Congratulations
on an awesome book! I hope you succeed beyond your wildest dreams and
have a life of writing, beer, and Nicola.
I must admit that
succeeding beyond my wildest dreams is a stretch goal, because I dream
big. I'm thinking, well, okay, what's my wildest dream of success, and
I can't even post it here, it's just too over the top. I find that I am
not embarrassed to have these dreams, which are a very powerful force
in my personality and my life. But I am sometimes embarrassed to share
them with other people. The endless question: what to reveal, what to
keep private. It's hard to have precious things misunderstood or dismissed.
Yet I also believe that dreams are harder to achieve if they are too closely
guarded, never made external in any way. It seems to me they need to be
expressed somehow, even if it's just out loud to myself in a field miles
from nowhere in the middle of the night. It's mighty powerful to say,
"I want this." It sets up echoes that come back at the damndest
times. So thank you for your kind wishes. I hope so too. I want it.
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#36
July 12, 2003
From: Lindsey Main, beanmain@yahoo.com
Wow. That was really wrong. She WAS a pig that day. I just lost a tooth yesterday afternoon. It had to be pulled out. It's not a good tooth to lose because it's a first molar (provides the vertical stop). My dentist is a cool guy though. He's a bit on the eccentric side, but he's great at what he does. He gives me all the Novocain I need and never tells me, "...it's pressure, not pain". I probably would have fainted if a teacher did that to me.
I should have said that the spaceship set is an interior one. My friend's parents were kind enough to let us have their basement (3/4 of it). We've got an engine room, a transporter, a command center, turbo elevators and a forward viewer...complete with a starfield. It looks like the inside of a spaceship. On film, it looks amazing. So, we are definitely proud of our set. For EXT. SPACE scenes, we use a model. Alx made it out of a digital alarm clock and other household items. All painted up, you'd never know. We made a lot of our own props.
Unfortunately, we've had a few setbacks. I can't play Agent Tallent because the girl who was supposed to play Nate, pulled several "no shows". Since Tallent doesn't appear until later, I have to play Nate. So, I have to exercise. I despise exercising. And the thing is, I'm in pretty good shape...just not "Nate shape". Then I have to Tallent search (ha! couldn't help it). There's quite a bit of stupid shit popping up. I won't get into it. I will say that we are not freaking out about stuff like we used to, so that's good. And, for something that is low (super-low) budget, Wayfarer 1 is looking great. We are very excited and extremely pleased.
I will definitely let you know when the website is up and running (shooting for Nov). Even better, I could send you a cd. Could I do that??? Perhaps through some c/o address or other? In fact, if anyone here would like a FREE cd, just email me with the information and I'll send it out. Uh... I'd be a little sketched about giving my address to a stranger, so I'll understand if no one wants a disc. But, there are always p.o. boxes and c/o's and fake names, etc., etc. So really, feel free. Keep in mind though, that it will be several months before any of this happens.
Arrivederla!
Lindsey
That's
nice of you! I will definitely take a CD when they're available (I will
send you contact information privately). I hope some other people will
take you up on it; it's good to Share Art.
I think it's amazing you built a spaceship in the basement. I regard it the way I regard being an astronaut or a spy or a sixth dan black belt in aikido—something cool for which I have neither the talent nor the predisposition. A real wow, people are amazing moment. You go.
#35
July 12, 2003
From: anonymous
There's a discussion on Nicola's website (scroll down to the last question) about the role of music in her work. I'm curious about how you use music in your writing? Thanks.
I've been enjoying
that conversation. Music has always been essential to me, but it took
that question and Nicola's response to make me think in more detail about
how I feel about music and how I use it in my work.
I'm a verbally-centered person. Language is my primary tool to ground myself, to express myself, to connect with others. That's part of the writing deal, of course, but it can be limiting. Some things are not so easily expressed in words. Sometimes a person just has to dance, or cry, or throw their arms out and try to hug the world. Music is my conduit to this part of myself. There are things I've learned about myself only through particular pieces of music that have taken hold of me throughout my life. Music is one of the few things in the world that I respond to by wanting to move, to feel, to think, all at the same time, instead of giving preference to thinking as I often do. And it has meaning for me beyond just the words and the beat. Some music has become a part of my self-identity in a way that's hard to articulate—not just I like this or I get this but I am this: this particular intersection of rhythm and voice and word and sound is about me, for me, of me.
My work so far tends either to use music overtly in this way, or to pretty much ignore it as an emotional force and just treat it as another feature of the environment. Strings is an example of the former, as is my most recent (unpublished) story in which a woman imagines herself a rock star. Those stories are, in one particular way, the most revealing and personal pieces of fiction I have written. In Solitaire, music is background.
It's hard for me to imagine using music in my work the way Nicola does in hers. We have a fair amount of overlap in our musical tastes, but we experience even the music in very different ways. What a surprise (ironic smile). Nicola and I are different. Different people, different writers. Segue to one of my hot buttons: I get grumpy sometimes at assumptions that my work must automatically always be informed by hers, as if she were the sun and all the rest of us are plants or something. Someone commented online a while ago that since Nicola and I are partners, I had clearly modeled Solitaire on the themes of Slow River. I find this more annoying than I can possibly express.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not slamming your question—in fact, I appreciate the careful setting of context ("this discussion on Nicola's website made me wonder...") without the actual request to "please compare and contrast yourself to Nicola." And of course I do compare and contrast myself to her, as she does to me. Maybe I should give her approach to music-in-fiction a whirl just to see how it goes. It's good to stretch. But I'm not sure that I could assign specific pieces of music to a moment in the story without wanting to go all the way with it and turn it into the sort of experience for the character that it is for me. And that's not always right for the work.
As I write this,
I am listening to what I think of as the early Aerosmith "trilogy":
Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic, and Rocks. Steven
Tyler is wailing about being back in the saddle again. The bass line kicks
ass. I am dancing in my chair. Time to go do some work.
