what will they do next?

I learned of a funny thing this week. It's about characters. And it's about people, too.

Sometimes when you create characters and you start writing them into a story, they take on a mind of their own. They are no longer you, and they start telling you what they are going to do next. It is very surreal. I thought I was writing a story about a Mexican archeologist and a Scotch enthusiast comparing notes on the finer qualities of tequila, and it turned into something completely different. How did that happen?

We all have learned the lesson that it is impossible to make another person into who you want them to be. What's funny is that the same can be true of fictional characters - of your own creation. Fascinating.

the new renaissance

1. Three weeks ago I attended the first class in a six-week session of creative writing workshops at the U of C. The seminar is classified under their school of continuing studies, so many of my fellow students are adults with careers who are taking this class for fun, or to pursue something that has always interested them but taken a back-burner to their working and family lives. As we went around the open rectangle of tables and introduced our selves, I became acquainted with all kinds of people in several different fields - finance, insurance, non-profit, teaching, self-employed, the list goes on. Many of them said they were looking for a creative outlet. None of them said they were considering a complete career change to pursue writing full-time. This gave me pause.

2. Earlier this fall, I was at home discussing current events and popular culture with my grandparents over Sunday dinner (as is our custom), and someone brought up the film "Into the Wild". I still have not seen the movie, but my grandfather made a comment that struck me. He said that it was poignant how completely the protagonist had given himself over to living a new life; it was so youthful, my grandpa said, to make such a sweeping life change and to follow your heart, refusing to consider an alternative once the decision is made.

3. Yesterday, on the radio, I listened to an interview with a jazz musician - a native of Chicago who, during his time, had revolutionized jazz music by composing pieces with highly unique time signatures. Toward the end of the program, the musician was asked about his other hobbies. He said he was also a painter, and the interviewer urged him to explain whether he believed the two different forms of creative expression were related in his mind. In his response, he mentioned that Miles Davis had also loved to draw and several other musician acquaintances of his were multi-talented. So I wondered to (out loud to myself while driving along) if I had ever seen any of Miles Davis's alleged drawings.

Then it occurred to me: the fame of his - or any successful artist's or thinker's - side-projects is irrelevant. What is interesting is that human beings are enthusiastically pursuing disciplines other than the one field that sustains them. My fellow classmates at the U of C and the character who goes "Into the Wild" represent two ends of the spectrum.

Perhaps the stars have been encouraging me to pursue the multiple arts and disciplines that interest me and to stop feeling torn between them. We could all be Renaissance Humans, right? It seems a healthier way to be, maybe it would do us some good.

tragedy

This past weekend, I watched Brokeback Mountain twice. I hadn't seen it since it was in theaters, and I had hesitated to watch it again because of the intense emotional reaction I had the first time around. But Friday night rolled around and I was doing laundry and my roommate had the DVD rented from Netflix, so there we were. I was amazed all over again. The film is so wonderfully acted, directed, composed visually, everything. So on Saturday night, I watched it again.

All day Sunday and Monday, I was thinking about it. Toward the end, the film touches something so unbelievably human - there is a scene where Ennis is sitting alone eating pie and drinking coffee in a bus station, and of course the final scene where his 19-year-old daughter tells him she is getting married. It is just so beautifully heart-wrenching, and Heath Ledger - god - is so amazing. I really think an actor cannot be that good unless s/he is tapping into something deeply emotional within his/her self.

I cannot get this image out of my head:


What an incredible talent he had - the ability to flood each of us with a sensation from the deepest parts of our hearts. I felt a genuine loss yesterday for a wonderful artist, a truly talented human being.

... I just found this article, echoing my exact sentiments.

fight or flight

A week before Christmas I stopped in at the paper supply store – the place where they sell you solid colored envelopes and notecards, ink pads, sealing wax, kits to build your own gift boxes, and paint-pens to color in your own holiday greeting cards (with the design already outlined on the front). They have everything to make you feel like the creative artsy person everyone wishes they were, which are the kinds of things that sell very well on Armitage Avenue in Lincoln Park. We all know it’s easier to buy a project and do it than to think of one yourself – and it certainly helps the neighborhood ladies that the store’s got a little extra space to park your triple-wide stroller while you browse.

I was working out whether I was going to pay $3 per card for something that required me to invest still more time coloring everything in – this, on top of finding my cousins’ addresses out in Denver and DC and wherever they all are these days and I was thinking I might as well just get discounted cards at Hallmark the day after Christmas and call it a day; I was already late on the whole thing anyway.

And then I saw her. Melissa had been a colleague of mine at my first job out of college. We worked together as business analysts for a corporate management consulting firm, and throughout the twenty months I lasted there, Melissa’s presence was the reason I could not be satisfied. I had ups and downs at that job, and I would be on the verge of quitting for various reasons from time to time. Ultimately, it was nothing other my conviction that I could not be associated with anyone like Melissa James that brought about my final resignation.

Melissa was a sweet girl, really. She had been the president of her sorority at Northwestern or somewhere, and she coordinated firm-wide volunteer activities every quarter or so. She was interested in non-profit management, and I’m pretty sure that is what she is pursuing at present; more power to her. There were two most essentially and frustratingly unfair things about her, though. One, she came off – on your average first meeting, first-impression – as the dumbest rich girl you’ve ever met. Two, she moved in – quickly – on the one firm partner who remained an attractive and eligible bachelor. Despite the first and largely due to the second, Melissa was hugely successful as a business analyst. Oh, and one other thing – she refused to take public transportation. Grr!

I had learned, via Facebook a few days prior to the whole paper-store episode, that Melissa and her Consulting Partner boyfriend were engaged. When I saw it on the newsfeed, my brain had a mini anger spasm and I think a small invisible puff of smoke may have escaped over my head. I flashed back to that constant feeling whenever I saw her around the office, my need to scream, “doesn’t anyone see that she took this job to get her M.R.S.?!” and feeling sorry for all the competent and immeasurably more intelligent-sounding, well-spoken candidates who lost the job to her.

So when I saw her in the paper store, I did what any normal individual on my high-horse would have done. I hid behind the rack of rubber stamps. I could hear her squeaky, child-like voice and I cringed. Then I bolted for the door, nearly knocking over a few holiday-happy moms giddily discussing the Hanukkah-themed project boxes in the front corner of the store.

As my long and powerful strides took me down the street, passing everyone in a huff, attempting to “walk it off”, I thought about these brushes with our past. Specifically, I thought about the moments when the past disgusts us and we want to run away – like I did in the first place, only faster this time. When all is said and done, and there is a new president in place next year at this time, how will we feel about it all?

It wasn’t just Melissa’s personality – which I resent – but the fact that someone like her could succeed in the same environment as me, the fact that she was actually more successful than I was all that time. George W. Bush – who has led a relatively successful presidency on his own terms –maintained a personality throughout that was a complete affront to so many of us. Personally, I want to see a politician who can inspire and speak eloquently; I want someone who genuinely sounds like he is smart enough for the job. And every time I heard his braggadocioed jumbled answers to intelligently-posed, necessary questions, a part of me wanted to punch the wall. But, even though his incoherent statements defied reason time and time again, he got away with it. He used connections to obtain his post, and his money paid for the rest.

Melissa was hired by an alum of her college and a former sorority sister. Once there, her association with our superiors allowed her opportunities on some of the best projects in the company portfolio. She was admitted to a top tier business school, and she will be a happy, successful, wealthy, suburban mom who can afford to buy creativity at the paper store.

I wonder how we will see President Bush in retrospect. Will we cringe and run away from that chapter in our history, or will we – as we did with Reagan a few summers ago – fondly speak of him as The Great Something-or-Other, chuckle at his incompetence in the spotlight, shake our heads a bit over the war he invented? I hope, above everything, that we neither run away from nor forget our anger. We have seen how badly we can be represented on the world stage, and we must always demand better.

As for Melissa, this should show her.

this fateful day

It occurred to me that, on a quite regular basis over the past year or two, I have taken to believing in fate. That is, these-things-happen-for-a-reason, and whatever's-meant-to-be-will-be, and so on. And not only am I becoming a strong and fast believer in fate, but I am also accepting it. My new philosophy, as it would seem, is to watch things happen, accept them, and move on.

Today I woke up to find that both of the appointments I had this morning had been canceled. And I found myself thinking, "aha, this must mean it's time for me to work on those creative pieces I've left on the back burner." So I took my laptop over to the couch and opened my folder of unfinished prose documents. Then I paused. Why, apparently, did it take some "sign", some fluke freed-up hours in my schedule, to motivate me to do the thing I love? What have I been sitting around doing all this time?

Living in the city and working as a receptionist, I'm operating at all times in a state of reaction. Phone calls and emails come in, traffic lights change, the train comes and goes, I run out of coffee beans and paper towels and now is a good time to stock up because they are on special at the market, and we've got to see that movie before the theater gets something new, and sure I'll pick up extra hours at work because there's rent to pay and monthly internet access fees are going up.

It's as though life is a musical number with a million different tracks and I am an ear with an amateur understanding of music. I pick up on different parts and follow the track for a while - the bass line, the melody, the drum style, one of the harmonizing vocal lines - and I am amused by it and sometimes I hum along. But I never have the energy to lay down a track of my own, to create a new harmony or add a new instrument, or even just join the chorus. I'm just listening. I'm just reacting.

The idea of creating a new track, honestly, kind of scares me. I think I am afraid that I'll lose sight of the beauty of it all. I'll be so focused on perfecting my own part and blending and complementing what is there, that I won't be able to hear everything, simultaneously.

But today there was a lull, a moment when things slowed down and got quiet, and I had to fill it with something. Whether it was fate or not, it certainly gave me pause and maybe a bit of a kick-start. This fateful day is showing me that I really should get in there and join the song.