Monday, December 15, 2008
Reflectors
I have misgivings about starting down the road that I did with Hard Times. Chapter 1. My first reflection was that leaving it hanging with the "what lurks behind the door" thing was tired and lame. I still agree with that thought, it was. My next feeling had to do with the story itself. It is a true story, a memory from days that I wish were far from me but I know are one step away at all times forever. Telling stories about my times on the street and my drug days is dicey at best. All of the people that I ran with at that time are dead or M.I.A. I have had to remove myself from the struggles of those years as much as I can and sometimes I feel that telling you a war story about me and +++++ +++ is bullshit because in the end I wasn't able to be there for him. It's a treacherous place to walk for me..... my mind that is.
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6 comments:
Scott - Those times of your life sound fascinating. Thanks for sharing those days of your life with us.
I have a buddy that moved to Oakland, when he came back he was different. Told me he almost got stabbed to death by a Latino, he told me didn't know why.
Never been west of Des Moines, Iowa. Everything I hear interests me from afar.
Your blog is awesome, bro.
-Plebeian
I don't think its tired and lame. True, it's a cliché, but sometimes things become clichés because they work very effectively. A cliffhanger like this is powerful without becoming cheesy, and to me it only heightens the interest in the story. I realize that this might not just be storytelling for the sake of it, but there's nothing wrong with using some of the "tricks of the trade".
It is good within this format too - blogs are not very good for very long, uninterrupted strings of text, so it works well to break stories into installments.
Great blog by the way, I am always fascinated by hearing from people whose life experiences have been so different.
I understand what you're saying. I get the same feeling sometimes when relaying a potential "war story" to someone. I get halfway into it and I have reservations about having started it. Mainly because I start feeling like half a piece of shit as I recall what I used to be like.
But sometimes other people have powerful lessons to learn from the harsh experiences of others.
Scott, you keep telling those stories. Time to exorcise those demons, God knows they've exercised on you long enough. These are war stories, and they aren't pretty. At the time of +++++ +++'s death how could you be there for him, you could barely be there for yourself. I do think you should be with him in celebration of his life, if it's who I think (and I could be terribly wrong) he was one of the wittiest,sweetest, and funniest motherfuckers I'd ever known.
Pain is productive. You might feel stories such as those are curses, poisons, viruses, a soar you wish you could just stop tonging so it would heal. Don't dread that you still have trouble reflecting on past events. It only means your still learning from them. Embrace it.
I wouldn't get too hung up on cliches or whatever man. Writers like Dickens, Lovecraft, Hemingway, Frank Baum, Takami, Homer and every medicine man storyteller since the age of Isis weren't "above" using storytelling conventions. The point is you used it well. I want to find out what's behind that door!
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