Forty five years ago I came into possession of a powerful tool, a typewriter. I remember it well. It was a little thing with a thin ribbon of black and red. You had to pound on the keys to write and I did not know full well how to type. I pounded away for years as a hunter and pecker. Before that remarkable machine, I would write with pen or pencil and yellow pad. I remember that I wrote poetry. Rotten poetry at that, but it was poetry. I wrote at night. Late into the night. I would write until my parents would get out of bed and come and force me to stop. The sound of that pounding upon those keys always gave away my nightly obsession with writing. It was always at night when the ideas would come. I guess it was like dreaming on paper. All the beauty and the demons came out to sit upon those pages.
I just finished watching a movie. It is called Quills. If you can get around the violent scenes, it is a hauntingly beautiful story. It is a tale of passion for the written word. One line in the movie caught my ear and it had so much meaning for me. It went something like...."and he found his sanity at the bottom of an ink well...".
Funny thing is the written word. It is not easy to capture and it often escapes easily. I can close my eyes and see things which must be written of and yet at times I just cannot grasp the words to tell the story. It is the same for anyone who has a concept that must be made physical out of the ether of thought and mind. I watch my Wife create things every day. I love to watch her work. She forms her thoughts into clay shapes and eventually, they become solid ideas you can hold in your hand. I suppose that is the way the written word comes to be solid...it is written down on a page or a screen.
What amazes me is how much emotion is wrapped into what you do as a writer or artist. The movie really was about a man's attempt to deal with the horrors of the French Revolution and the total collapse of his world. That idea sends a shiver up my spine when I think of what seems to be around the corner for this world. How many times has such an event as a revolution happened in this world? How many people have been caught up in that revolt? You see, there is two sides to every revolution. There are those who benefit and those who suffer the loss. And, there are those who orchestrate the revolution and never are affected as either side. I would venture to guess that those who orchestrate have no emotion and no story to tell that is worth reading. It is the other two groups who render the best stories. But, the revolution is not what I want to talk about. I want to express myself in saying that I think I have been on both sides of the fence as the benefactor and the sufferer. I can tell stories of glory and defeat in my own life. And, I am at a point in life when I am about to tell my best story, the ultimate story.
What about you? Do you have the emotion to put down on paper your best story? Is there a spark of inspiration in your life which will lead you to an epic? I would ask you all to think about that. Do not sit back and let your life's story remain silently tucked away in a dark recess of your mind. Tell it to the world. I say this because I am waiting for the next great story to be added to the literature of mankind. Each story becomes a part of the greater story that needs to be told and remembered. Let it become a part of the history of our species. If we are remembered for nothing else, let it be for the ability to tell a good story. Time is short...words are plentiful.
"And I came to realize that the dreams I was having each and every night were not just mere memories of the day but a new reality. When I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep, I entered a new reality not of my world. There I could do anything and everything. There I could be free. And the freedom was a freedom unlike any I had ever known back in my wakeful world. Thus the reason I chose to remain asleep. I escaped the bondage of life and found real life beyond the consciousness of my existence...."
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