i felt that this was coming. hey davi remember i told you i felt it was coming?
I don't know if it will stick, but I have started a writing project that is massive in scope. On Friday, stoned and drunk, I was flipping through a photo series on Nat Geo. I can't describe the feeling -- best I can offer is to say it was like having a layer of my brain peeled back, finally, and being allowed to look in at some kind of opalescent nougat within, and being comfortably and confidently aware, suddenly, that there was a sprawling environment in there rippling with a new set of characters and a very tangible sense of place, an environment that could hold and unify the handful of novella-length unexplored ideas I've held for the last decade or so.
I had a very loving conversation with Tia the following day, needing first a gut-check ("I think this is a good idea, but I might have been stoned," I said. "It's a good idea, isn't it. Ah fack now what.") and then encouragement ("One doesn't get these moments of early passion often," she said, speaking from experience as a person who has had them, speaking from experience as a person who perhaps is worried she has lost them for good, the way one worries when one has produced great work but not for a while. She has written scenes that seem to have shot on a gruesome sunbeam straight from the glowering heart of the gothic South. When she's good she's very very good. "Please ride it out and choose to participate in it, at every moment it even seems remotely possible, without judgment") and ultimately needing realtalk about process ("I don't remember how to write," I said, "and the thing that has always stopped me has been fundamentally not understanding how something the size of a novel is actually, you know, MADE. How do you get enough stuff in your head in the first place to even squeeze enough of it back out? And in what order? What?")
But now I feel none of that pressure; for whatever lucky reason, it seems to be a place I enjoy thinking about, transportive and ripe. One thing she said to me that I found extremely moving and motivating: "Who else is there?" As in: yes you have the scene or the set of characters or a circumstance, but who and what all ELSE went in to making that come about? Not the tenant or the landlord but the city developer who sold the property in the first place. That sort of thing. That's where the richness comes from. So I find myself sitting on the subway like a kid retreating to an imaginary place, wandering around to find the elseness of it all. And sitting down to record my findings without judgment or pressure. It is a really fabulous and foreign feeling.
I had a very loving conversation with Tia the following day, needing first a gut-check ("I think this is a good idea, but I might have been stoned," I said. "It's a good idea, isn't it. Ah fack now what.") and then encouragement ("One doesn't get these moments of early passion often," she said, speaking from experience as a person who has had them, speaking from experience as a person who perhaps is worried she has lost them for good, the way one worries when one has produced great work but not for a while. She has written scenes that seem to have shot on a gruesome sunbeam straight from the glowering heart of the gothic South. When she's good she's very very good. "Please ride it out and choose to participate in it, at every moment it even seems remotely possible, without judgment") and ultimately needing realtalk about process ("I don't remember how to write," I said, "and the thing that has always stopped me has been fundamentally not understanding how something the size of a novel is actually, you know, MADE. How do you get enough stuff in your head in the first place to even squeeze enough of it back out? And in what order? What?")
But now I feel none of that pressure; for whatever lucky reason, it seems to be a place I enjoy thinking about, transportive and ripe. One thing she said to me that I found extremely moving and motivating: "Who else is there?" As in: yes you have the scene or the set of characters or a circumstance, but who and what all ELSE went in to making that come about? Not the tenant or the landlord but the city developer who sold the property in the first place. That sort of thing. That's where the richness comes from. So I find myself sitting on the subway like a kid retreating to an imaginary place, wandering around to find the elseness of it all. And sitting down to record my findings without judgment or pressure. It is a really fabulous and foreign feeling.