called her, I had watched Gigantic:The Story of Two Johns, a documentary about They Might Be Giants. Ira Glass asked them about why they chose to make a song about a Belgium painter and why include a line about junksters running out of junk. John simply said "He was a great painter". In another interview that same John was talking about how difficult it was when people asked him about what a song is about. "It's about that", was his general reply to probing interpretations.

These guys are prolific song writers and whatever anyone else thinks about their music, they love it. They hardly cared about getting a record deal and did such creative and seemingly useless things as to have a dial-a-song service in which people could call and hear one of their songs play to them off an answering machine. They didn't have any expectations other then to make and share their music. They write with the generalities and specifics of a pure stream of conscience. They use coffee as a kind of tradition and talisman before writing songs and performing at concerts and have a dry, zany sense of humor tinged with existential grief, desperation and lonliness.

They just do it.

Broken into My Waking

A loom to climb upon between layers of lint and dust atmosphere, a toy to fight for-cry over. Big energetic snow dog, tail wagging against the flattened tire, is only a symbol of much needed warmth. "Your teeth are strung with tendons, does this mean you have to leave? No, please, don't 'leave', run away, into..."

The land lay shrubby and vulnerable beneath the dominating sky. Streaks of light discover themselves illumined orange on the abrupt white peaks, reflecting and being absorbed into the supple and defiant storm clouds. Abyss. Isolated rain bursts alternate preseance of the horizon. The dream landscape has escaped its prison, has broken into my waking. Turned inside beyond.

"Is the spiritual world this beautiful?"

"Can it really be this lonely?"