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.
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3 comments:
Fears and inadequacies can be turned to our advantage, its really the only chance we got. "That" is the stumbling block that was turned into our plaything, "that" gave us a creative chance, "that" is what was cumultively stagnent in front of the lauphing crowd of combinatorials. And us, without pants, and with a wry smile, started dancing.
This post reminds me of the beginning of a "Rolling Stone" or some other magazine article about a band. Are you intentionally experimenting with this style? Or is it more of a stream-of-consciousness anecdote of creative process as you ponder your own creativity? I suspect that it is both.
I think that it is important for creative work to reflect the process. At the same time, I have noticed in a couple of your pieces that the work itself is about not being able to produce work, or thinking it inadequate, or wanting to just do it. I have found that your most gripping work was when you just let loose, perfection or profundity be dammed. For example, you mentioned on the phone that in writing "A Little Raisin", your mood or tone was perhaps intellectually silly and flippant (or something like that). I think structurally it is your best work. In "The Pendulum", you just express a deep and raw experience and realization. It doesn't seem like you took an eternity worrying about form, or using the proper metaphor, but it is really well written and quite profound.
I think you need to just write, about whatever is on your mind and in whatever form, and not worry so much about form and uber-original metaphors. You are smart enouph, and thoughfull enouph, and emotionally honest enouph, that whatever you do, it will be great, or almost great. And in the latter case, you can always go back and perfect once it has gotten out there.
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