This Writing Thing

Well, I'm happier than I was a day ago. I've been sick for the last two days, but I managed to get six pages of writing done today on my novel.

Oh yes, THAT. People have heard about this damn book of mine for years, and I think nobody actually believes that it exists, since it's taken me all of ten years to write it. I have, let me check,....oh. Only 234 pages to my credit. Well, that's not much, is it? Really, actually, that's about a third of it finished, and for ten years, that's not a helluva lot. But, as my grandfather was wont to say, "It's better than nothing.”

Oh, you're wondering how I happen to know it's going to be two thirds longer than it is. Well, that's easy. I have the plot mapped out, and according to my synopsis (God help me if anybody ever sees THAT mess!) I've only written about one third of the story. Thank God it's finished, it's the only thing keeping this whole unwieldy mess intact and on track.

So why am I working on a blog when I should be working on my novel? Well, this unwinds me wee stone brain somewhat after the knots that Ethan, Brooke and Quinn manage to tie it up in. None of these jokers is a light hearted soul, and by the time I'm done with them, (or they're done with me) all I feel like having is a Scotch and cigarette, or a shot of morphine, which for a Scotch hating, morphine fearing (I saw Long Day’s Journey Into Night too many times) non-smoker is quite an accomplishment. So if it's a choice between drinking and smoking myself into an early grave, or bitching about them in my journal or venting on my blog, then fine, so be it, I’ll take the reasonably healthy lungs and liver anytime. Truthfully, I couldn't begin writing a goddamn thing until the whole mess was semi-coherent in my brain anway, that’s why it’s taken so long.

Sorry I'm swearing so much, it's Brooke's fault. The woman has a mouth on her like a brigand. It's catching. You know she once beat Hemingway at cribbage? Well, at least she SAID she did, but I'm not inclined to believe her. In the first place, I can't see old Papa with those big hands playing on such a small board with toothpicks, and secondly, he always seemed more of a poker player to me, which Brooke emphatically didn't like, after her days on the Toronto Telegram. She also said Radclyffe Hall had a crush on her, and I don't believe THAT either, but to be fair, she only said that because Quinn said it first, and in those days Quinn would say anything if he thought it would get a rise out of her. Oddly enough, it didn't, in fact, she seemed oddly pleased at the thought, for all that she really couldn't tolerate lesbians, "bulldaggers" as she called them contemptuously.

Anyway, where was I again? Sorry, you see how difficult it is to get rid of these people once they're in the room.

Oh yes, writing. Well, you see, now that I'm gainfully unemployed with more than enough time on my hands, I'm struggling with getting at least five pages down on paper a day, maybe more if I'm up for it. The writing is bad, don't get me wrong, and when a first draft is finally finished, the rewrites may well land me in the Home for the Terminally Muddled.

My great friend Alison believes that human beings only have a certain number of words in them per day, and that if you're a writer, you have to be especially stingy with them. I agree with her in part, but I also think we have a hidden cache of superfluous emergency words we keep in the back cupboard, so that if unexpected guests show up, we aren't stranded sounding like Cousin It or R2D2, with only growls, beeps, whistles and shrieks to illuminate the others as to what we’re thinking. So not expecting any visitors, I write in this.

It isn't really so odd. John Steinbeck used to write a daily letter to his editor Pascal (Pat) Covici daily on the left side of the page of the manuscript he was working on, which eventually became East of Eden. When he was done the manuscript, he built a wooden box to hold it and the letters in and mailed it to Covici. He used to say the letters were like warming up his pitching arm before a baseball game.

I liked that analogy, and so I usually scribble on this, or write a letter by hand before or after I work on the "book", as I've come to call it, in the most dreadful tones imaginable. It warms me up and/or cools me down, depending on what has gone on before. Sometimes a whole scene will hit me unawares, like today, Brooke and Ethan's showdown in the barn, in the cowstalls. I was washing dishes, and I stopped right in the middle of what I was doing, and sat down to write. (That reminds me, the dishes are still soaking in the sink. Damn.) It wasn't a pretty scene. It was a cold March day, back in Springhill, and if you've ever been in a barn in early spring with manure and straw, you'll know how cold and damp it can be. What with denunciations flying everywhere, it wasn't their finest hour as a couple. It is one of several confrontations they have, and maybe, if not the biggest, then perhaps the most vicious. Nobody can hurt you, I'm reminded, like those who love you. And nobody can wield the knife more sharply or damagingly than those who are wounded themselves. The scene came to me out of nowhere, and it changed slightly as I wrote it, because in my original sighting, Brooke attacked Ethan, and then I realized, the old Brooke would have attacked, this one, after being a wartime nurse, and parenthood and a bad marriage, had changed, and perhaps grew more, and wouldn't attack. She'd endure whatever accusations he threw at her, and reason them out. She could see he was in agony, and set that above her own pride, whereas before she could never have done as much. I hadn't realized until I started writing, and knew he was going to attack, that he was the one who needed help, more than she did, and in the end, it didn't matter anyway. He was in too much pain for her to do anything. It was awful to realize that, for them. There was nothing at that moment to be done. So she didn't. But it was good getting it down. Even if it was exhausting.

So I got six pages done. I literally couldn't pump out anymore. Drained. Sorry about the scatological inferences, but there it is. Writing drains you. No matter what you think it drains you of, it drains you. At least writing about this lot drains me. These people are so caustic and contrary and acrimonious so often and so much tragedy happens in their lives, that they're quite bleak and tiring to be around for any length of time. Oh, it sounds like a fun read already, doesn't it? Yeah, well, maybe they're just bleak for ME, I've lived with them for so long. They may not be for you. I mean, I love them, (you HAVE to love your characters, even the ones we're meant to hate, you have to love them if you're going to make them believable, just as actors have to love the characters they play to make them believable) but sometimes I don't like being around them very much because sometimes, they're just not very likable. You may find them hilarious, and yes, there are moments of hilarity, somewhere, I just can't remember where right now. Oh yes, waitaminute, the flying poop in the sock was funny, but in light of what happens after, it was so relatively minor. Right now, I'm just so busy concentrating on getting the damn story out that I can't recall a lot of what went on before. When it's done and on the table, I'll check it over for all its fingers and toes, and (God help me) a SPINE. For now, it's just enough to get through (what feels like) the longest bloody delivery on record.

Now. For a glass of wine.

Girl Power; True Grit and Black Swan

I recently saw two films about the coming of age of two young women. One film, TRUE GRIT, is about a 14 year old girl who has to venture into an horrifically violent environment to avenge her father's murder. The other film, BLACK SWAN, is the story of a slightly older young woman who has been repressed and infantilized by her art and her parent, and who has to virtually destroy her mind to free herself from the constraints of both. Both young women transcend the external and internal violence of their lives to achieve their goals, but at some cost, for one ends heroically and the other tragically.

To wit; I don't like a lot of Westerns. I find a lot of them are horrifically violent, one dimensional and infuriatingly male. Which is to say that they don't have a lot of emotional arc to them. Some of the ones that I do like are Howard Hawks' RED RIVER with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, TOM HORN with Steve McQueen, and Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN. They all had stories that had a feminine pulse to them. The men were killers oftimes, but they knew that there were consequences to their actions, oftimes at the hands of the women in the story. (I omitted RIO BRAVO and STAGECOACH from my list as I haven't seen them yet.

The Coen Brothers' latest offering, TRUE GRIT, is a western filled with violent men, but whose heartbeat is that of a determined young girl. I haven't seen the original film of TRUE GRIT, but I can't imagine that it was any better than this remarkable reimagining of the original Charles Portis novel about a young girl who hires a federal marshall to capture her father's killer.

Jeff Bridges has an extraordinary time taking on the only role John Wayne won an Oscar for, and unlike Wayne (who always played Wayne) Bridges loses himself completely in the part of an aging, overweight, harddrinking curmudgeonly lawman. We forget that this is indeed Jeff Bridges, the Dude. This is not the beautiful young Adonis of THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, or TUCKER, or even STARMAN. This is an old man, crusty, curmudgeonly and wonderfully human. If anyone had doubts as to Bridges' ability as an actor, then certainly this role should forever disspell such a foolish notion. He makes one forget John Wayne, if such a thing is possible. He is boorish, rude, cantankerous, violent and just plain wonderful. A joy to watch and listen to.

But one actor alone isn't the reason this movie is so good. This is an ensemble piece, almost a chamber piece, albeit a chamber piece on horseback. Also along for the festivities and proving again that he really is one of the best actors in movies, (and not just an A-List movie star) Matt Damon plays the part of Texas Ranger Le Beouf (pronounced Le Beef) a smallish supporting part that any competent actor could have played quite well. In Damon's hands, this lumpen, not particularly intelligent middle aged man becomes funny and rather touching in his rather egotistical view of his abilities. In his scenes with young Mattie, he is almost disturbingly creepy, since it is apparent that he's attracted to this willful young girl, inspite of the fact that she irritates him exceedingly with her high handed intellect. It is to Damon's credit that he makes Le Beouf unattractive and somewhat repellent instead of going for the dazzling movie star turn he could very easily have done instead.

The Coen Bros. have wisely stuck to the original Portis novel, and made the young heroine Mattie Ross the heart of the story. In the casting of Hailee Steinfeld, they really have "A Star is Born" on their hands. She is merely magnificent, and in her work with Bridges and Damon, she very often steals the scenes effortlessly. She is the emotional heart of the movie, and her combined ferocity and softness make it virtually impossible to watch anyone else when she is onscreen. I suspect she may very well win an Oscar for this. Her face on screen is plain, beautiful, childish, womanly, wise, foolish and sublime all at once. Her voice is cutting, and you really do believe she is as brilliant as she thinks she is. What is even more remarkable is that Steinfeld was only thirteen when she played this part of a fourteen year old Presbyterian firebrand. Kim Darby in the original movie with Wayne was in her twenties.

As usual, the Coens have served up a sumptuous visual feast, with mud scarred earth, grey skies, dirt and death surrounding the characters every where. They have stayed true to the spirit of Portis' novel, with a brilliant screenplay which has a hard edged Presbyterian leanness to it, tough and wiry, much like its young heroine. In keeping the focus on Mattie, as Portis did, they brilliantly leave the audience wondering, as a much older Mattie walks away into the dusk at the end, who it truly was who possessed "True Grit" after all, in this marvellous coming of age story.



The other film, Darren Aronofsky's BLACK SWAN is almost a companion piece to his Mickey Rourke film of a few years ago called THE WRESTLER, in that they both deal with the extremes a performer sometimes goes through in order to achieve greatness. Having been surrounded by ballet dancers for a number of years, I would say a great deal of what goes on in this film is accurate; the physical pain, the endless hours of rehearsal in the pursuit of perfection, and the crushing psychological disappointment of not being "good enough" when no matter what you do, or how good you become, the body fails under the punishment it is put through. Ballet is not what I would call, an easy art form. Not everyone is designed for it. In fact, very few are. It requires a specific body type in both men and women, and the body is either there, or it isn't. If it is, and it can be trained, so much the better. But lasting through the years of torturous training is the real trick. Dancers' professional lives are shockingly short. One torn ligament, one sprained knee and it's all over.


This film to its credit, makes us aware of all of that in subtle ways that are as disturbing as they are effective. The movie is a little over the top, and I suspect in many ways, it wanted to be an Ingmar Bergman film. Indeed, I wondered, while watching this movie what the Swedish auteur would have made of it. Nobody knew the soul of an artist like Bergman, nor the torments they went through, or how they tortured others through their single minded devotion to their art. I kept being reminded of his AUTUMN SONATA when I watched this film, and there were moments when I wished Aranofsky had toned down the CGI effects, and just let the actors do their work. The screenplay, by Mark Heynman, Andres Heinz, and John McLaughlin was very effective but a little unbelievable at times. I mean really, could anyone dance the last act of Swan Lake with a life threatening stab wound? Little things like that gave me pause, but, that being said, it's still a remarkable film, and one well worth seeing.


A fragile young ballerina named Nina Sayers (stunningly played by Natalie Portman, but more on that in a moment) undergoes a psychotic breakdown in order to achieve brilliance in the dual role of Odile and Odette in the ballet Swan Lake. Her life is one of brutal emotional repression. She lives with her mother (a failed dancer, played by the brilliant Barbara Hershey) who infantilizes her, allows her no privacy, and calls her obsessively on the phone constantly. Into this mix, Nina must deal with the harsh competitive world of the ballet, where careers are made or broken by the whim of artistic directors. Nina's artistic director Thomas (a deliciously cruel Vincent Cassel) chooses her, berates her, abuses her and like everyone around her is completely unaware of the toll the part of the Black Swan has taken on his dancer's fragile psyche. An older dancer, (played by Winona Ryder with a wonderfully harsh fury) attempts suicide after Nina replaces her. Another new young dancer named Lily (a dazzling Mila Kunis) becomes Nina's friend, but appears to be angling for her role and her position as Thomas' new star, thus adding to Nina's psychosis. As the movie progresses, Nina starts to come undone, and as events occur, (or do they?) and opening night draws ever closer, we start to wonder whether or not any of this is real.


Just as Mattie Ross has to deal with harsh brutalities from the environment she finds herself in, Nina too must deal with the almost cruel harshness she faces daily in the world of ballet. These cruelties however, pale in comparison to the ones she creates for herself. Bulemic, possibly hallucinating, fiercely sexually repressed and with a wild anger struggling to break free, Nina has to cope with the possibility that she can trust no one, and that everyone is out to deny her the one thing she is living for, and that is to triumph in Swan Lake. As the plot progresses, and she sees suspects at every turn, she starts to unravel when she fears that her greatest fears will come to pass; that she will lose this role or worse, not be perfect in it. Nina sacrifices everything she has in her pursuit of perfection, a pursuit that even Thomas tells her is not possible.


Aronofsky's film is a cold, austere and bleak place to be in. It is also brilliant, cruel and remorseless. It portrays the harsh reality, the sheer physical torture of a dancer's life, and spares the audience nothing of the pain of bloodied feet, battered joints and the sheer agony of not being quite good enough. Technique is not enough this film seems to say, for Nina has technique, flawless technique. What she requires for the part of the Black Swan is passion and sexual danger. Nina is hopelessly inadequate to this task. Having been repressed for so long, she does not know how to access this side of her personality without involving some real risk. Indeed, the relentless harassment of both Thomas and Lily entreating Nina to visit this dark side of herself threatens to destroy her already fragile hold on her sanity.


As Nina, Natalie Portman gives the performance of her career. Her initial appearances in the film have her stunningly resemble Audrey Hepburn, and one could imagine Hepburn having played this part as a young woman, as she was after all, a trained ballet dancer before she became an actress. As well, her legendary fragility was always best juxtaposed against her steely strength. Portman has much of the same quality here.


This is to take nothing away from Portman's accomplishment. Her eyes, (always her best feature) are frequently black with pain, and when she snaps, it is not the CGI special effects we notice, as much as it is her repressed fury pouring forth in a terrible geyser of madness. She embodies Nina's fragility effortlessy, and her limpid timidity is painful to watch. When she tries pathetically to reach out, to claim her own measure of control of her fate, she is remorselessly smacked down, and the audience winces in shared recognition of that awful moment. This is not an easy thing for an actor to do; to involve the audience to such a degree that we not only feel the character's pain but react right along her. That Portman has done that and taken us with her so effortlessly on her shoulder is a testimony to her great gifts as an actor. That she apparently spent a year or so training to be physically believable as a prima ballerina should not be surprising, as any good, thorough professional actor would do the same. But that she should take that and us on such a harrowing journey of the artist's soul is a revelation not to be missed.


In the end, Nina does indeed achieve greatness and breaks through the restraints that held her back from perfection. Like Mattie Ross, Nina too loses part of herself to achieve her goal, but unlike Mattie, who triumphs, Nina's tragedy is far too dear a price to pay.

2011......Anybody Home?

Am I the only one grateful to see the last of 2010? I myself can't personally complain, I mean, getting laid off with a whack of cash, and becoming debt free (but can it last? THAT is the $64,000 dollar question, Merv) into the bargain is hardly reason to gripe, to my way of thinking. Oh sure, I had a minor setback, a three week attack of nerves; of the, "What the fuck do I do NOW?" variety which fortunately passed when I went to the land of citrus and picked a bunch of oranges for breakfast. Amazing what fresh Vitamin C, sun and surf can do for your mood. Then I come back here to -7 degrees celsius and thought I was going to lose my mind again.

Yes, I think this last year sucked for a lot of people, to put not too fine a point on it. Marriage breakups, relationship breakups, and my God, the amount of deaths that friends of mine went through last year was horrendous. I counted myself lucky that the only thing I lost was my job. But you know, recessions do that, layoffs happen. It could have been far worse, I could have little or no money to survive on, and still had a debt load.

Right now, oddly enough, I am in Aurora, land of my youth, or at least the nether part of it. Am staying over at my brother's following my youngest nephew's eighth birthday. Because it's a school night, everyone is in bed by nine-thirty. So I followed suit, and fell asleep on the couch. Having a vain belief that I can cat-nap anywhere during anything, (and usually I can) I thought, oh well, I'll just be awake at six is all.

Ha.

I woke up at 2:04, suddenly seized by apparitions, and unlike the Ebenezer Scrooge kind, these were the post-November "What the fuck am I going to do with my life?" variety back with a vengeance. No real character to them, just greenish black bilious feelings of anxiety and panic. The ones that caused me to have so little sleep during the month of November and December. I don't know whether it's because I'm in an unfamiliar environment, or because the Bailey's went down the wrong way and is now acting as a insomniacal agent, or whether my subconscious is just a perverse fucker who likes to wait until my defenses are low before it strikes my most vulnerable fears, (that is to say, the fear of failure and dissolute poverty in a garrett) but I can say that it sucks large.

I'm pretty much sold on the idea of teaching in South Korea for a year or two. This too is a frightening concept. It means I'll have to give up my life here in Toronto, one I've worked quite hard to achieve, but for some reason, feels as though it has slipped away on me. I'm not quite certain how it happened, or what I did or didn't do to make it happen, but it feels as though I've left the party somehow and I wasn't even aware I was going. I got the apartment I wanted, had the life I thought I wanted, and although I was alone in it, it seemed fairly nearly ideal. Granted, I had a job that wasn't satisfying, but it was THERE, and it did carry me through ten years of fairly traumatic events. In many ways, it was the one stable thing I did have in my life, as people changed, left and died, I at least had that. Then that went, and it left me with some wherewithal, and although I'm not frittering it away, part of me feels as though it IS being frittered away, as I sit here, wondering what to do next...

Hence, the panic. The panic of indecision, plus the panic of knowing that I should be writing, but am not, and I'm not likely to get such a lot of free time to write again. The panic I should be working at anything so I'll have money. Then I panic again and think, "What if I want to go to South Korea and teach? What then? How can I do that if I'm working?" Or the thought, "Why South Korea? Yes, it's got money behind it, and you can travel, and the income tax is light, and you can come back after a year or two with some coin, but then what? You'll be forty-five and no further ahead than you were. What do you then? Who will you be then?"

I know I want to, have to write, and I wonder, is this is all a big feint to keep me from writing? Writing is hard by the way. It's frightening and it tears me up and freaks me out. I write letters, I write in my journal, I write on this blog, all of it done to keep me from attacking my fiction, because it's the fiction that's the terrifying stuff. This? This is nothing. Mental masturbation. Nothing will suffer because of it. It's the equivalent of chewing on a mental hangnail.

I have my characters who have patiently waited for me for TEN YEARS to finish their story, and they have achieved such a sheen in my mind's eye, they are so relentlessly solid and real to me, that I feel I've been hiding from them, like the dentist or a landlord. (For the record, I am on excellent terms with both my dentist and landlord.) I have over some three hundred pages of their story finished, (don't get your hopes up soon, it's a 600-700 page book) their deaths and their loves, and they still stand there, just staring and glaring at me. Brooke, with her Louise Brooks bob, rolling her eyes and impatiently lighting another endless cigarette, Ethan just shaking his head and sighing, and tiny, adorable, dangerous Quinn hollering at me to "shit or get off the pot". You think I'm crazy, don't you? Of course you do, and of course, in a way, I am. Every writer is, to a degree I think. It's a semi-sort of benign schizophrenia we practice.

You see, this is what happens when you write. You let these people into your life, and they end up RULING your life. In many ways, they become more real to you than a lot of people you know. They have to be, otherwise, how will you, or anybody, believe them? Much less believe IN them? Not that you know them any better than anybody else, just because you created them. Like anybody real, you have to discover them. It's just my luck, I've discovered that they're a dangerous, hot headed, furious bunch. No shrinking violets my lot, oh no, not them. Life has been a hell of a lot more cruel to them than it has been to me, and they let me know it in no uncertain terms. It's the heat of their unspoken anger I feel. Their need to have their stories told, and here I am, farting about, wasting my time doing nothing when I could have spent the last TWO MONTHS working exclusively on their stories. No wonder they're angry. I don't blame them, I've neglected them shamefully.


The funny thing was, life got in the way. Or rather, I felt it did, and let it. Damn. It's amazing the excuses you make to avoid the issues in your life, like your writing or getting a job and surviving. Like the excuses people make to avoid going to the gym. Now I have to try and do both now. Get my life in order and work on my book. I need to do the former for me, and the latter for them. My secret hope is that they will both turn out to be one and the same.

But then I look around my apartment with my painted walls and artwork, in this old apartment building with the woodburning fireplace, (MY FIREPLACE!) and I think, maybe I should. Maybe I should write, should stay just where I am, and desperately hope it will all work out. Perhaps the money will come through and I can stay where I am and finish their story and I can still have my lovely apartment where I feel at HOME for the first time in my adult life. Maybe I can have all that, and stay in and write stories and books and live a little comfortable life and grow old, with my hair gone white, and one day have interviewers in for tea while I sit there in my chair by the window and my grandfather's table, telling off-colour jokes in my eighties.

But then, a rather forceful but gentle voice inside me says, or rather feels, "No. This chapter is done. This isn't the real life you hoped for. You hoped for things from people who weren't really there, and misread them the entire time. You expected them to do things they couldn't, to save you from having to face yourself, when it's been for you to do all along. It's only this surface life that kept you content for awhile, but too much has changed. This isn't you any longer."

All of which just spins me into FITS. "Alright then, Wise-Guy, who the fuck am I then? And who am I supposed to be, if not this person living this life right now? Who's the alternative and what do they DO?"

Can I just tell you how frustrating realizations like these are? And how frightening it is when you're not even sure you can trust them? Am I fleeing this life because it's habit, and I've never settled down, or am I fleeing, escaping, leaving, because it's true and I haven't found what I'm looking for yet? I know the book is the one true thing I have in my life that's real, and maybe that's why I'm so daunted at finishing it. When I'm done that, what do I have left? You see, it's not the starting that's the problem, it's the finishing and the what's after that, that is driving me nuts. It's the looking for the rest of my life that scares me.

There is a part of me that wants this life I have now, but there is a part of me that knows I need to go out further and find something else. It isn't my book, since I know that will be done and won't be a part of what I'm looking for. That was started long ago, and may have been the hidden cache of an old life I needed to build, but didn't finish. Now I suspect I need to finish it before I can move on with this new life. Or move on into it.

I'm sorry if I'm blathering away self-indulgently, I know I am. You see, I always need to write things down before I can see if they're real or not. This, this is just ruminating. Some people see shrinks so that they can get themselves opened up to see what is going on inside them. I write everything down, and I don't believe I have any hidden corners that some dim light hasn't been shone into. Perhaps it's just a form of literary narcissism. Most likely that's it to a T. I'm being self-indulgent I know, but in a way, right now, it's necessary. There's a block there that's keeping me from moving forward, and I need to take it apart and look at it to see just WHY it's there, so I can keep on going forward. That I've had to move forward, I've never doubted. I just have to figure out HOW.

So, welcome, 2011. Ready or not, here I come.