home | articles | fictions | poetry | images | audio & video | shop | bio | contact

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Great Conundra

One of the great blogging conundrums - or conundra (yes, I'm still sticking with the serif font - for now) (just you wait, when my new font strikes, people will freak right out) (right out) (I promise) - is the wondering if one has any kind of life worth telling. Could my life be of interest? Why in the world would anyone want to read about me? Why? Why the hell?

The conundric part is that you don't really know if you have any kind of life worth telling, until you tell it.

And if you tell it honestly and straightforward-ish-ly, then it will probably be of interest to someone - not to everyone, but to someone. That is a praiseworthy accomplishment. The one thing that is terribly uninteresting is someone trying to be interesting. I know whereof I speak. When people enjoy my writing, it is usually in spite of my attempts to be interesting, not because of them.

So very often- almost daily - I'm not exaggerating here, almost daily - I imagine a story I might tell, a thing I might express, a film I might make and I begin to wonder if it is any good, if it's worth doing, if it's not just another deluded vision of mind - "of mine" I meant to write, but "mind" is better. I project into the future all the possibilities of failure and success, preparing, preparing - but the thing I shy from - although less and less so, to give myself some credit - is to start telling the story, to start making the film, to start expressing the expression.

I am over-attached - enamored - with my thoughts and myself . That's my great nightmare. That's the big prob. I can't bear the thought of letting go of a story, a script, a blog entry, without it being, well - "perfect" - as if the value of it was astronomically high because of its rarity, as if the idea or impulse were just the most precious thing in the world and there was little or nothing left where that came from.

But the opposite is true.

There is too much to express. Too much to say. Too much to do. And this dull-witted polishing and repolishing, thinking and rethinking, planning and replanning is just making silk purses out of sow's ears, making mountains out of molehills - or , better analogy, gilding lilies. It's a big waste of time is what it is. Not that a first draft is a best draft. But often the first impulse is the best impulse. And writing and rewriting is best done in the service of honoring and clarifying that first impulse.

This is the way I'm seeing it today.

I'm going to an interview today at a gigantic media production company. Did I say it was gigantic? It's gigantic. Gigantic.

I'm feeling ambivalent about the outcome, which should be to my benefit. I don't feel like I need to impress them, I feel unafraid of asking for exactly what I want. I'm mostly looking forward to walking around the lot and inspecting the cool facilities.

There's always a chance I may start panicking 15 minutes before I go in there. That has been known to happen before. But I am writing right now.

I didn't know what I would tell you before I started the post. Now I have some idea of what I told you. I'll go back and reread it - possibly clean up some of my passive verbs. But there's so much to do, so much fun to be had, so many crayons to use, I hope you'll forgive me if its not perfect

| More

0 Comments:

Your Comment?