Alluring Incongruity (Short Story)
December 12th 2006 10:22
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Category: No Category
The curtains are half-drawn, and through them peeks a room of an alluring incongruity.
It is immediately evident that we are in an art gallery through the collection of artworks that hang upon the walls... encapsulating the range of modernity, it would appear. Here soft, subdued squares containing free-flowing shapes tease the eye in their gentleness as would the vibrant pale of the sky outside; patches of cool in a bright peach-coloured room. However, in some act of neglect, or perhaps the poor choice of an inexperienced curator, these freeform, abstract apparitions find themselves in ludicrously ornate golden frames. The evocation of the intricacy of the Baroque period results in a most certainly bizarre, but eerily cheery displacement of styles- the classic and the modern cohabit quietly, tongue-in-cheek.
There is one artwork that catches the eye, mainly because it is the only piece of art on the back wall of the gallery, and here it seems the frame has been used to good effect: A large blank canvas is mounted on the wall. There is a single tiny sign painted in its middle in black ink, reading: UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Around its heavy, grandiose frame, a collection of art materials have been stuck to the gallery wall. Here we find tubes of paint scattered all around the space surrounding the canvas, some unopened and some with their lids unscrewed, paint leaking out. Several paintbrushes hang listlessly about, either dipped into the paint and leaving a red, blue or yellow trail on the grainy texture of the wall, or stretched out towards the vast emptiness of the wall around them.
The room further continues to draw curiosity with the introduction of an antique Victorian style couch in the centre of the room, facing the right wall. A dark, polished antique, its intricate, quaint wooden designs and soft lawn-green cushioning make an eerie contrast with the walls. In front of this is brought a large, square, black leather cushion seat. This somewhat eccentric room is lit by artificial lighting that accentuates the orange of the walls. There is no one about.
For a long time, silence.
No perceptible activity.
Then, one by one, a stream of characters is injected into the space of the room, each making a unique entrance from one of the four exits available. They perform a little walk around the room, succeeding each other and making their rounds with an unrealistic fluid motion that speaks of obvious choreography.
They're a starkly archetypal collection of characters, with something fishy about them- their very cartoonishness belying a representation of deep integrity. They give off the impression of being a dubious whole; their self-consciousness and ego-centric assertion of identity indicating a moral elusiveness to each character:
A middle-aged woman wearing a pale blue collared shirt and wheeling a pram is preceded by a small boy of about 5 years, from back left entrance. He wears a red cap, a white shirt and aqua trousers, striding ahead of his mum with undisguised curiosity. His mum pushes the pram slowly, busying herself fastidiously with worrying about her son going too far ahead- this is a form of a distraction for her: he's perfectly behaved. Blissfully immersed his own world, a radiant smile never leaves his face. Her demeanour is otherwise placid as she gazes from side to side to take in the artworks around her, but her first activity is largely detracting from the experience of the other, which is how she likes it.
The boy pauses just in front of the audience, centre stage, eyes gaping with an unpretentious supply of curiosity at the sight of them, and he waits for his mum to catch up with him, make the same wonder-filled discovery. As she faces the imaginary wall, their reactions couldn't be more different: her eyes squint now, and her eyebrow slides upward as she regards the audience dubiously. Her features scrunch into a frown, even as her boy's expand in the delighted of the spectacle. What the woman sees seems to disturb her carefully monitored grasp of the real world. Finally, breaking away with ease and joie de vivre, the boy skips down the corridor, in front of the curtains, and she follows (automatically, restlessly), visibly relieved to break her gaze with what she saw. On her hasty retreat away from the room she looks back over once, but continues walking. The memory of this unnerving experience will not torment her too much longer as she returns to the world she knows how to respond to.
A youngish Caucasian male wearing paint-stained blue overalls and an aloof, hardened expression enters behind them, and walks rigidly down the room, inspecting the walls. He looks out of place, mainly because he looks like he feels it, and somewhat removed from the scene, like he's not taking much of the gallery in in his brisk walk-around. Arriving in front of the audience it is evident he's been taken aback, and that a feeling of discomfort has settled over him. Tense in his movements and expression to begin with, he now acts even more notably so. The lack of understanding and inability (or, rather, refusal) to emote with the scene in front of him is evident in his gawking expression. He lingers indecisively centre stage while searching for meaning, but finding himself only more immersed in a labyrinth of concepts he doesn't understand, or doesn't wish to, he finally moves on to the left wall with that very forced air of moving on. He departs in much the same manner as he arrived, although a slower, more reflective stance is evident as he slips out of the back left exit.
Wearing T-shirt and jeans, and large photo-camera around her neck, a young female Japanese tourist emerges from the same entrance. She enthusiastically surveys every artwork with close attention. Her curiosity only intensifies as she comes face to face with the audience, carefully scrutinising every person with an air of awe and respect, yet also one of deep amusement. Not so much because it is a custom with her, but because she's genuinely fascinated with the 'work' in front of her, she raises the camera up to her eye level and presses its button. It has a blinding flash. Satisfied and quite pleased, she walks in front of the corridor to the left, to exit.
A plump 30-something couple has wondered out onto the stage from the back right exit while she was taking the photo, and they walk together, communicating to each other with gestures steeped in pretentiousness. The woman has over-styled strawberry blond hair, and wears a red suit and ostentatious jewelry, her husband immaculately dressed in a black suit, but irritable and disgruntled in posture and appearance. He walks along almost paying no attention to the art around him. These two treat each other as if in a world of their own, shutting all else out with a sense of triumph and superiority. Their conversation pauses only for a moment as they take in the sight from the centre of the stage, then resumes in an equally contrived nature, however slower and less certain, as they gesticulate slightingly at the audience, their mimed commentary almost as if rehearsed. (One hand on their chins in twin expressions of haughty disapproval.) They move off after pointedly ending their speeches with expressions scowling in distaste, to inspect the left wall, then the back. They pause over this one, unable, unwilling to make head or tail of it either. Silence, then they move off in much the same way, to exit back right.
A skinny, sinewy elderly male in a faded aqua jumper comes onto the stage vigorously from the front left exit, carrying on his face an imposing glare and forehead deliberately tensed in a show of intense disapproval. Energetically marching in a military fashion till he reaches the centre of the stage, his anger and displeasure seems to be heightened, to a level which hurls him into an even more extravagant display of bad temper. Rage and disgust embedded into his features, he clenches his fists, and with one last glare stomps away, exiting impatiently through the front right exit, deliberately scowling and refusing to glance at the audience for a second longer.
Not long after his exit, a 20-something woman dressed in a close-fitting black bodysuit, with dark sunglasses and a colourful shawl wrapped around her hair suavely enters from one of the back exits. She moves discreetly and with grace around the room, slowly approaching the front, the click of her high heel shoes the only sound arising from her. She glances around her as she walks, taking in the artworks, but her countenance reveals annoyingly little about the being inside. She comes face to face with the artwork and looks at it directly, but her face registers no sign of a change in expression- her reaction to the work is unknown. Infuriatingly enough, not a single twitch of the muscles or change in posture indicate her personal reaction. After a while she turns away, as stylishly as before, and commences her exploration of the room. She at last exits through the same exit she entered from.
There is silence once again.
Then a young, teenage Asian girl steps out onto the stage, back right, wearing a black polo shirt and black trousers, self-conscious and uncomfortable with every step. She makes her way to the front of the stage in the now empty room, and sits with a rigid sort of grace onto the black seat. She stares, bemused, at the audience. She appears quite puzzled and intrigued, unable to shift her gaze and look away, almost as if transfixed by what is before her.
Where is this going to go? How do I continue?
Should this mysterious visitor now be joined by a similarly lost and lonely soul? And what do I do with the tension I've built up so far?
Empty lines stretch down the page...
The once innocent thin blue lines suddenly take to jeering at me, mocking my whole identity with their serene, undisturbed, parallel uniformity, dividing the page into one crisp, empty line after another.
Oh how I want to make those lines dance with a jumble of letters that wind their merry way through from right to left, dancing upon the page...
It's pathetic, really...
Up till now it's all been 'just right'.
And just at this crucial moment, when what happens next is of ultimate importance to the fruition of the play, when the suspense is almost overpowering...I cannot continue. (Am I in love with my own precipice?)
By now there has been a distinct atmosphere established, and the air of expectation which surrounds this play has reached a sort of climax. Everything that's needed in order to continue.
But by giving it that which it currently lacks, that is, consummation, would be to leave it lacking in an entirely different, detrimental way...
For here in its unfinished glory, its infinite potential and possibility, the play is all that it could never be had another action been recorded: it is perfect in its imperfection, suspended eternally over the threshold of textual consummation.
I will not be made to feel guilty, no, not one bit, for abandoning it in this state of exalted incompletion.
But where do I go from here?
For I do want to continue somehow... I've already put a part of myself into these scenarios. Into these nameless characters I have built.
As I stepped out tentatively onto the stage and for a moment stumbled, ever so slightly, on my thick, padded sneakers, I wondered if it was so much the character's clumsiness and insecurity I was projecting, or my own. For a moment she and I seemed inextricable, and I could no longer discern whether I was just representing her soul the best way I could through pure gut instinct, or if she was actually a part of me I involuntarily embodied, no more a medium for her than I was for my own self.
There I was, scrutinising the crowd just as they were scrutinising me, the one person defying the pattern of the others by striding over to the couch and sitting down, unable to remove her gaze from them.
My job was to reflect what I saw in the audience's faces back to them. Most of them were slightly unnerved by all the silent scrutiny they had been subjected to, and even more unnerved by my own persistent gaze, being that I was supposed to be 'different' somehow. It was fun, arousing the insecurities of this crowd, who had come to watch others, find themselves being watched instead.
My eyes swam over the sea of faces, mirroring their expressions: puzzled, bemused, slightly irritated, shifting in discomfort it was a game- to see how long it would take for them to catch on. It usually took them some time to realise that they themselves completed the collection of the gallery- they were the final artwork on the imaginary wall between us and them, and stare at them we will, until they eat up their assumptions about who the audience and subject are allowed to be.
They usually catch on after a while. The photo Maiko took will be hung up on the notice board, and they'll see it as they leave the theatre. In it they will see their bewildered expressions, and remember this moment.
And I preside over that moment, a precious moment for them in retrospect, a triumphant one for me in the startling, sparkling now.
Just because I didn't want to continue writing the stage directions didn't mean I had to leave the play idea behind entirely, right?
I'm in a very impulsive mood today. The scenarios seem to inspire themselves, my hand moves effortlessly over the page, merely a medium for translating ideas into speedy loops.
Do I feel like the actor I described? Is her hesitation over how she conveys her role akin to what I feel when constructing characters? Every fictional being you create must somehow be inextricably linked to yourself... How much of your deep unconscious attitudes do you reveal, exactly, when you're expressing yourself?
Would it be possible to grasp a person's character through what the texts they produce?
I feel deliciously mentally hyperactive.
I have no idea where my mind will take me next,
and its quite exhilarating.
All was well. (A small sigh.)
All was undeniably well, and Richard Torner was placed in the uncomfortable position of admitting it.
Even if it was to himself, in the dark empty theatre where he sat alone on one of the chairs the audience had occupied earlier tonight, gazing up at the set of the play he had directed.
It had been a sneaking suspicion at first, and the more he thought about it, the more it became irrefutable. It was troubling and puzzling to admit nothing was actually wrong in his world right now; in fact it threatened to send Richard's whole intricately developed coping mechanisms into chaos.
It had pleased him to always find something wrong, or something that needed improvement, in the least. That way he always strove for something more. Quite an ingenious way of avoiding any lingering feeling of satisfaction (in Richard's opinion a disabling emotion).
Here in the deserted theatre, in the accentuated silence of the late night hours, dim yellow lights behind him faintly illuminated the empty stage. Richard liked being alone with the set: he felt more intimately in tune with it, this way.
With all the people gone, the artwork on the back wall commanded the viewer's attention.
He had created it.
In his mind, at first. He had imagined and mentally formed the concept of it, a sudden flash of inspiration. It had at first stood quite alone, detached from any other of his current work. He had no intention of actually creating it either- he was a playwright, a director- not an artist. And then one fine day he realised it would make the perfect contribution to the 'modern art' gallery of his fictional set. So theory was translated into practice, and now he could hardly imagine the effectiveness of the play without it, embodying its main themes so effortlessly through its concept. He was still a little amazed to see it hanging there, so... actualised. That which had once only existed in his mind was now the centerpiece of the stage.
No doubt about it, life sure worked in weird ways sometimes.
He had been sitting facing the stage for quite a while now. The night had been a success, and he had received only praise from audience and critics present alike. He went over the night's performance over and over again. He didn't want to let his mind wander past the immediate events of that evening. He knew that if he thought too long he would invariably come to some sort of unpleasant conclusion about his life, like that it was fine. What then?
He did not want to deal with the consequences of whatever that might be, just in case it might ask him to step out from the persistent yet dissolvable fears which constrained his soul, to finally stand up and take responsibility for the way he had let life treat him.
He was a genius, and it hindered more than helped him. A success. But at what inner cost?
He was a bit spoilt. and looking for a way to cheat life out of any pain it might have to offer him. Quite cleverly too, but projects like this fail on account of the inability to fool one's own heart.
And sitting there, trying to let the silence of the night somehow seep into his heart and numb it to all possible future suffering, he couldn't help but notice that the author had no idea how to continue the story!
I was having fun with Richard, but I felt that I needed to stop before I waded into this guy's profile too far. You never want to go in too deep and suddenly realise that you've gone way too far- meaning you'll have to go back over what you've written, cross out the offending lines (and that always mars the page, doesn't it? That constant reminder of error), and disrupt the intricate process of bonding with a self-made creation. Once that momentum and spur-of-the-moment thrill is stalled, its harder to get back into it, and immerse yourself in that creative zone without being overly conscious of yourself.
And then, of course, sometimes you just can't decide what to say next...
But even if the author doesn't feel that his or her piece is finished, who's to say at which point any tale really commences or concludes?
In that respect maybe my selective investigations into people can be quite justifiable, in the whimsical way they come and leave!
I gave Mr. Torner ownership over my own creations. I was the one who imagined the play, and the work, before it. I was the one who found that one of these imaginary concepts fitted wonderfully onto the wall and context of another, and found them an encouraging enough combination to start placing my ideas onto paper...
(Its interesting that I made Mr. Torner a perfectionist who refuses to settle for feeling satisfied. That does sound strikingly familiar... in fact, probably more than the author would care to admit.)
I guess I was never really sure how I was going to continue that play. But that doesn't stop me from being able to reflect upon it as a text and as a whole! It is a narrative of produce from my imagination, and if that doesn't lend it integrity then I don't know what will.
Why the eclecticism of the room, I wonder? It's an oddly displaced conglomeration of styles, but it sounds quite charming to me somehow...
Now if you wanted to psychoanalyse the author through the depiction of that little room, you might say that it is symbolic of my mind, the metaphorical space within which it resides. That its dubious interaction with the outside world is indicative of the author's personal desire to retreat from the conventions of society and culture imposed upon their personal space. (Would you really see that? Or is that my deeper attitudes coming through?)
Perhaps the fact that the author offers on display a group of people who represent some of the breadth, if not the depth, of society might indicate that the author interprets their society as an intrusion into their inner world. Every visitor, minus the girl at the end, brings with them into the room the unmistakable stamp of their identity through their external composure, mannerisms and costume, contrasting the final, staying visitor, who doesn't behave in a distinct or predictable way. Perhaps through this mysterious figure the author has unconsciously symbolised their own stance in this room occupied by postmodernist concerns.
Okay, moving on...(We might be getting a leettle too deep here.)
I wonder what Richard Torner's personal history is... Who is he outside this director's context? Does he have a family? What would they think of him? A regular eccentric? A loving father?
The moon is out for all to see. Yet, in this bustling city evening, no one seems to look up but me.
A scattering of stars adorns the otherwise hollow black of the sky.
One could liken this to crushed diamond bits embedded in the mysterious texture of the inky carpet which has rolled itself out above, engulfing the innocent blue of an earlier hour.
But perhaps you, reader, aren't so inclined. Perhaps you much prefer the unexplored beauty of the ostensibly ordinary, envisioning not the overrated sparkle of a diamond, but in its place the subtler elegance of a quartz crystal entangled into the web of the sky. You hardly agreed with the author's need to capture the sky in such confining terms as a carpet either- why should we reduce the wonders of natural phenomena to comparisons with man made objects?
You probably scorned the author with silent contempt as you noted the lack of originality of this particular passage. But then it's to be expected, you figure, this mediocrity of modern fiction. After all, nothing is original anymore.
Or maybe I have further underestimated you, and you in fact took the time to appreciate the unusual depiction of the sky in such traditionally poetic terms, reminding you of the Romantic period's enchantment and romanticism of nature, a style of writing long extinct from the shelves of our latest, contemporary works, reminding you of an era in which nature and poetry was conceived of in a very different way to our own. Tradition indeed has a time and a place for you, and to withhold recognition of its successful revival would be as contradictory as to only praise the texts that attempt to break new barriers.
Diamonds they are, and you're assured of their steady sparkle before the author describes them to you, anxious as you are to establish a sense of familiarity in this somewhat disorienting text, which is presently taking an awfully long time to establish any sort of clear setting.
There's a lot you can get from just walking home in the night's silence, with nothing but your thoughts to accompany you. Looking up at a sight so often depicted, and taking a moment to compose a hilariously unfunny ode to the enlightenment different perspectives bring.
Sometimes I wonder if I really do think too much, like my friends declare!
But then what better way to amuse yourself when you've got nothing else to do? Thoughts, more than anything else, have the power to lift you out of any tedium your physical circumstances impose on you, and elevate you to another level of existence.
I wonder if my dad would like that particular passage. He's always doing weird and wonderful stuff in his work. If only I was half as inventive with meta-narrative as he was with meta-theatre!
Okay, I'm stopping now before it gets even stranger. I'm writing about a writer, writing about writing! Where does this sort of thing stop? How far can it go? Surely one could go mad with continued thoughts along those lines?
Once again I have given a fictional character ownership of my own thoughts. I wonder why I do this... Does it make them more manageable? Allow me to present a context that is half my own, yet never fully emerging exclusively from my identity? Does it permit me to allocate the responsibility for a displaced fragment of thought within the context of another, so that it doesn't seem so rootless? Or perhaps it's my own rootlessness I can't accept.
If I ever comment that I know something with certainty/ hit me over the head!/
Since aware that I will never know a thing at all/ to negate this knowledge would be mad!
Poetry can sometimes be a really nice break from prose. It allows me to go wild, embrace a madder sense of sanity, consider the simple complexity or the complex simplicity of the world in a way I can never quite do with prose.
The clouds in my eyes have been collecting for days/ hovering around the edges, waiting to liquefy/
The sadness in the atmosphere is one dark, dull haze/ as unshed water vapour builds up in the sky
The eye that shed the tears
Loomed too near
And I got wet
Thoroughly soaked, but not really shocked
From the sprinklers that it set
I squeezed out the liquid from my shirt,
and found it transparent
What had made it opaque had been washed out
Guess the dye was never really that inherent
Now what did that last part mean, exactly, I ask you? Certainly meaning could be read into it. But no one will ever know what profound meaning I intended it to hold, or if I meant it to be profound in the first place!
I accept that I live in a fantasy world, because I have never known how to do anything else. We've been shaped to see the world in terms of what is real and what is not, but 'reality' is simply your state of mind, no more, no less. I pity the person who believes that they have an unf(l)ailing grasp on reality. Reality, the shared percept, is nothing more but a consensual hallucination.
I sometimes dream about finding a shared concept of 'reality', in some distant, faraway universe that will never be, despite myself. I know I will never have a grasp on what is 'real', neither do I expect to. But I can't help fantasising for a day when reality will make itself tangible or recognisable, of a common meeting ground for beings that I will discover one day venture, and share my intricate, fantastic delusions about the world with another sane, receptive lunatic like me.
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Nothing's new/ Nothing inspiring/ I've done so little that I'm heavily perspiring.
Then I remind myself to chase more challenging dreams.
I'm not really sad, nor apathetic, the tones my poetry takes today. I'm reflecting on words, rhythms I can make with them, and possible metaphors I can create, and that is triggering emotions I put to those words. Most people would find the emotion first, and try to capture it into words, but since words have never been enough to capture how I feel, I search for the words first- and create feelings instead...
You belong to everybody
Yet nobody at all
You fit in perfectly
Because you don't fit in at all
It's a lot easier to write evocatively about sadness and desolation than about a general sense of well being! The latter is much nicer to feel, but not a particularly exciting subject matter.
Delicate flower, petals prematurely crushed
How did you survive the damage
That has tortured you so much?
Shy little shriveled creature
Shielding, with upturned petals, your heart from the sun
The light that meanders its way to your core
Never as direct or bright as before
Because our petals grow in strength and vigour
And before we know it we're a bigger figur
And you're still hiding from the sun-
Rooted to the ground with nowhere to run.
(Blind to your own beauty, all bound up
Always looking down, below, and never ever up)
Finding solace in the shade
While the brightness habitually fades
So slowly that you hardly notice the encroach of the eclipse
But for the laughter that no longer sneaks past from your lips
Now pain and scars... there's something to write about! (Or is that mere justification for the poetic evidence of mine?)
Is it a fear of expansion that's my real concern, when I don't know how to continue my stories? That if you expand on them past a certain point you might destroy the system of delicate flirtation with meaning you've devised, and transform them into something that attempts to be substantial? The more ambiguous a piece of writing is, the more people will be able to relate to it. Expand on it and you limit the diversity of meanings one can make. It's that simple.
(Enough deep psychological analysis for you?)
Popcorn, people and peanut M&Ms were spilled over my calm, innocent cream couch.
Sometimes you just begin with one interestingly composed sentence in mind.
A quick glance at my wristwatch confirmed the scene was now set for my beautiful Master Plan. The greatest crime fiction story of all time was to unfold and reach its tantalising climax here, all within the confines of my living room.
And sometimes that triggers a whole idea, which you can immerse yourself in.
A story of untold drama, passion and revenge, culminating in a brutal, unsightly crime, to shock this little rural community out of its tedium, its repetitious code of apathy.
Sometimes you don't exactly know where exactly you're going.
My guests were clueless as to what to expect from this night. The hurried, anxious consumption of anything edible was enough proof of this.
Or why.
The large-screen TV I'd persuaded my mum into purchasing especially for the occasion was effortlessly impressing this bunch. The TV boxed them all in, the three-sided couch a cushioned barrier to the rest of the lounge room. Even inactive, the TV demanded attention, my guests peering into it as if through the smooth, dark surface they might catch a glimpse into the unknown depths of the cosmos. The TV innocently reflected back their expressions.
But it's alright, because your underestimated genius comes through.
I was the host; it was up to me to make sure that all plans ran smoothly. To ensure that everyone went away feeling the full impact of what tonight's events would bring.
Sometimes you can wind up in really strange places...
And that's where the fun usually begins.
My finger bounced off the power switch of the giant machine, and all around me, systems flickered into life. Mouths and eyes flickered to a wider gaping open, so eager to consume the eye-candy that was flung at them, in the form of larger-than-life commercials.
The noise level reached an irritating peak.
But very little could possibly annoy me tonight.
I had been planning this exact moment for weeks, and to have it finally here, so achingly tangible, exactly the way I had planned, gave me a surge of energy and power that was almost dizzying. Beauty was to be created tonight.
In my opinion a most insightful writer is in part just as ignorant and expectant as a reader, relying on some unknown beneficiary, some all-knowing creator to uncover for them the secrets of the text. A good writer would be one who has the ability to astound, befuddle and discover themselves- all in between the lines.
I actually managed to disconcert myself a little in that piece. The moral ambiguity of the character... the sinister undertones of those actions... it's a bit disturbing to know that I can write something as creepy as that.
But after all, I should accept everything that comes out of my mind. Everyone has a dark side... Expressing some of mine in this way is probably good for me.
It's probably
Helping you consume the emptiness away, the special offer for today...
Production/ consumption/ corporate reproduction. Does anybody really care?
(I am just like my character, gleefully setting the stage to guide someone through a memorable moment of life, with an ulterior motive to entertain. For is anything more important to creative writing than a sense of entertainment? Entertainment has the power to reach through the worlds of others and engage with them.)
I see each empty line as pregnant with possibility, and in my creative frame of mind tonight, I'd be a fool not to blindly take on the daunting prospect of venturing into the places (of my head) I've never been, and taking the reader (the imagined reader, for at this stage I am the only such entity) along with me, for a drive around our imaginations. There's nothing that bores me as much as sticking to the tried and familiar. I'm compulsively drawn towards the unfrequented avenues in the maze of the mind.
At other times I'll feel placated, and wonder if I write simply to create a beautiful arrangement of words. It is the thought of stylistic flair that makes me want to write then, the plot not much more than something to base it around. Content sometimes a mere necessity, or byproduct! (I'm sure liberal humanist critics the world over would be very appalled.)
I'm wearing white, but I feel blue
Blue is my true colour
Within its hues I'll always hover
(Again with the blues theme, is this a safety zone I've got here?)
But any way is a valid way of writing, in my opinion.
There's more than one way of creating an interesting story. There's trying to plan it all beforehand, or letting your mind, heart and hand guide you through line by line, relying on your latent brilliance and unique inspiration, letting them be the means through which your deepest instincts come into play.
That's where the best stuff is. It resides in the examination of your soul, and it is purely a matter of choice whether you choose to pursue that indefinable knowledge, in all its elusiveness and ambiguity, or leave it undisturbed.
A door that's comfortingly shut to all winter chill
Is amazed at the gentleness of the summer breeze
But it is afraid to open up
to let the same substance in
Cannot accept that that which was a threat
Can now be something to believe in
Trusting the assumed assailant
It seems, the stranger at the door is asking me to do
I'll turn them away right now, so they won't be ever able
To split my heart in two
Like everybody did, that I was close to
They might knock and knock, but the door is secure and locked.
When the night is heavy I do wonder
If you take notice of the rampant thunder
That echoes in and out of your mind
And leaves you rattled and bemused behind?
Does it draw from you a shiver
When you realise the moon is glowing silver
Reminding you of the stillness of peace
Does it calm you or instill you with unease?
How often do you kiss the air
With unabashed flair?
Or do you sit and stare
Abandonedly into that air?
If you split yourself in half
Would you be terrified, or laugh?
Scream or joke about the will of your division?
Do you welcome your untimely fits of derision?
(Or do you sit and stare...)
The first thing to do when you want to write from that place is... don't belittle it by attempting to make sense! Start out intending to make none, if you must- this will truly allow you to get in touch with your inner lyrical logic, the one that lies somewhere beneath what you think you should be doing.
Only through this romp through your soul will you emerge with the loud secret of how to write: realise the secret links between the universe no-one but you can find, and you'll connect them up to form... something that is deliciously incomplete, vividly vague, unfathomable in its lucidity.
And you may just congratulate yourself for it being the best thing you have done.
Another irresistible catastrophe
Another lucrative diversion
It seems that to some sort of inner peace
I've developed an aversion
I'll revere revolution, in the meanwhile, while I wait
Delirious and un-evolved
Perfunctory interest, only half-involved
I'm annoyed at the proximity of endless continuity
It indicates that I will need to use my latent ingenuity
To rationalise my hopelessness away
And embrace the endless scope of possibility
That threatens to send me into dismay
My freedom had become suppressed
My naked individuality, dressed
I was trembling on the border, of
Universal chaos and disorder,
But then I made up my mind.
I cast my clothes aside and rolled around in glee
Upon the floor, knowing those
Who mask their vulnerability
With the fashion of convention
Will possess my loyalty no more
It is immediately evident that we are in an art gallery through the collection of artworks that hang upon the walls... encapsulating the range of modernity, it would appear. Here soft, subdued squares containing free-flowing shapes tease the eye in their gentleness as would the vibrant pale of the sky outside; patches of cool in a bright peach-coloured room. However, in some act of neglect, or perhaps the poor choice of an inexperienced curator, these freeform, abstract apparitions find themselves in ludicrously ornate golden frames. The evocation of the intricacy of the Baroque period results in a most certainly bizarre, but eerily cheery displacement of styles- the classic and the modern cohabit quietly, tongue-in-cheek.
The room further continues to draw curiosity with the introduction of an antique Victorian style couch in the centre of the room, facing the right wall. A dark, polished antique, its intricate, quaint wooden designs and soft lawn-green cushioning make an eerie contrast with the walls. In front of this is brought a large, square, black leather cushion seat. This somewhat eccentric room is lit by artificial lighting that accentuates the orange of the walls. There is no one about.
For a long time, silence.
No perceptible activity.
Then, one by one, a stream of characters is injected into the space of the room, each making a unique entrance from one of the four exits available. They perform a little walk around the room, succeeding each other and making their rounds with an unrealistic fluid motion that speaks of obvious choreography.
They're a starkly archetypal collection of characters, with something fishy about them- their very cartoonishness belying a representation of deep integrity. They give off the impression of being a dubious whole; their self-consciousness and ego-centric assertion of identity indicating a moral elusiveness to each character:
A middle-aged woman wearing a pale blue collared shirt and wheeling a pram is preceded by a small boy of about 5 years, from back left entrance. He wears a red cap, a white shirt and aqua trousers, striding ahead of his mum with undisguised curiosity. His mum pushes the pram slowly, busying herself fastidiously with worrying about her son going too far ahead- this is a form of a distraction for her: he's perfectly behaved. Blissfully immersed his own world, a radiant smile never leaves his face. Her demeanour is otherwise placid as she gazes from side to side to take in the artworks around her, but her first activity is largely detracting from the experience of the other, which is how she likes it.
The boy pauses just in front of the audience, centre stage, eyes gaping with an unpretentious supply of curiosity at the sight of them, and he waits for his mum to catch up with him, make the same wonder-filled discovery. As she faces the imaginary wall, their reactions couldn't be more different: her eyes squint now, and her eyebrow slides upward as she regards the audience dubiously. Her features scrunch into a frown, even as her boy's expand in the delighted of the spectacle. What the woman sees seems to disturb her carefully monitored grasp of the real world. Finally, breaking away with ease and joie de vivre, the boy skips down the corridor, in front of the curtains, and she follows (automatically, restlessly), visibly relieved to break her gaze with what she saw. On her hasty retreat away from the room she looks back over once, but continues walking. The memory of this unnerving experience will not torment her too much longer as she returns to the world she knows how to respond to.
A youngish Caucasian male wearing paint-stained blue overalls and an aloof, hardened expression enters behind them, and walks rigidly down the room, inspecting the walls. He looks out of place, mainly because he looks like he feels it, and somewhat removed from the scene, like he's not taking much of the gallery in in his brisk walk-around. Arriving in front of the audience it is evident he's been taken aback, and that a feeling of discomfort has settled over him. Tense in his movements and expression to begin with, he now acts even more notably so. The lack of understanding and inability (or, rather, refusal) to emote with the scene in front of him is evident in his gawking expression. He lingers indecisively centre stage while searching for meaning, but finding himself only more immersed in a labyrinth of concepts he doesn't understand, or doesn't wish to, he finally moves on to the left wall with that very forced air of moving on. He departs in much the same manner as he arrived, although a slower, more reflective stance is evident as he slips out of the back left exit.
Wearing T-shirt and jeans, and large photo-camera around her neck, a young female Japanese tourist emerges from the same entrance. She enthusiastically surveys every artwork with close attention. Her curiosity only intensifies as she comes face to face with the audience, carefully scrutinising every person with an air of awe and respect, yet also one of deep amusement. Not so much because it is a custom with her, but because she's genuinely fascinated with the 'work' in front of her, she raises the camera up to her eye level and presses its button. It has a blinding flash. Satisfied and quite pleased, she walks in front of the corridor to the left, to exit.
A plump 30-something couple has wondered out onto the stage from the back right exit while she was taking the photo, and they walk together, communicating to each other with gestures steeped in pretentiousness. The woman has over-styled strawberry blond hair, and wears a red suit and ostentatious jewelry, her husband immaculately dressed in a black suit, but irritable and disgruntled in posture and appearance. He walks along almost paying no attention to the art around him. These two treat each other as if in a world of their own, shutting all else out with a sense of triumph and superiority. Their conversation pauses only for a moment as they take in the sight from the centre of the stage, then resumes in an equally contrived nature, however slower and less certain, as they gesticulate slightingly at the audience, their mimed commentary almost as if rehearsed. (One hand on their chins in twin expressions of haughty disapproval.) They move off after pointedly ending their speeches with expressions scowling in distaste, to inspect the left wall, then the back. They pause over this one, unable, unwilling to make head or tail of it either. Silence, then they move off in much the same way, to exit back right.
A skinny, sinewy elderly male in a faded aqua jumper comes onto the stage vigorously from the front left exit, carrying on his face an imposing glare and forehead deliberately tensed in a show of intense disapproval. Energetically marching in a military fashion till he reaches the centre of the stage, his anger and displeasure seems to be heightened, to a level which hurls him into an even more extravagant display of bad temper. Rage and disgust embedded into his features, he clenches his fists, and with one last glare stomps away, exiting impatiently through the front right exit, deliberately scowling and refusing to glance at the audience for a second longer.
Not long after his exit, a 20-something woman dressed in a close-fitting black bodysuit, with dark sunglasses and a colourful shawl wrapped around her hair suavely enters from one of the back exits. She moves discreetly and with grace around the room, slowly approaching the front, the click of her high heel shoes the only sound arising from her. She glances around her as she walks, taking in the artworks, but her countenance reveals annoyingly little about the being inside. She comes face to face with the artwork and looks at it directly, but her face registers no sign of a change in expression- her reaction to the work is unknown. Infuriatingly enough, not a single twitch of the muscles or change in posture indicate her personal reaction. After a while she turns away, as stylishly as before, and commences her exploration of the room. She at last exits through the same exit she entered from.
There is silence once again.
Then a young, teenage Asian girl steps out onto the stage, back right, wearing a black polo shirt and black trousers, self-conscious and uncomfortable with every step. She makes her way to the front of the stage in the now empty room, and sits with a rigid sort of grace onto the black seat. She stares, bemused, at the audience. She appears quite puzzled and intrigued, unable to shift her gaze and look away, almost as if transfixed by what is before her.
Where is this going to go? How do I continue?
Should this mysterious visitor now be joined by a similarly lost and lonely soul? And what do I do with the tension I've built up so far?
Empty lines stretch down the page...
The once innocent thin blue lines suddenly take to jeering at me, mocking my whole identity with their serene, undisturbed, parallel uniformity, dividing the page into one crisp, empty line after another.
Oh how I want to make those lines dance with a jumble of letters that wind their merry way through from right to left, dancing upon the page...
It's pathetic, really...
Up till now it's all been 'just right'.
And just at this crucial moment, when what happens next is of ultimate importance to the fruition of the play, when the suspense is almost overpowering...I cannot continue. (Am I in love with my own precipice?)
By now there has been a distinct atmosphere established, and the air of expectation which surrounds this play has reached a sort of climax. Everything that's needed in order to continue.
But by giving it that which it currently lacks, that is, consummation, would be to leave it lacking in an entirely different, detrimental way...
For here in its unfinished glory, its infinite potential and possibility, the play is all that it could never be had another action been recorded: it is perfect in its imperfection, suspended eternally over the threshold of textual consummation.
I will not be made to feel guilty, no, not one bit, for abandoning it in this state of exalted incompletion.
But where do I go from here?
For I do want to continue somehow... I've already put a part of myself into these scenarios. Into these nameless characters I have built.
As I stepped out tentatively onto the stage and for a moment stumbled, ever so slightly, on my thick, padded sneakers, I wondered if it was so much the character's clumsiness and insecurity I was projecting, or my own. For a moment she and I seemed inextricable, and I could no longer discern whether I was just representing her soul the best way I could through pure gut instinct, or if she was actually a part of me I involuntarily embodied, no more a medium for her than I was for my own self.
There I was, scrutinising the crowd just as they were scrutinising me, the one person defying the pattern of the others by striding over to the couch and sitting down, unable to remove her gaze from them.
My job was to reflect what I saw in the audience's faces back to them. Most of them were slightly unnerved by all the silent scrutiny they had been subjected to, and even more unnerved by my own persistent gaze, being that I was supposed to be 'different' somehow. It was fun, arousing the insecurities of this crowd, who had come to watch others, find themselves being watched instead.
My eyes swam over the sea of faces, mirroring their expressions: puzzled, bemused, slightly irritated, shifting in discomfort it was a game- to see how long it would take for them to catch on. It usually took them some time to realise that they themselves completed the collection of the gallery- they were the final artwork on the imaginary wall between us and them, and stare at them we will, until they eat up their assumptions about who the audience and subject are allowed to be.
They usually catch on after a while. The photo Maiko took will be hung up on the notice board, and they'll see it as they leave the theatre. In it they will see their bewildered expressions, and remember this moment.
And I preside over that moment, a precious moment for them in retrospect, a triumphant one for me in the startling, sparkling now.
Just because I didn't want to continue writing the stage directions didn't mean I had to leave the play idea behind entirely, right?
I'm in a very impulsive mood today. The scenarios seem to inspire themselves, my hand moves effortlessly over the page, merely a medium for translating ideas into speedy loops.
Do I feel like the actor I described? Is her hesitation over how she conveys her role akin to what I feel when constructing characters? Every fictional being you create must somehow be inextricably linked to yourself... How much of your deep unconscious attitudes do you reveal, exactly, when you're expressing yourself?
Would it be possible to grasp a person's character through what the texts they produce?
I feel deliciously mentally hyperactive.
I have no idea where my mind will take me next,
and its quite exhilarating.
All was well. (A small sigh.)
All was undeniably well, and Richard Torner was placed in the uncomfortable position of admitting it.
Even if it was to himself, in the dark empty theatre where he sat alone on one of the chairs the audience had occupied earlier tonight, gazing up at the set of the play he had directed.
It had been a sneaking suspicion at first, and the more he thought about it, the more it became irrefutable. It was troubling and puzzling to admit nothing was actually wrong in his world right now; in fact it threatened to send Richard's whole intricately developed coping mechanisms into chaos.
It had pleased him to always find something wrong, or something that needed improvement, in the least. That way he always strove for something more. Quite an ingenious way of avoiding any lingering feeling of satisfaction (in Richard's opinion a disabling emotion).
Here in the deserted theatre, in the accentuated silence of the late night hours, dim yellow lights behind him faintly illuminated the empty stage. Richard liked being alone with the set: he felt more intimately in tune with it, this way.
With all the people gone, the artwork on the back wall commanded the viewer's attention.
He had created it.
In his mind, at first. He had imagined and mentally formed the concept of it, a sudden flash of inspiration. It had at first stood quite alone, detached from any other of his current work. He had no intention of actually creating it either- he was a playwright, a director- not an artist. And then one fine day he realised it would make the perfect contribution to the 'modern art' gallery of his fictional set. So theory was translated into practice, and now he could hardly imagine the effectiveness of the play without it, embodying its main themes so effortlessly through its concept. He was still a little amazed to see it hanging there, so... actualised. That which had once only existed in his mind was now the centerpiece of the stage.
No doubt about it, life sure worked in weird ways sometimes.
He had been sitting facing the stage for quite a while now. The night had been a success, and he had received only praise from audience and critics present alike. He went over the night's performance over and over again. He didn't want to let his mind wander past the immediate events of that evening. He knew that if he thought too long he would invariably come to some sort of unpleasant conclusion about his life, like that it was fine. What then?
He did not want to deal with the consequences of whatever that might be, just in case it might ask him to step out from the persistent yet dissolvable fears which constrained his soul, to finally stand up and take responsibility for the way he had let life treat him.
He was a genius, and it hindered more than helped him. A success. But at what inner cost?
He was a bit spoilt. and looking for a way to cheat life out of any pain it might have to offer him. Quite cleverly too, but projects like this fail on account of the inability to fool one's own heart.
And sitting there, trying to let the silence of the night somehow seep into his heart and numb it to all possible future suffering, he couldn't help but notice that the author had no idea how to continue the story!
I was having fun with Richard, but I felt that I needed to stop before I waded into this guy's profile too far. You never want to go in too deep and suddenly realise that you've gone way too far- meaning you'll have to go back over what you've written, cross out the offending lines (and that always mars the page, doesn't it? That constant reminder of error), and disrupt the intricate process of bonding with a self-made creation. Once that momentum and spur-of-the-moment thrill is stalled, its harder to get back into it, and immerse yourself in that creative zone without being overly conscious of yourself.
And then, of course, sometimes you just can't decide what to say next...
But even if the author doesn't feel that his or her piece is finished, who's to say at which point any tale really commences or concludes?
In that respect maybe my selective investigations into people can be quite justifiable, in the whimsical way they come and leave!
I gave Mr. Torner ownership over my own creations. I was the one who imagined the play, and the work, before it. I was the one who found that one of these imaginary concepts fitted wonderfully onto the wall and context of another, and found them an encouraging enough combination to start placing my ideas onto paper...
(Its interesting that I made Mr. Torner a perfectionist who refuses to settle for feeling satisfied. That does sound strikingly familiar... in fact, probably more than the author would care to admit.)
I guess I was never really sure how I was going to continue that play. But that doesn't stop me from being able to reflect upon it as a text and as a whole! It is a narrative of produce from my imagination, and if that doesn't lend it integrity then I don't know what will.
Why the eclecticism of the room, I wonder? It's an oddly displaced conglomeration of styles, but it sounds quite charming to me somehow...
Now if you wanted to psychoanalyse the author through the depiction of that little room, you might say that it is symbolic of my mind, the metaphorical space within which it resides. That its dubious interaction with the outside world is indicative of the author's personal desire to retreat from the conventions of society and culture imposed upon their personal space. (Would you really see that? Or is that my deeper attitudes coming through?)
Perhaps the fact that the author offers on display a group of people who represent some of the breadth, if not the depth, of society might indicate that the author interprets their society as an intrusion into their inner world. Every visitor, minus the girl at the end, brings with them into the room the unmistakable stamp of their identity through their external composure, mannerisms and costume, contrasting the final, staying visitor, who doesn't behave in a distinct or predictable way. Perhaps through this mysterious figure the author has unconsciously symbolised their own stance in this room occupied by postmodernist concerns.
Okay, moving on...(We might be getting a leettle too deep here.)
I wonder what Richard Torner's personal history is... Who is he outside this director's context? Does he have a family? What would they think of him? A regular eccentric? A loving father?
The moon is out for all to see. Yet, in this bustling city evening, no one seems to look up but me.
A scattering of stars adorns the otherwise hollow black of the sky.
One could liken this to crushed diamond bits embedded in the mysterious texture of the inky carpet which has rolled itself out above, engulfing the innocent blue of an earlier hour.
But perhaps you, reader, aren't so inclined. Perhaps you much prefer the unexplored beauty of the ostensibly ordinary, envisioning not the overrated sparkle of a diamond, but in its place the subtler elegance of a quartz crystal entangled into the web of the sky. You hardly agreed with the author's need to capture the sky in such confining terms as a carpet either- why should we reduce the wonders of natural phenomena to comparisons with man made objects?
You probably scorned the author with silent contempt as you noted the lack of originality of this particular passage. But then it's to be expected, you figure, this mediocrity of modern fiction. After all, nothing is original anymore.
Or maybe I have further underestimated you, and you in fact took the time to appreciate the unusual depiction of the sky in such traditionally poetic terms, reminding you of the Romantic period's enchantment and romanticism of nature, a style of writing long extinct from the shelves of our latest, contemporary works, reminding you of an era in which nature and poetry was conceived of in a very different way to our own. Tradition indeed has a time and a place for you, and to withhold recognition of its successful revival would be as contradictory as to only praise the texts that attempt to break new barriers.
Diamonds they are, and you're assured of their steady sparkle before the author describes them to you, anxious as you are to establish a sense of familiarity in this somewhat disorienting text, which is presently taking an awfully long time to establish any sort of clear setting.
There's a lot you can get from just walking home in the night's silence, with nothing but your thoughts to accompany you. Looking up at a sight so often depicted, and taking a moment to compose a hilariously unfunny ode to the enlightenment different perspectives bring.
Sometimes I wonder if I really do think too much, like my friends declare!
But then what better way to amuse yourself when you've got nothing else to do? Thoughts, more than anything else, have the power to lift you out of any tedium your physical circumstances impose on you, and elevate you to another level of existence.
I wonder if my dad would like that particular passage. He's always doing weird and wonderful stuff in his work. If only I was half as inventive with meta-narrative as he was with meta-theatre!
Okay, I'm stopping now before it gets even stranger. I'm writing about a writer, writing about writing! Where does this sort of thing stop? How far can it go? Surely one could go mad with continued thoughts along those lines?
Once again I have given a fictional character ownership of my own thoughts. I wonder why I do this... Does it make them more manageable? Allow me to present a context that is half my own, yet never fully emerging exclusively from my identity? Does it permit me to allocate the responsibility for a displaced fragment of thought within the context of another, so that it doesn't seem so rootless? Or perhaps it's my own rootlessness I can't accept.
If I ever comment that I know something with certainty/ hit me over the head!/
Since aware that I will never know a thing at all/ to negate this knowledge would be mad!
Poetry can sometimes be a really nice break from prose. It allows me to go wild, embrace a madder sense of sanity, consider the simple complexity or the complex simplicity of the world in a way I can never quite do with prose.
The clouds in my eyes have been collecting for days/ hovering around the edges, waiting to liquefy/
The sadness in the atmosphere is one dark, dull haze/ as unshed water vapour builds up in the sky
The eye that shed the tears
Loomed too near
And I got wet
Thoroughly soaked, but not really shocked
From the sprinklers that it set
I squeezed out the liquid from my shirt,
and found it transparent
What had made it opaque had been washed out
Guess the dye was never really that inherent
Now what did that last part mean, exactly, I ask you? Certainly meaning could be read into it. But no one will ever know what profound meaning I intended it to hold, or if I meant it to be profound in the first place!
I accept that I live in a fantasy world, because I have never known how to do anything else. We've been shaped to see the world in terms of what is real and what is not, but 'reality' is simply your state of mind, no more, no less. I pity the person who believes that they have an unf(l)ailing grasp on reality. Reality, the shared percept, is nothing more but a consensual hallucination.
I sometimes dream about finding a shared concept of 'reality', in some distant, faraway universe that will never be, despite myself. I know I will never have a grasp on what is 'real', neither do I expect to. But I can't help fantasising for a day when reality will make itself tangible or recognisable, of a common meeting ground for beings that I will discover one day venture, and share my intricate, fantastic delusions about the world with another sane, receptive lunatic like me.
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Nothing's new/ Nothing inspiring/ I've done so little that I'm heavily perspiring.
Then I remind myself to chase more challenging dreams.
I'm not really sad, nor apathetic, the tones my poetry takes today. I'm reflecting on words, rhythms I can make with them, and possible metaphors I can create, and that is triggering emotions I put to those words. Most people would find the emotion first, and try to capture it into words, but since words have never been enough to capture how I feel, I search for the words first- and create feelings instead...
You belong to everybody
Yet nobody at all
You fit in perfectly
Because you don't fit in at all
It's a lot easier to write evocatively about sadness and desolation than about a general sense of well being! The latter is much nicer to feel, but not a particularly exciting subject matter.
Delicate flower, petals prematurely crushed
How did you survive the damage
That has tortured you so much?
Shy little shriveled creature
Shielding, with upturned petals, your heart from the sun
The light that meanders its way to your core
Never as direct or bright as before
Because our petals grow in strength and vigour
And before we know it we're a bigger figur
And you're still hiding from the sun-
Rooted to the ground with nowhere to run.
(Blind to your own beauty, all bound up
Always looking down, below, and never ever up)
Finding solace in the shade
While the brightness habitually fades
So slowly that you hardly notice the encroach of the eclipse
But for the laughter that no longer sneaks past from your lips
Now pain and scars... there's something to write about! (Or is that mere justification for the poetic evidence of mine?)
Is it a fear of expansion that's my real concern, when I don't know how to continue my stories? That if you expand on them past a certain point you might destroy the system of delicate flirtation with meaning you've devised, and transform them into something that attempts to be substantial? The more ambiguous a piece of writing is, the more people will be able to relate to it. Expand on it and you limit the diversity of meanings one can make. It's that simple.
(Enough deep psychological analysis for you?)
Popcorn, people and peanut M&Ms were spilled over my calm, innocent cream couch.
Sometimes you just begin with one interestingly composed sentence in mind.
A quick glance at my wristwatch confirmed the scene was now set for my beautiful Master Plan. The greatest crime fiction story of all time was to unfold and reach its tantalising climax here, all within the confines of my living room.
And sometimes that triggers a whole idea, which you can immerse yourself in.
A story of untold drama, passion and revenge, culminating in a brutal, unsightly crime, to shock this little rural community out of its tedium, its repetitious code of apathy.
Sometimes you don't exactly know where exactly you're going.
My guests were clueless as to what to expect from this night. The hurried, anxious consumption of anything edible was enough proof of this.
Or why.
The large-screen TV I'd persuaded my mum into purchasing especially for the occasion was effortlessly impressing this bunch. The TV boxed them all in, the three-sided couch a cushioned barrier to the rest of the lounge room. Even inactive, the TV demanded attention, my guests peering into it as if through the smooth, dark surface they might catch a glimpse into the unknown depths of the cosmos. The TV innocently reflected back their expressions.
But it's alright, because your underestimated genius comes through.
I was the host; it was up to me to make sure that all plans ran smoothly. To ensure that everyone went away feeling the full impact of what tonight's events would bring.
Sometimes you can wind up in really strange places...
And that's where the fun usually begins.
My finger bounced off the power switch of the giant machine, and all around me, systems flickered into life. Mouths and eyes flickered to a wider gaping open, so eager to consume the eye-candy that was flung at them, in the form of larger-than-life commercials.
The noise level reached an irritating peak.
But very little could possibly annoy me tonight.
I had been planning this exact moment for weeks, and to have it finally here, so achingly tangible, exactly the way I had planned, gave me a surge of energy and power that was almost dizzying. Beauty was to be created tonight.
In my opinion a most insightful writer is in part just as ignorant and expectant as a reader, relying on some unknown beneficiary, some all-knowing creator to uncover for them the secrets of the text. A good writer would be one who has the ability to astound, befuddle and discover themselves- all in between the lines.
I actually managed to disconcert myself a little in that piece. The moral ambiguity of the character... the sinister undertones of those actions... it's a bit disturbing to know that I can write something as creepy as that.
But after all, I should accept everything that comes out of my mind. Everyone has a dark side... Expressing some of mine in this way is probably good for me.
It's probably
Helping you consume the emptiness away, the special offer for today...
Production/ consumption/ corporate reproduction. Does anybody really care?
(I am just like my character, gleefully setting the stage to guide someone through a memorable moment of life, with an ulterior motive to entertain. For is anything more important to creative writing than a sense of entertainment? Entertainment has the power to reach through the worlds of others and engage with them.)
I see each empty line as pregnant with possibility, and in my creative frame of mind tonight, I'd be a fool not to blindly take on the daunting prospect of venturing into the places (of my head) I've never been, and taking the reader (the imagined reader, for at this stage I am the only such entity) along with me, for a drive around our imaginations. There's nothing that bores me as much as sticking to the tried and familiar. I'm compulsively drawn towards the unfrequented avenues in the maze of the mind.
At other times I'll feel placated, and wonder if I write simply to create a beautiful arrangement of words. It is the thought of stylistic flair that makes me want to write then, the plot not much more than something to base it around. Content sometimes a mere necessity, or byproduct! (I'm sure liberal humanist critics the world over would be very appalled.)
I'm wearing white, but I feel blue
Blue is my true colour
Within its hues I'll always hover
(Again with the blues theme, is this a safety zone I've got here?)
But any way is a valid way of writing, in my opinion.
There's more than one way of creating an interesting story. There's trying to plan it all beforehand, or letting your mind, heart and hand guide you through line by line, relying on your latent brilliance and unique inspiration, letting them be the means through which your deepest instincts come into play.
That's where the best stuff is. It resides in the examination of your soul, and it is purely a matter of choice whether you choose to pursue that indefinable knowledge, in all its elusiveness and ambiguity, or leave it undisturbed.
A door that's comfortingly shut to all winter chill
Is amazed at the gentleness of the summer breeze
But it is afraid to open up
to let the same substance in
Cannot accept that that which was a threat
Can now be something to believe in
Trusting the assumed assailant
It seems, the stranger at the door is asking me to do
I'll turn them away right now, so they won't be ever able
To split my heart in two
Like everybody did, that I was close to
They might knock and knock, but the door is secure and locked.
When the night is heavy I do wonder
If you take notice of the rampant thunder
That echoes in and out of your mind
And leaves you rattled and bemused behind?
Does it draw from you a shiver
When you realise the moon is glowing silver
Reminding you of the stillness of peace
Does it calm you or instill you with unease?
How often do you kiss the air
With unabashed flair?
Or do you sit and stare
Abandonedly into that air?
If you split yourself in half
Would you be terrified, or laugh?
Scream or joke about the will of your division?
Do you welcome your untimely fits of derision?
(Or do you sit and stare...)
The first thing to do when you want to write from that place is... don't belittle it by attempting to make sense! Start out intending to make none, if you must- this will truly allow you to get in touch with your inner lyrical logic, the one that lies somewhere beneath what you think you should be doing.
Only through this romp through your soul will you emerge with the loud secret of how to write: realise the secret links between the universe no-one but you can find, and you'll connect them up to form... something that is deliciously incomplete, vividly vague, unfathomable in its lucidity.
And you may just congratulate yourself for it being the best thing you have done.
Another irresistible catastrophe
Another lucrative diversion
It seems that to some sort of inner peace
I've developed an aversion
I'll revere revolution, in the meanwhile, while I wait
Delirious and un-evolved
Perfunctory interest, only half-involved
I'm annoyed at the proximity of endless continuity
It indicates that I will need to use my latent ingenuity
To rationalise my hopelessness away
And embrace the endless scope of possibility
That threatens to send me into dismay
My freedom had become suppressed
My naked individuality, dressed
I was trembling on the border, of
Universal chaos and disorder,
But then I made up my mind.
I cast my clothes aside and rolled around in glee
Upon the floor, knowing those
Who mask their vulnerability
With the fashion of convention
Will possess my loyalty no more
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