Thursday, July 10, 2008

From my Thesis Play at UCLA

I've edited a bit so as to keep the blog in the PG13 range. Why, you may ask, am I posting this. No reason specifically. I have been rediscovering my voice as a writer lately. It really races around and it's hard to capture. I am realizing that I have to stay on top of it and ride it right through the twists and turns of life.

I was looking back over a lot of my writing, and I cringed a thousand times. More. I have one play that I wrote in undergrad, long before I had and "training" as a writer. To this day, it still gets the best reaction. People really like it. My friend Rodney jokes that using his monologue (from this play) in his UCLA audition was what got him into the MFA Acting program. But reading it again, now that it's close to 10 years old, I can't stand to look at it. And it's like that for almost everything I write.

A friend of a friend, someone that I have butted heads with quite a bit, also aspires to write. Her medium of choice is the screen. No comment. She once asked me, though, to elaborate my writing "process." I didn't know what to tell her except that I sat down and stared at the flashing cursor until my characters started to talk. It's that organic for me. And maybe that's why I can' t really go back. There is something surreal about seeing through time. Seeing back into that soul that can never really exist again. And if you know me, really know me, you know that I hate all that hippie-dippy crap... but it's really true hear. Writers take little pieces of themselves and slap them down on the paper. We bare a lot for the hopeful enrichment of others... and that can be a very metamorphic process.

Maybe I'm totally full of shit, though. I don't know. But I am reminded of the tombstone of our dearly departed Keats, which reads, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." F**kin' A, Johnny. F**kin' A.

Without further ado - a little ditty from my thesis play American God.  (Which I titled before I knew of the book by Neil Gaiman.  But that title has a plural.)  I won't tell you anything about it.  Except this: His dialect isn't southern or Texan or any such thing - so don't try to read it that way.

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A day's coming when the world will notice the little man in the corner scratchin' the skin from his arm.  They gonna ask what he's doin'.  An' he's gonna say that he's tryin' to change the way he was born.   He's tryin' to look like they look.  All his second-hand jeans got holes in the knees from one too many days carryin' the man on his back.  Carryin' him high up in the buildings he built for them so they could drop that axe down on his head.  An' there's a smile on their face when they say they don't need him no more.  A big fat toothy smile.  But what they really sayin' is that the planet called Earth be a whole lot better if he just climbed up real, real high and fell into space.

An' they'll grab his hand and say stop scratchin'.  But he ain't gonna stop.  Until all that skin is gone.  Maybe his guts will make them less sick than his skin.

An' they say, "How come if you so stepped on, you ain't cryin?"  An' he doesn't say nothin' 'cause if they don't understand without askin' they ain't never gonna know.  They don't know.  He just keeps his head real high all the time even when they're yellin' and screamin' real loud...  that's all he's got.  They don't understand that he's got more pride in his little pinky than they've got anywhere... anywhere.

An' they say that if he cry, if he cry people gonna remember the hurtin'.  People gonna notice and say to take care of that man.  Take care of them that takin' care of us.  An' they twist up their faces confused when he says that he doesn't want them to see how much they hurtin' him 'cause that just makes him weak and when he's weak they jus' keep steppin'.

And' they say somethin' like if they step on him and step on him and step on him, then people gonna start feelin' sorry and feelin' sorry and like that.  An' he stops them an' yells in their face an' says there ain't nothin' people should feel sorry for.  He says, "I'm a man and I'm strong and I'm proud and f**k you if you don't see it.  An' f**k you if you don't see it, an' f**k you if you don't see it."  An' on like that.  'Cause he's got a pride inside of him so big it won't never break.  An' he's goes back to scratchin' 'cause at least they see that.

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Ugh.  Hard for me to read that... I know this reflection is important, but it's hard.

Enjoying my quaff,

Jed


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