I’m working on a story, maybe even a film, about one of my songs “Crash and Burn.” The idea is to flesh out the story of the song with words and images, but I’ve sort of hit a wall on it. The story is not interesting enough. The conflict is not big enough. The antagonist is not scary enough.
So what I’m going to do is post a summary on the blog. That will help me process externally, and if you think of any way to make it better, specifically the antagonist (which right now is a psychological lack of self confidence), leave a comment. The crazier the idea the better. This will be a test to see whether anyone is reading this and how smart you are.
Synopsis
Bobby, a dorky kid in high school, is sitting outside, under the moonlight, eating Chinese food out of the carton, and writing a letter to the African boy from Kenya, Ndugu, his parents adopted. In the letter, he complains of loneliness, lack of interest from the girls at school, and tells Ndugu about Tiffany, his beautiful, popular crush, who doesn’t know he exists. He finishes his letter and goes home.
Before going to bed he says goodnight to his glass unicorn figurine, Robert, and a large, half nude mermaid figurine who he calls Cindy. The figurines come to life briefly to say good night to him (like in Elf… this might not be practical). To emphasize Bobby’s dorkiness, the figurines are very effeminate.
At school the next day, he sees his crush, Tiffany, walking through the halls with her entourage. Her hair is blowing back and she walks like a supermodel on a runway. She glances at him as she walks past while he turns full to stare. Then, he runs right into Frankie’s fist. Tiffany sees Frankie, her buff, BMXer ex-boyfriend, hit Bobby, and gets into an argument with him while Bobby is on the ground recovering. Frankie storms off and Tiffany helps Bobby up. She introduces herself, and flirts with him, mostly to make Frankie jealous. They lock eyes, and Bobby fantasizes about kissing her. It’s just a fantasy though, and they part ways.
Later, in class, Bobby writes another letter to Ndugu telling him about Tiffany and says he wants to win her over. He wants to give up the things holding him down. He wants to crash and burn. He seals the letter, dropping it off in the mailbox outside his house.
That night, Bobby practices asking out Tiffany with his unicorn and mermaid, and he begins a vigorous training regime. He reads GQ. He starts playing basketball. He takes up swimming. He puts on cologne. He combs and gels his hair. He wears preppy clothes. He learns French (”voulez voucous chez avec tois”). He looks like a new person. On his way out to a party, he grabs the only thing left from his old life, his unicorn, and puts it into his pocket.
The second half tomorrow. Chime in if you’ve got any ideas. Remember, the crazier the better.
When you’re tired of writing, burnt out, just type.
That’s right. Type don’t write. Don’t worry about what you’re saying. Don’t worry about spelling. In fact, don’t even look at the screen. Just stare out the window and type or write longhand.
Sometimes the simple act of writing gets you in the mood to actually say something. Even if it doesn’t, if you spout enough crap you might be able to delete 90% of it and have 10% that’s halfway decent.
Describe what you’re seeing.
Describe the homeless woman outside, her stained, canary shirt and floral dress. Tell a story about the homeless men who flirt with her, despite her weight and odor. Talk about the child she gave birth to on the streets and had to give up because schizophrenic women rarely make good mothers. Who knows, maybe that kid became a doctor.
Just write. Write whatever comes to your mind. Write about the fact that nothing’s coming to your mind. Write the same word over and over and over and over and over and over.
It’s about the rhythm.
The words flowing from your fingers, nothing else matters. Think about the flow. Think about the sound of the keys. The crackle they make like popcorn in a microwave.
Get your thoughts on the page like a big oozing brain beating away. Worry about dissecting it later. Just get it out!
Maybe you’ll wind up saying something profound. Maybe you’ll get an idea for a novel. Maybe you’ll waste 15 minutes, but at least you’ll be writing.
It helps. Trust me.
Are you very good at playing? I’m not. I am more like the college professor in life: serious, serene, and seldom joyful. It’s sad really. I would have been such a good little angel.
Why do we die when we get old? The Joey who danced oblivious and wore short red shorts that exposed way too much white leg for a boy of seven, became a teenager who wore preppy clothes and didn’t smile. I envy those who can play with paint and words and sounds. Even my play is serious, serene, and only sometimes comprises any joy.
Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids. What a sad little rabbit I am, but I don’t mind. I like my words and my weird fun which doesn’t make you laugh but has me smiling like a fool. I like the occasional onrush of emotion which I let melt in my mouth like dark chocolate, savoring every second. I can be enthusiastic even with very little sugar added.
My laughter is the wind throwing dry leaves off of desert trees and my dancing is the smell of Arizona rain. My sadness is truer than rain and brighter than gold and it kills and makes you stronger at the same time. I have peace, even in my pacing.
I just want to be a better dancer.
I got some good advice from someone in the entertainment industry yesterday. He said,
“I do not advise anyone to work in any form of entertainment, no matter how talented, if there is any other endeavor in which they can be happy and fulfilled. This business is so difficult and unpredictable, that you have to be absolutely assured there is no alternative. You will need that determination to endure the process of getting to a place where you can earn a living at it.”
Tough words to hear for an aspiring artist like me, but I suppose I knew it was tough already. People like Thomas Merton and Julia Cameron inspire me by their simplicity when facing the task of creating art. For them, writing isn’t about making money, it isn’t about their careers, it’s about being a conduit for God, and because they wrote for God it was joy rather than a job.
Yes, you need money because you need food and clothes and shelter, but I am inspired by these words,
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”
Continued from yesterday’s post.
I was starting to get frustrated.
We’d been looking for 45 minutes and still couldn’t find the keys. I had prayed. We had prayed as a group. I told my story about the shark’s tooth to Chris, and paced around, certain, confident even that I would find the keys. Yet, here we were, still stuck on a dusty dirt road in front of the small house we just built. It was getting dark, and we were about to be in big trouble.
“What happens if we don’t find the keys?” I asked, cringing at the sight of the woman we were here to build a house for as she dug through our trash.
“We’re going to find them,” Chris replied.
“But what if we don’t?”
“We’re going to.”
“Chris,” I said, hoping he would answer my question. He paused and thought.
“Well, we could smash everyone into one car,” Chris replied, “and call a locksmith tomorrow. It’ll be expensive, and I don’t want to leave our car here in the middle of Mexico. We’ll come back tomorrow and it won’t have a radiator and it’s wheels will be gone. No that won’t work. We need to find those keys.”
I remembered the shark tooth and went back to praying and listening, sitting in the house thinking, trying to look busy so the rest of the group wouldn’t think I wasn’t being helpful.
Prayer is a funny thing,
especially listening prayer. You never really know for sure whether your being spoken to or if it’s just your imagination coming up with things. Anyway, I felt like God was telling me to go stand outside. Not to do anything, just to stand.
So I walked out of the house and stood in front, waiting, listening, feeling the breeze, and looking over the city which was starting to light up.
Yes, prayer is a funny thing. All of a sudden I felt this rushing of love all around me. I felt a bit what God was feeling for me, for my group, and for the family we were helping. “I love you,” it said like a gust of wind.
I smiled and said, “Me too.”
As I said it, there was a loud cheering from the car.
“What happened?”
I asked, after walking over. I was pretty sure I already knew.
“Well, we had all given up looking,” Kathy said exuberantly.
“I was still looking!” said Megan.
“Ok, Most of us had given up,” she continued, “and so Garrett was joking around and picked up a roll of toilet paper and… Garrett, you tell it.”
“I picked up the roll and held it to my face,” he said while he demonstrated, closing his eyes and rubbing the roll of TP lovingly on his face. “And I said, ‘Mmm, downey soft.’ And then the key just FELL OUT!”
“Yeah, it had been inside the roll this whole time, and we had no idea.”
We were leaving. We said our final goodbyes to the family and got into our cars.
“There is a real Jesus!” Jessica said, as we were waiting for the stragglers to climb in. I just laughed and smiled.
See part 1-4 here.
We were just about to leave the jobsite.
It was late and we had been working hard for 9 hours. About an hour before, Emily, our psuedo-forewoman, had arrived at our site and started rushing us to finish.
“I’m supposed to get you out of here by 5! My boss is going to be mad,” she said in the midst of launching cement trowels and shovels 15 feet away to a pile so they could be cleaned. She was a beast.
We had finished it. The house was done. Beautiful. Home,
but now we had a problem. After going to get the gifts we had brought for the family, Garrett had lost the keys. He thought he had dropped them in the car, so we checked under the seats, in the trunk, in the cupholders, in the compartment with the spare tire, everywhere, but they were nowhere to be seen.
The sun was starting to set. People were getting home from work and the volume of the neighborhood was going up. Mariachi music blared from cheap radios. Loud voices carried from dirty cement porches, and little niños cried in delight. Mexican families drove by our worksite, and children and adults alike stared at the 15 gringos raking through the dirt, tearing apart a car, and frantically searching everywhere.
I, however, was not frantic, not even phased. The exercise of building, the satisfaction of completion, and the wonderful breeze blowing across my face had put me into a very deep peace. God felt near in this place of the poor, and I wasn’t worried about silly things like keys.
Instead of searching frantically, I prayed and sauntered around, staring meditatively at the ground, remembering my sixth grade science camp.
The camp at Rancho Alegre
was just 30 minutes from home in the mountains above Santa Barbara. It was the second or third day, and we were taking a hike to a spot aparently plentiful in shark teeth, even though it was miles from the ocean. The whole earth was covered with water once, didn’t you know?
I really wanted a shark tooth. Only really really. I was in sixth grade and it was a competitive year for me. I wanted to win all the contests that year: the wrapping paper fundraiser, the jog-a-thon, the jog-a-thon fundraiser, the halloween costume contest, and I did. I won them all. Now, I wanted a shark tooth.
A strange thing happened though. Instead of going to search and dig in the ground frantically like everyone else, I prayed.
“Dear God, I know that you don’t really care about shark teeth, but I would like to find one. So if you don’t mind, would you please help me. You know where all of them are in the whole world. Would you help me find just one?”
As I prayed, I sauntered slowly without a location to dig in mind. Everyone else had found a spot and by now had made several holes. Instead, I paced and prayed, and as I did, my eyes picked out a spot on the path.
I’ll dig there, I thought. I was confident it was the right spot, but also afraid my confidence would soon be dissapointed. I knelt down on the dirt, grabbed a stick, and started scratching away at a shallow hole.
Then, I saw it.
Not two inches from where I started digging I hit a small rock. Scraping away the dirt revealed it was a tooth.
I just stared at it for a few seconds dumbstruck. Really? Did this really just happen? Slowly, I walked over to our counselor, still mesmerized by my discovery.
“Yeah! That’s a big one,” he said. “Good find Joe.” I looked around and watched all the other kids still digging. Although the last to start, I was the first one to find a tooth.
“Thanks God,” I prayed. “That was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed.”
When I told Chris the story as we were looking for the keys, he was only the second person to know how I found that tooth.
The keys were still missing, but I was praying. And listening. I was going to find those keys.
To be continued.
Oh that Seth Godin is such a little idealist. On Sunday he posted an encouragement for people to “write what you believe, not what sells.”
His case? You can write what other people want, things that will increase readership and boost popularity, “mini-hits,” as he calls them, or you can write what you love, “creating long-lasting art, ideas that matter and things that spread organically.”
Read his post, and then come back here and let’s talk about it.
First, define love, Seth. I thought I loved music. I thought I loved my songs, but as I struggle trying to build a career and music, as I am routinely disappointed, I am becoming more and more frustrated by it.
Is love supposed to give you energy? Is it supposed to motivate you to work through the disappointments?
I am on the verge of giving up music. I’m not going to stop playing the guitar or anything, but I am on the verge of giving up the dream I had to make a career out of it.
Is it because I’ve fallen out of love with it?
Second, what happens when you do what you love but can’t pay the bills? Do you pander to the audience then? Do you try to become more entertaining, more engaging? What happens if you’re starving?
I’m not sure. I like Seth’s ideal of doing what you love, and I feel convicted by it, especially today, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to live up to its requirements.
The last word is from my old friend, Thomas Merton. In Seeds of Contemplation, he says (paraphrasing), if you write for yourself, reading what you wrote you will be so overwhelmed by its dullness that you will kill yourself (I can’t remember if he actually said that, and I don’t have it with me, but that was the point).
If you write for other people you might make a lot of money and have a few followers. But…
“If you write for God, you’ll reach many men and bring them joy.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but I’d like to find out.
