In my playwriting class on Saturday, my third revision of the first scene of the play met with the greatest approval. I am revising it again for next week, but I suspect that I have finally gone far enough back in time to start before the story does. Almost. I want to have a production meeting with the producer addressing the assembled staff in something in the manner of “Though of Hamlet our brother’s death / The memory be yet green…” I feel a sort of momentum around this idea that I haven’t felt around the other beginnings.
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Nature may have done something
“But, perhaps, I keep no journal.”
“Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am not sitting by you. Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladies’ ways as you wish to believe me; it is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.”
– Catherine Morland & Mr. Tilney, NORTHANGER ABBEY (Jane Austen)
the wheels on the bus
The 70 Division eastbound from Ashland to North Branch.
GIRL: Dude, you just, like, jabbed your elbow into my gut.
MAN: Sorry.
GIRL: Ow.
MAN: You want to go out with me? I have a phone.
GIRL: No.
MAN: I can call you.
GIRL: No.
MAN: I’m only 61.
GIRL: I’m 16!
MAN: That’s, like, 61 reversed.
A seat opens up and GIRL moves to sit down.
MAN: Don’t leave me!
MAN’S SEATMATE, A WOMAN OF FEW BUT APT WORDS: She thought you were a dirty old man.
MAN: Yeah.
MSAWOFBAW: Ha, ha, ha.
MAN: Yeah, all right.
no action
Friday night at La Pasadita, one of three of the La Pasadita taquerias in the block south of Ashland and Division. B and her friend C are eating carne asada Super Tacos.
A: Where did you ladies get that beer?
C: Around the corner.
A: Around that corner there?
C: Yep.
B: There’s a giant arrow sign pointing to it. You can’t miss it.
A: We appreciate it.
In rereading a portion of this blog yesterday, I decided that the parts I like reading the best are:
1) the observations about writing, which I’m getting better about doing regularly
2) the dialogue excerpts, which there aren’t enough of. I’m going to create a new category.
I will try to have dialogue even when, as is typical in my plays, there is no action. Maybe by writing a little bit of dialogue regularly in the blog I will find more action in the sound of people’s words.
let’s get it started
I am revising a scene for my playwriting class this morning. I’ve woken up so early every day this week to help C move that I’m used to not sleeping, and have become more productive. She is staying here tonight, waiting to finally move in. I’ve had or been a houseguest every night this week. It’s been fun.
C was telling me about her brother, the short story writer, who rises super-early each day to write before his 9-5. I like the hour of the day for writing myself. I just never know, when I go to bed, if I will manage to get up. I think having her in the house helps. It’s more exciting to get up and start another day if there’s someone else to start it with.
Speaking of starting, this is my third attempt to write the first scene of the play. I do think each one gets better, but for my sake as well as the play’s, it would be nice to have a second scene some day.
that’s what I’m talking about
The 52 Kedzie/California bus south at 7 AM on a Friday morning after a Bulls OT victory against the Celtics, in which Ray Allen scored enough 3-pointers to become part of the times table.
MAN ON BUS
Ray Allen. I’m telling you, that Ray Allen – watch out! Ray Allen, Ray Allen, Ray Allen.
Ray Allen, Ray Allen.
Ray Allen!
MAN ON BUS #2
That’s what I’m talking about!
MAN ON BUS
Ray Allen. I mean – come on!
MAN ON BUS #2
Ray Allen!
imaginary horses
Yesterday, I met an actress friend on the Green Line. We both traveled from our jobs toward the Loop – her to an acting class, me to the library. My pants were tucked into my (Green) rain boots. She told me I looked like a British horsewoman. I told her that my horse would be waiting for us at the Ashland station, and I meant it.
The thought of this horse was more real and more pleasant to me than the presence of my friend, the clouds outside the train’s windows, or the sense of my own breath moving in the gallon accordions of my lungs. I am still thinking about that damn horse.
I told my friend this. Imagination, she told me, is an escape. I wonder – I know there is – if there is a danger in practicing escaping – just like when I was a kid, how I used to practice unfocusing my eyes.
(I seem to bring a better quality of observation to these posts when I am forced to do them less often. You know what they say about absence. )
past compare
Poems are comparisons and if you write too many poems everything starts to seem like something else. The trees, ringed with puddles, have pissed themselves after a night of drinking. The Hershey’s wrapper floating in the gutter, touching one corner to the concrete, is a fish nibbling at the reef of the sidewalk. It is starting to infuriate me. I do not want things to seem like something else. I want things to only be what they are. I want to release the visual world from the curtailment of my comparisons! Nothing is like anything!
To see a tree with a puddle under it and know it only for a tree with a puddle under it: that will be a new level of poetry.
something about nothing
Once upon a time, I cared more about the sounds of spoken words than about plot, which is central to drama, and comparison, which is central to poetry. I only cared about sound. But this is no longer true. This is who I was, the writer I was. I am no longer that person. As I get older, I seem to get better at action, metaphor, and simile. My writing today is not something my former self would recognize as mine. I would not want to possess it. I would not know it.
We name things and they change under the names. You can just be grateful – I know I am – that this blog isn’t titled TIME TO RHYME.
Dara Weinberg 