Embracing The Madness
Why? Because there’s nothing left for me to do, that’s why. I’m in the stew! The gnarly, nasty, unskimmed stew with turnips and chunks of unidentifiable animal protein in it. But, as King Richard IV famously said, “We must eat the yellow wobbly parts.”
And, as my friend Katy somewhat less-famously said, I’m “in good company.” Lots of creative types have been…let’s call them mentally interesting. My challenge is to avoid sitting alone in my apartment being interesting in that way, because that leads to all kinds of unpleasant business involving endless loops of thought, quivering hands, pacing, too many cigarettes, and loud conversations with myself that I find more engaging than is generally considered healthy.
However, managing to be in the distracting company of others at all times is a difficult task, even if you’re not new in town and out of your gourd. So my task becomes the discovery of ways to avoid sailing off into the reddened skies of disastrous mentalities when I’m by myself.
One way, of course, is bloody obvious: write. Create. Take what I’ve got, throw it on the page. Build my word-based marionettes and move them through the worlds I create for them, worlds which are very much like this one, but tweaked, just a bit. Characters who are very much like me and the people I’ve encountered, but amplified, broadened, and dramatically enhanced. Situations that are familiar, but with increased tension, greater emotional impact, and a higher frequency of synchronous events. Take my situation, make it worse, toss it high into the air and watch it crash down at my feet, then pick through the wreckage and find a story to tell.
Which is kind of a shame, because I’ve got some spec-fic in my queue that I’d really like to finish, but it requires a certain storyteller’s voice that has fled from me for now, a voice that demands an entirely different technique, not to mention a better state of mind. I’ll get back to it when I can.
For now: there’s a gentleman by the name of Shelley Curtis who’s earned two stories of his own, so far. He looks quite a bit like me, but he’s older, smarter, and better-looking (of course). I’ve discovered that he can be cruel—which I’ll get to in a moment—that he’s probably more selfish than I am, and certainly more devoted to an aesthetic hedonism which may or may not be destructive. He’s an academic, and a controversial one at that, managing to piss off both sides of any debate he’s a part of. He lives in the New York of about 20 years from now. He is, in the identity nomenclature of the day, a “homosexually-identified bisexual,” although he does seem to be blurring the edges of that box quite a bit. I find him interesting, and as a character I attempted to use him in the way I described above.
But he surprised me. When I was finishing up his second story this week, he acted in a way which I did not expect: cruel and confused, harsh yet sympathetic, even guilty. It wasn’t the story I planned to write at all. I let his actions stand, and I’ll find out whether they serve the story at next Wednesday’s writers’ group crit.
I’ve read other writers discussing their techniques, and how they give their characters free rein on the page. That never made sense to me. It always seemed to be a kind of New Age affectation. After all, I’m the one writing the thing, and these people ought to do what I tell them. Shelley didn’t. He said things that I didn’t think he would say, and did things I didn’t think he would do. The puppet, it seems, managed to cut a few of his strings. Now, I know a bit more about him, which opens up further story possibilities.
All of which, upon further reflection, is remarkably functional. Yes, I’ve got a bad case of the Wackies. Yes, I feel subjugated by my neurobiology—particularly by my pesky amygdala, which is supposed to be regulating the chemicals that drive fear and anxiety, and by my prefrontal cortex, which is supposed to be keeping an eye on my amygdala. However: everything I am doing in my life right now is focused on eliminating the Wackies and gaining control of my neurochemistry. The plasticity of the brain is well-established in neurology, and one of the ways that it changes is through repeated exposure to stimuli. The wonderful thing about this property is that it works with positive as well as negative stimuli. Every time I write a paragraph instead of taking a drink, I’m changing some infinitesimal pathway in my brain. Every time I interact with someone instead of collapsing into a ball of hot nerves on the couch, I give my amygdala the equivalent of a smack on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.
So: yes, I’ll embrace where I am right now. But only because that acknowledgment is the first step in getting the hell out of here.
Speaking of which: I'm off to see a play!
