| By Matthew David (First Edition: July 2010)  |
| Image Courtesy of its rightsholder(s) |
 |
| Image Courtesy of its rightsholder(s) |
If you see Ernest Hemingway and Bob Dylan as great golden DreamChasers, you are getting somewhere. You could argue the masterful Ernest Hemingway inspired most of this piece. Dylan’s The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan gave rise to the rest.
—A profoundly literary gentleman I know sent me this. Told me it was utter trash. So I thanked him very much, explained to him that of course I didn't have a million things to do, and I'd find time to slap it up here for you.
There is a species of composition writers call Editing. Upon conception, plan, and initial creation, Editing rounds the experience of Writing. I have not yet spoken with Michael Chabon, but maybe that extraordinary storyteller can work his way to brilliant at his current vessel's helm with the ease of a Sunday morning drive through wine country, and without a whole hell of a lot of second looks. I would probably buy that from him, or another a writer of his caliber, if we can find one. I'd accept it the way you do Tiger Woods leading the Masters after a season in hell. And if Mr. Chabon does decline to self-edit during initial composition, he may be the only Writer alive who can. But I wouldn't bet all of my net worth—not very much—that such an artist ever would.
The great E.B White said, “The best writing is rewriting.”
There is no doubt. For my money, though, and with all well-due respect to Mr.
White, it is the only writing. You won't see it till you dive into
the words—all the way in—and even then it's buried way down deep. Not in the
oceans of college or grad school or that second-grade book report on
Komodo Dragons that you summarized entirely because you drew last at the
encyclopedias that day. This is when you figure out you're in love with it—head
over heels—for this writing art, linguistic science, these precious human considerations.
When you know you were built to swim and drink and play with them. That's where
this lives.
There's a reason it does, and it's nature. I'm no guru, nor do I claim to be. I
wouldn't disrespect the great men and women who are. Can't even rightly say
First Captain DreamChaser. Haven't yet earned the stripes. But for now,
wordsmith feels just fine on me.
When you're starting out as a writer, you come from somewhere. That
place buried in the dark and dank of Abilene
or Allegheny or Amontillado, where you first find the time to dream about all
the good stuff you could be. That place is not a passion-pure circle
of writers, at least not one in the Hollywood
or Tin Pan Alley sense of the word.
No doubt, you've lived among Directors and Actors and
Writers all your life, of course—even good ones. But, if you haven't spent four
weeks or six months or thirty years with life-thinkers who believed
in themselves long and loud enough for consummation—Doctors Heller and Wolfe
and Joyce or Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner—maybe you should. You may find
it infinitely worth your time—if you're thinking you might climb in the ring
with these gents, I mean. It's a good gambler's bet, right? Sure. Eye the
table, spot the play, sit—then mop up. Won't be long before you're
rounding like a pro. You certainly don't wanna be the guy who turns the corner,
wipes his boots, and slaps his stack on sticky green velvet, smiling like the
theory he doesn’t realize he’s just disproved is law. That will not
go anywhere good. I know a bit about it, and perhaps you may read about it
sometime.
But I understand. I get it. You went to college. You did a
little work. But, if you're a hell of a DreamChaser—someone who can feel the
sting of soul or faith or guidance, body and mind, for the whole of your
existence—maybe you didn't do all the work. Maybe you had some
Thinking to do. And I genuinely hope for you something in the vast, magic ballpark
of that truth really is the case.
Maybe when you did do all the work, you did it
with half the passion. And should I hear that proud and solemn
confession breathe faintly from your direction, I will empathize, and you
will have earned my respect.
If you were beaten back ten or twelve times asserting you before
everyone who thought they knew you thought you should, then tried to push it
all away but lost it and you and all you once believed about where you
thought your one, big life could go—to the darkest corner at Nothing and
Forever—okay, I'm with you.
That whole forever part? In case you're not quite there
yet, you learn that it must be the best lie you ever choked down
with your green eggs and ham. It's what it has to be—it must be—because that
one fights back hard when you try and push it all away. You learn
that too, but Vegas odds of accepting it at first blush: three hundred
thirty-three million to one.
If you do the math and proof it—Actors Studio, Rock And Roll
Hall of Fame, plain old Hard Rock Cafe—I think you might find
those figures spot-on.
And when you do it's all Acceptance, and no other way; this
is Key. Clearing Rural Farm Route 63 and Routine, bare cow pastures every
bedroom window, raking up rotten apples for holiday pie (good, brave folks
you know) I promise you; it is the right first step.
You find out when you're hiding all your cards so long you
can't read them. You learned it wasn't good when anybody saw you had
trip aces, and you'd hide them in your lap and ante always, just to
try and fit in, stay the game. If that's the secret you're sharing—if you've
ever played that hand—then yes. Some nights I know that sounds
familiar.
But till your fairy-tale forever dies from constant stabs by
your own hand, that's the rigged goddam game you're playing.
It's a truth that stalled me longer than a few fine folks I
know: House Game; House Rules, always—Your Honors, let the record show.
And I would like to think that in some soft enchanted
moonlight in the brilliant, bare bosom of Starland, summer breeze meets grand
Pacific, starshine cast just right, and a DreamChaser in solitude on sugar sand
so white it blinds the non-believers says, “Piss on Forever for good. And bring
the House—I'll Beat it.” And I will always hope to hear that.
If college didn't just waste your time, and you
learned other than on cramming sprees of early test-day mornings, maybe you at
least picked up on Procedure. And it's true, that whole professor-student
thing, that epic You talk–I listen—that stuff works. It
does. But what you don't know when you're reading books on ancient native
tribes and econ. graphs for GPA-approval is that you won't retain a name or
date or number you'll think useful, till you're designing your course
catalog.
Best piece of advice I might have ever gotten: A literary gentleman
I used to visit on occasion, right outside my door, actually, little town east
of Hollywood —very
east—used to tell me his secrets.
He'd say, “When you get older, you start to learn about
every, little, inkling of chance you might've ever had. You know, you can just
feel it. You don't need to look. It starts out simple. You start saying, 'shit,
I have kids to feed.' Then it's, 'I can't possibly write that book with three
kids of tuition and this goddamn ball-chain mortgage. It's just not happening.'
And you start thinkin', I got a wife who's tired of the once-a-month laundry because
she saw Hillary speak last week, and then . . . you don't do it. And
you respect and respect and you give and you give, and pretty soon it
doesn't matter anymore. And then, it won't take much for you to pack it in
altogether.”
Then this literary gentleman, he turned to make sure his
machine was still breathing, hiding it so I don't know how much he hates he
can't stop checking. He drained and refilled and continued. “Couple hours here,
few million hours there of ugly black buildings and commuter traffic
and goddamn airmiles from places you can't even remember, and you wake
up dead. And when you know it, it's bullshit, because you're already dead.”
“It's not that you don't need to write that novel or that screenplay
or that memoir or that story or that poem. You still do. But you
can't, 'cause you been living that way so long you can't help it.”
“These guys I see at the Vee-Dubs used to say, 'Johnny Boy,
you gotta git atta here, and go. Take the wife and go somewhere, John . . .
y'oughta get on nat cruise next month. We did it last New Year's. Oh, my Gawd—beautiful.'
Then they turn to their buddies and say, 'Yeah, you know what, boys we oughta
git outta here an' head up to A.C., you know, for the weekend sometime. We
should go fish Big Blackfoot. It’s time for a golf week in N.C.”
“And, I'm gonna tell ya, son, I hear this bullshit every
single day of my life. 'You're gonna be dead. Go do it now,
while you still can, you know. Make the memory.'”
“You'll be dead, yeah, and that's true, you will. But I tell ya what,
my young friend: most people—most guys I know—they've been fighting it, didn't
know it, and now they're already there. But, hey, you know, you seem like
a smart kid. You do, you know. Maybe you already know about that.”
I think this gentleman was right. I guess you probably should
by twenty-two. May just help you get somewhere you'd really love to
go . . . before you wake yourself for breakfast in the haze of all
Johnny's can't one day, finding out just how right one man
can be, think about that man on the sands of paradise in starshine spotlight.
Maybe, just maybe . . . you should grab yourself a pen for
that lesson.
Sure, I agree, maybe you shouldn't feel it quite
severely or often at fourteen years old as the man now with his heartbeat in
the case in the corner, but the end of all that innocence—if you can find some
left—and all that passion, all those dreams. It comes. It does. For
everyone.
It comes quickly, violently, and it sparks without
warning at the gas line to the powder keg, the one that's primed to scatter
scraps of your love all over DreamChase Avenue . And you can watch it
all melt into ash in front of you.
But you could be the savvy sort, an explosives
expert, and handle it before the big, bad fuse ignites, save the Day.
You could do that. And if you do, you will have unlocked a coveted, prized
power of the golden-starlight DreamChaser. Pin the merit badge, Life
Editor, when you know. You will.
The catch is you won't have all day to find out if you can
hack it. That high-school curtain falls well before you even thought about
taking your bow. If it's too late, God help you because you'll be
very, very lucky if anyone else will. You'll need Angels to
fly you back from there.
In those darkest places, when your gambling game's up, you
learn that only Angels come and only . . . when you really need
them. If you get so lucky at the tables that your skin starts turning gold—if
your Angel gives much more than any mere mortal could, you might even see him
sometimes.
The gentleman next door told me, “That dead nonsense—right?—it's
true. All of it. But listen to me right now because it is true but
just in this one, little, tiny baby sense. Universal application, right?
All that fancy Plato bullshit. Well, it doesn't and never will exist.
And I know you know that by now.”
“This is it right here, and it's no joke, son. Ahhh . . . you just don't
give a shit anymore. Nope. Doesn't matter. My back hurts. I
have cats to feed. I wake up and walk to the john and walk back and
type my memoirs for—well, they call themselves my friends—ten people,
okay, who couldn't give a shit about my work.”
“They just don't get it. They don't. They don't care; and they won't
even skim.” He shook his head and sighed the most defeat I've ever seen
for the longest of naked moments before he said, “Ahhh . . . it's all bullshit.
All of it. Whatever—piss on them, you know?” He looked to the hillside beyond
his cramped concentration camp of a one-floor apartment at Nowhere and said, “Oh
well, right? Can you imagine how empty—how painful that
is?”
In fact, I did know. I may have read that sorta thing
somewhere once. That's why I toasted him when he said it, and I'm not sure he
really got that part or even wanted to know on the roll he put
together that day, but it was there for him from me, wide open. I wouldn't have
let him down.
Teenage dreamers get good at the fake-till-you-make scramble. If he didn't get
it, and, now I'll never know, call it DreamSmith's compunction and we'll toast
him again.
He continued after a good, long draw from his traditional
afternoon beverage, the same one he thought Hemingway used to drink,
then he turned to me, licked his lips, and said, “The point is that because I
waited for forever, I lost my now forever. And so, now, I
have an email group of nurses and barmaids who watch Oxygen every
night and Tivo “Friends” reruns instead of reading my
writing.”
“I know they don't read. But they're real good at telling me, 'I really like
it, Johnny. Wow. How do you do that?' And I give 'em a hug, and I say
my horseshit thanks, and I walk away reminding myself not to paint them liar to
their faces.” John returned to the glass.
“Now, pay attention son, because if you leave here with
nothin' else, here's the money ball.”
“All that stuff you spent every night of your life dreaming about and
perfecting and loving on till you got it just right—that stuff that kept you up
nights wondering what New York City looked like in October or San
Francisco Bay in the crisp chill of an August night. That album or your book or
the stage or the goddamn movie set—whatever. That stuff will rip and tear and cut at
everything you ever were till you drop to the floor and clutch your chest
'cause all your sand's spilled over. And hey, that's no bullshit, kid, it
happens every day. So, do it—whatever it might be, and do it till you
can't do it anymore—swear to God—because one day soon it's gone. And when you
do, just like they tell you: Don't ever come back.”
This friend of mine was a deeply literary man. When you look
for it, you can see like minds all over. They've busted their clouds and sowed
their oats and stared down their distant horizons. They've set out on their
first adventures in the bustling halls of DreamChaser University
But you can't get to the sugar sand in that place bathed in
moonbeams at that moment . . . without the gold of an Editor's Badge. And the
best Dreamers—those for which dreams are but great plans—know exactly where to
find it.
Truth is, when you hear good people talk about writing, about living, about
life, they love to tell you it's all just about the story. As an
artist has noted: "They love to tell you/ Stay inside the Lines."
Write the story, kid. Don't bother mixing paint. Slap it up there. Let's go!
Write it well. It's Story time—get a job. Hey, there's Story here,
all right? Get married, get divorced. C'mon, this is Life, dammit. Story stuff—go,
get to it. Pay the bill; Write the check; and Carry your humble pail back home
after graveyard shifts. And when you do it, don't you dare let anyone
see you don't love every minute. That stuff—it's just fine. It is. In fact,
it's great; it's life. It is . . . a living.
But the thing that those on the brink at the shores of
Forever and Happiness, the DreamChasers—what they know and want to tell us all is
never easy to say. And it could be because they know we Love a few of those
good people who only ever see the Chase in their mind's eye and need what
the Dreamer sees; but they just can't get there anymore. Or they think
they can't and convince themselves they can't be one of those few who
drives and digs and claws and bleeds until that golden moment on the great blue
horizon.
But if he could tell us what he knew on that perfect summer
evening in the Stars, the message might sound something like this: If you never
stop to look, to see, to Edit, your story goes places you'll only get
to share with those almost-friends of yours, the ones you make at seventy, not
far from the cozy little town where you grew up.
And it is sad, and it might be true. And it happens
. . . because they never could either.
—MD
DreamChase Entertainment
DreamChaser Pictures
DreamChaser Pictures
© 2010 Matthew D. Anderson;
2010-2012. All Rights Reserved.
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