I'm starting to see the two things that are going to sort of shape my course of development in college. One of them was Debate, the other, I discovered today, would come to be Playwriting.
I am currently taking a class on it, and as mentioned several times I am on board for TOOP, a performing arts group in my school. The Playwriting class I am taking changes its instructors every semester it's offered, with a different NYC playwright being flown in for a day to enlighten our young minds.
Or, you know, in my case, change the course of direction in my life bla bla bla... all that.
So we did a few exercises today, and it got me really thinking about this. This could be good for me because I specialize, almost too much, in writing first person narratives, sort of building up this one character's traits and thoughts, especially with this blog as well. So it'd be good to be able to get some (real) human interaction going on, engagement of the characters and just start, well, including other people in my stories other than just "I". Cut back on the narcissism, share the love, spread the seeds ... all that.
One exercise we did was where Jason Grote (our playwright this semester) made us all draw a place which evokes emotions in us, and we were also supposed to draw people in it, particularly one person that we feel close to.
Okay, obviously, this posed a few problems for me.
1. I am about as emotional as a study table.
2. I have no particular person that I feel close to. It is widely known (by no one but myself) that I am a very solitary person, and I am content with it being that way.
For a second I thought I did have someone I felt close to, but then I realize it was probably just the great sex, which happened like twice at most.
So, man, I don't know. What the fuck am I supposed to draw then. Something that evokes emotions ... football? (I refuse to call it bloody soccer.) I could draw a football stadium. Or maybe like a really cliche one where I see my loved ones dying in a hospital. Or a place where something bad has happened.
In the end, I settled for this imaginary place in my mind, where I'd be sitting in the middle of the room, with four huge screens as my walls, each one playing a different scene from moments in history (the Russian Revolution, Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral train) or scenes from movies and books that really struck a chord with me (Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye on his train, Meursault of The Stranger in his jail cell and Lester of American Beauty in the cheerleading scene), as well as an empty screen for me to play
my story.
And because my art skill is also akin to that of a study table, I drew Vladimir Lenin as a stick figure.
I said that if this were to be a play, the books would be represented by a bookshelf and the history will just have to settle for paintings.
Notice how even through this exercise, my need for solitary confinement just shines right through.
And for the person I felt close to ... I ended up drawing a dog next to me (also poorly drawn), my justification being that if I can't feel close to humans, maybe I do more for animals.
I went for a poorly drawn Dad in the end, but standing outside this room of mine, only looking in through a window.
Then we had to write a dialog between that person and us, starting with the statement, "Do you really think you know everything there is to know?"
Boy was I glad I didn't choose the dog, though it would have produced interesting results.
So in like five or ten minutes I churned up some (what I thought was)
pretty good shit. It was very emotionally charged and even made me choke up reading it, and generally I think anything I write that ends with, "You don't [know me] Dad ... you just don't ... and you don't have to. Not now, not today anyway. One day, you will, and you'll find out from someone else. You'll hear about me in someone else's words and you'll learn about me that way, and you'll learn about who this familiar stranger in your life is."
I would say that is some
pretty good shit. Very much in need of polishing, but PGS all round.
There was also a certain kind of structure to the short dialog I wrote, with a slow unraveling of the story, reaching a climax, the conflict apparent - as well as a deeper, unseen conflict - and it was really engaging in a way my writing probably has never been before. I've always focused more on the "train of thought", the meditation, the rambling, pattern, so playwriting is a good change for me.
And then we had to draw our ideal writing space, and I drew my room, with a coffee machine, and the dog again (though one can never tell if it's the same dog from the other picture because of my abysmal skills ... tricky), and this time we had to draw our ideal writing mentor, and give him qualities and all that.
I chose to make my writing mentor a person from the future, whom I hope - and not hope - to meet. That way hope will remain what it is: cruel irony.
And then we had to write that person's monologue, telling us how to fix the weaknesses in our writing that we mentioned before we started drawing our ideal writing space. Mine was, trying to find a theme to write about - I have some vague ideas, but I'm trying to solidify it - and sort of shifting (almost wrote shitting, my my how much different this sentence would be if I did) the writing style from first person narrative to an actual story, so I can write something that will look equally good performed to an audience. Going from the written word, to actions of a play my audience can identify with. That was my weakness.
And so my "mentor" taught me how to change that. He said something about how I'm bipolar, and that I contradict myself at every turn, how I know I have both sides but I lean more towards one side, and how I'm too afraid to explore the other, like how it's not true I don't have emotions for anyone, I do - and in fact I easily do - but it's just that I find it equally easy to leave them, how I have to learn to love and feel and be normal, and that is how I will learn to transform the written word into real actions of real people.
What a bunch of bullshit. Who the fuck does this mentor think he is.
I should also add that in this "writing space" of mine my mentor is sleeping in my bed while I sit on the floor with my laptop. Oh yeah. I fucked my mentor.
(Okay at this point I suggest that if you're an idiot and couldn't keep up with my story just ... nevermind. The mentor is not actually real. I created him.)
It's no secret that I like to write late into the night, like right now it's 5.20am, and what better time to write than after passionate sex.
Of course I didn't tell that to the class. "Bedroom" would have been a sufficient explanation.
And then Jason Grote gave us all individual writing assignments, and I got one which required me to write a scene between two characters who want something from each other, but either one of them, or both, are lying to each other, and I get to decide if the truth comes out or not.
Wow. Mind-blown or what.
It was then I realize that deception was such a common theme in my life, and writing, and it took my playwriting teacher to tell me that.
Also I realized that I write more in the realm of human interaction with each other - particularly between men and women (maybe not quite women) - and that is probably where I'm going to start.
Probably shouldn't have blurted it out in front of the whole class that I am interested in the theme of pedophilia. At the start of the class I veiled it by calling it "male maternity" - very handy, and also the subject of my 4000-word research paper in IB - but towards the end it just came out.
I can't help it, okay? I'm not to be blamed here. You don't choose your theme, your theme chooses you. There's no specific reason why I'm so attracted to the subject areas of pedophilia and communism, or why reading/writing about things like these interests me and makes me wanna continue writing them, whereas writing about other things don't.
Other than maybe because these areas are controversial and uncomfortable, hence they have much to tell me about the depths of humanity, and I'm interested in drilling that unchartered territory.
Isn't that what you people like to call "love"? How it's irrational and unjustified and how when it hits you, it just hits you?
Maybe that's me and pedophilia.
It's definitely an interesting topic to explore, or at least gives me a place to start. That fine line between fatherly care and amorous desires, tying it into the Oedipus complex and all the other PGS out there. That would just be fucking awesome.
I am learning something new about myself everyday.
And tomorrow I'm off to learn more Russian, more on American presidents, more on the structure of mythos and all that is about to start in three hours and twenty minutes.
I survive completely on coffee and knowledge. My heart beats for them.
Goodnight!
