Monday, October 13, 2008

True original (ha!)

So I'm sketching characters and setting for a new play, and I recognize that I'm playing with ideas Virginia Woolf's already batted about quite tidily in Orlando. No worries, I figure. The whole inhabiting another sex's body thing is at least as old as Teirisias, and in my play it's a vehicle, not the main idea. Archetypal, yeah, that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. Then a snatch of a Leonard Cohen song floats in, as sung by Tim Baker on the last Feast of Cohen CD -- "You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn, learn to serve me well." Anchor -- hang onto that, scratch it on a file card, memorize it -- search the lyrics. It's from "Avalanche," also known on paper as "Parasites of Heaven." The song describes what my play is trying to do. Fabulous, now I can plagiarize Cohen. Fuck! Might as well cut the play's throat and abandon it balls-up in the fog. But ... Cohen, Woolf and Homer don't have my particular characters, my setting, my fucked-up world view ... and in my deepest dreams I'll never be half the writers they are ...

Cocky, yes. Crazy -- goes without saying.

Three conflicts, when you get down to it. And every story's a quest.

Shred of something original, one feather's worth?

Only way to find out is to write the thing.

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Spark-gap transmission / Michelle Butler Hallett

Spark-gap transmission / Michelle Butler Hallett
in progress