When I Say "WRITING!", You Say "OBSESSION!"

Art is a weird obsession.  So much of what is done is interior, behind doors of houses or minds.  When I meet people I try to explain it.

"I write."  I say.

"Oh, cool. What do you write about?"  They say.

And I say, "I don't think you listened to the heavy and delicate and layered and manic emphasis I put on the word 'write'."

Sometimes I just want to shout everywhere, "I WRITE!  EVERY DAY!  THAT'S WHAT I DO!  THE ONLY THING I ONLY DO!"

Because it's like having a secret life.  Having an affair, cheating on everybody, the whole world. Preferring to live inside and to only use the outside to create more inside. Being a murderer and sometimes having to leave your secret to challenge a sun and air you haven't created. 

Creation as opposed to absorption.  That's not a delineation.  People are combinations of both.  It's just artists feel a need to tip the scales. To create more or if they don't create let it bug them.  Let that animal eat something else inside. 

What I'm saying is, I can share a couple of things with you.  A few evidences besides this blog that I do put stuff out there.

THE DRUNKEN ODYSSEY

First off, John King's Drunken Odyssey podcast.  John hosts a wonderful show talking to amazing writers about their process, their love of books, their successes and failures, their humanity stripmined for words.  John is a deft and interesting host who brings out the interesting angles of an interview.

I find it very inspiring to hear writers talk about the craft of writing.  I miss my MFA for that reason.  John interviews Rick Moody, author of the very good and famous book The Ice Storm.  After that is  me reading a humor noir piece called "Why I'm Not Afraid of Sharks". You can listen to it on iTunes.

Download here: http://thedrunkenodyssey.com/2013/03/06/episode-39-rick-moody/

I highly recommend the other episodes.

FIRE IN THE PASTURE SAMPLER

Over a year ago I was included in the anthology Fire in the Pasture.  It's an amazing collection of poets.   It's billed as Mormon Poets and that can mean a lot of things but suffice it to say all the poets have some tie to Mormonism.

I consider myself Mormon and a Poet but had never put those two together because I haven't yet started to include thoughts about my faith in my work.  At least not overtly.  My faith could be underpinning everything I've ever written.

But they've released a sampler of work from the anthology and I'm included.  It's an honor, there's a lot of great work in that anthology.  Even better, it's FREE.

Fire in the Pasture Sampler

You should download it and read through some.  My poem "Return" is a few poems in.

Creative Withdrawal

Sometimes I sit down and try to write something a little more real or confessional here.  I'll even write several paragraphs.  Then I just erase it.  I'm not sure why.  You'd think as much as I write I'd be able to explain a few emotions or thoughts.  I generally can't.  Not in a straightforward manner.  It's easier through an abstraction, the obtuseness of an image.

Today I'm suffering a little creative withdrawal.  This is not a new phenomenon for me.  I usually dip when I finish a project or even a major leg of it.  We had a recording session for The Pine Barons, an animation project I'm working on.  I spent so much effort writing the episodes, editing the episodes, rehearsing, organizing table reads and schedules, setting up the space, motivating even when I'm unmotivated, just getting it all together.  And I'm drained.  Just hollowed out.

And we haven't even started animating it.  Haven't even gotten to the hard part of it.

You would think that a creative endeavor finished would bring a sense of accomplishment.  A relaxing of the brain.  But instead it feels like getting off a drug.  My mind cycles down into a lower RPM and I miss the speed.  I want that much energy back in my life.  I need it.

Someone asked me once, "What would you do if didn't write?"  And I didn't know how to answer.  Because there isn't anything else.  There isn't me without these buttresses.  At this point, I don't know if I've always been this or I've replaced every stone until I became this.

I recently taught a writing class and this girl was asking me how I write everyday.  I wanted to ask, "How do you not?"

So this project is done. Partly.  And now I just move the train forward.  Start unloading the next car.  I have ideas stretching back into some vanishing point in my subconscious.  If there's such a thing as Writer's Block, I've never seen it.  I told this writing class: Just write something else.  The brain is a limitless machine.

This is why I don't write my feelings. I feel it gets weird or preachy. Thanks for indulging me.  Back to silly stuff.  Maybe once I get a few things in place, you'll find some poetry on here again.  That's a quiet room I'd like to sit in again.

My Nature

Here's something I've been trying to explain for years.  Friends have heard this in snippets but I finally sat down to compose my thoughts on it.  Here's the other thing about it.  Critical writing is not my strong point.  I don't venture into it much and I would say it's my weakest writing.  So forgive a little.

NATURE

Nature doesn't do it for me.  It's a nice excursion.  It's a change of pace.  But it's not my thing.

It doesn't relax me or make me a better person. I don't miss it when I'm not around it.  I don't want to rush right back into it when I leave it. I'm not a Romantic Poet who sits opining on some hillside absorbing the ether of knowledge and beauty.

Now I can appreciate beauty.  Natural forms.  The asymmetry of trees and mountains. The endlessness of water.  When it comes to nature, I prefer waterways, lakes, oceans.  If I had to live in it, I would choose to live on a lake in a deciduous forest.  That's the Michigan in me.  That feels like home.

But I'd rather be in a city.  I like built things.  I like to see the workmanship of hands.  Work of people that I can reach out and touch. I believe in God.  I believe in the beauty he's created.  But I can't create it.  And what I can't create doesn't interest me.  I have to learn the lesser forms before I can learn the higher.

This is not to take away from God.  Or that I appreciate God any less.  I'm in awe at the rock structures of Monument Valley.  At a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains in Glacier National Park.  I've seen the Northern Lights twice and it was deeply moving.  I'm speechless at the delicate knife's edge of balance that keeps this world together and us all living on it.

But at my core, I'm a creator.  (And I don't know God's core, but I know that he is a creator, too. Capital C, in fact.)  I don't have enough time on Planet Earth to do the things I want to do.  I don't have the time to make all the things I want to make.  So since I don't have time to learn how to create everything,  I just spend my time on a few things.  And that is what makes me, at my core, happy.  Creation.

So mountains, trees, the complexity of life, in a way, frustrate me.  They're beyond me.  It's like studying painting your whole life just to find out that compared to the master, you are a child.  A scribbler.  So I'd rather spend my time on forms I can understand.  The art of man.  Our constant and ceaseless tribute to the greatness of God.  Poetry, Comedy, Drama, Paint, Sculpture, Architecture, Sport, Film, Photography, Dance, Science, Mathematics.

I wouldn't call them lesser forms.  I believe they are God's form of art as well and that they were given to us.  And I don't think God is a jealous being that demands all of our art be representations of him.  That we spend all our time writing hymns and painting religious iconography.  I believe that all art, whatever is created, is a representation of him.  And I believe that pleases God.

So if I had my druthers, I prefer to spend my time here. In words.  In thought.  In constant exploration of the mystery around me.  I don't need to go to Nature to see it.  I already see it.  I'm deep in the woods of it.

I don't hate being outdoors though. So, please, ask me to go camping.  Please ask me to hike and to canoe and swim and fish. I love adventure.  Just know that my life is right at my fingertips.  This is the place I meet with God the most.

How Art Feels Like Prostitution

On Sunday, my friend Joseph Clay, a very talented writer and filmmaker, mentioned that art is hard because it feels so selfish.  As if you're spending all your time focused on you.

You start asking yourself questions.  Why am I doing this?  Why should people care?  Why is making this important?  Why do I even need to?  Who is this for if not for me?  What is this?  Why does it matter?

I'm going to be upfront here and say I don't have answers to these.

I'm suffering from a little bit of Want Everything Now Syndrome.  I would like to say that most days it feels like I'm being proactive.  I'm meeting with writer friends.  Talking to people about agents.  Getting the scoop on the 'biz'.  I've sort of put it into overdrive lately and that maybe explains why I feel a little frantic.  Because I've sped up the pace of my life.

I don't get this agent business.  Finding someone to like me.  To believe in me and champion me to other people.  It feels forced.  It feels like a blind date.

I get writing. The symphony structure of drama.  The jazz nature of comedy.

I get sitting down and just doing it.  Because that's how it goes.  I sit down every day and write something.  Depending on the amount of time I have, I usually produce at least a scene, a poem, an interchange, a structure.

Truthfully, if there's Writer's Block, I've never seen it.  In my opinion, Writer's Block occurs when people don't have enough projects on their plate.  I can't wait to finish something and move on to the next thing.  Either I'm very blessed or too obsessed.  Let's say a combination of both.

(I feel sorry for anyone who has been around me this summer.  I've talked about nothing but the scripts I'm writing.  I've dominated conversations with my own concerns and obsessions.  I can't talk normally to people anymore. I've become a weirdo.)

But once you produce something, any kind of art, there's the last step.  The worst step.  Where you show it. Where you step up to people and say, "Please experience this."  You hand them a script.  You invite them to a gallery.  You sit them down and pop in the dvd or pull it up on your computer.  You hand them the object as a gift.

And people think it means "Love me."  But mostly it means, "Understand me."

This is where I'm at.  Saying to everyone, "Hey, I'm a writer.  I write.  A lot. Here's some stuff. Check it out if you're bored.  I promise I won't think about why you didn't finish reading it and didn't get back to me and tell me your thoughts and whether I matter or should just give up and live in the Appalachians and eat apple mash and goatmeat until I die of some old timey disease."

I know why so many people give up on art.  It's taxing to put yourself out there.  Maybe most artists want to 'make it' because it doesn't bring money and fame as much as it brings an end to explaining yourself.  An end to justification.  An end to looking across at someone and saying, "I don't know why I do it either. I just can't stop."

Jobs I Would Be Terrible At

I don't know if I've had a job I was amazing at really. I'm kind of a dreamer. I really only want ever want to be writing. When I was a waiter, I would stand off to the side of my tables jotting down poems in my notebook. When I was a cashier, I would write dialogue on the back of receipt paper. Most of my jobs I've gotten by with a smile and a joke. Here's some other jobs I'm sure I'd be terrible at.

 DOCTOR

There's Dr. Best barely listening to his patients.  He wears the appropriate "sad and understanding" face as they tell him their problems but where good doctors would hear the vital details that lead them to the diagnosis, Dr. Best is thinking of dolphins.  Wouldn't he like to have a dolphin baby?  Surely as a doctor, he has enough money to construct a giant pool for his dolphin child?  How would we drive his aqua boy to the vet?  A van filled with water?  Maybe a waterproof convertible?  Uh-oh, Dr. Best.  Your patient is in cardiac arrest.

LAWYER

Look at James Best, Esq.  He sure looks dapper in that suit.  He spent way more time picking out this suit than he did reading all the necessary case work for this trial.  He only does jury trials because this is the only place he even seems like a competent lawyer.  He likes to lean on the jury box, half wink at the moms and single ladies he's loaded the jury with.  He's already used a couple of sports analogies to win over the sports guys.  He put on a somber and serious face so the ex-cop in the jury knew that he's serious and he really understands life.  When he thinks he's got them, he sits down and writes out a funny scene between two men in quicksand on the back of his case files.  He decides to overrule something just so he looks interested.

FIREFIGHTER

James the Firefighter.  Why did he join up?  60 percent for sliding down the pole. 30 percent to ride the big red engine.  10 percent to smile at ladies in the grocery store while he's wearing his fireman togs.  He's the only one on his crew who calls them togs.  Let's see a typical fire with James.  There's James holding the firehose.  He likes the way the fire spills into any open space.  He kind of lets go of the terror and seriousness of the scene and thinks about how the char is like a reverse snowflake.  How the fire is an insatiable hunger, how it would eat everything its hot hands could reach.  Or maybe its insatiable thirst, how only enough water or rain can ever make it sleep.  He reaches for a pen to jot this down and the hose bucks in his hands, spraying all the onlookers.

RACE CAR DRIVER

Nope, I would die. Straight up day dream myself right into a mega flip and keep on going right into the afterlife.

Painting from here.