Wow.  Forgot I had a blog again.  Well, faithful followers here is a little post to keep you updated on the goings-on in my life I suppose —

Tonight is the second, and final, night of the FSU Ten-Minute Play Festival here in Tallahassee.  My play, Death of a Newspaper Man, is opening the show followed by pieces by the other writers in my class, Zdenka Turecek, Bekah Suellau, Ray Nelson and Matthew Barnette.  We played to a full house last night (standing room only), and it was a great show.  A really good response to our first forays into live theater.  It has been an incredible process working with directors, technicians, stage managers and, of course, the very talented actors, to actually get our words realized and on their feet.  This is the first thing that we have written (in the last year and a half) that any of us have actually seen produced and acted out, it is a really gratifying sensation to see one of your stories move from that ethereal, theoretical state on the page to actually moving and talking in human form in front of you.  It is nights like last night and tonight that remind us why we are dramatic writers in the first place.

On a more individual level – one of the twenty-minute thesis films that I have spent the last semester writing is going into production starting next week.  What makes this project very special is that it shooting in Kansas.  This is the film school’s first time having a project in production so far from Tallahassee.  I’m very excited to see how it comes out.  Having these two projects going at the same time has really opened my eyes to the differences between being a screenwriter and a playwright.  With The Last Winter, the movie being shot right now, I am completely out of the loop.  As a screenwriter I have to hand over the final draft to my director and her ATL and hope that they are able to shoot and capture the story I tried to tell.  In the actual creation of the film, there is no room for the writer.  It can be a very nerve-wracking experience.  However, I chose my director carefully and I have faith that she will do a fantastic job.  That is part of the fun of screenwriting.  As I write the story, I have very specific film playing in my mind.  However, when the difficulties and compromises of filmmaking arise, changes to my script will be made in the heat of production.  Therefore, when the film is finally created it is very seldom anything like that film in my head.  This anticipation of the difference of what I write and what is created is what makes screenwriting, and filmmaking in general, so special.

However, in theater the writer is always present.  The director cannot vary from my text in the slightest way without my permission.  That is great deal of power over the final project, a level of power I am not used to.  I love the collaborative nature of both film and theater, so most of the time I’ve kept a pretty loose grip on the specifics of my play.  The director and actors have creative voices too.  That is why they do what they do.  And if I control the production of a play with an iron fist, then they aren’t creative beings at all, their voices no longer matter… they are simply tools to achieve my vision… they are simply means to an end.  The production process with my Ten-Minute play has been a really special experience, because of how collaborative and fluid the piece has become. And I look forward to a hell of a closing night.

There now –- that wraps up most of the logistical catching up we had to do.  You know I don’t get the hankering for a post very often… and those hankerings aren’t usually fueled by a need to let you know what I’m up to (‘cause frankly, it isn’t that interesting).  Usually, I have some thought, some problem that I feel I have to write about… it helps me think it out… and maybe reading it helps you with a problem of your own. I dunno.

Anyway, a few days ago I watched It’s a Wonderful Life with some friends at my place.  I love that movie.  I love that movie for reasons beyond it simply being a good movie (because frankly, in filmmaking terms, it has A LOT of problems, but we won’t get into that).  Growing up, there were a few films in my house that if they were on TV the rest of the day’s events became less important and everyone sat down and watched those movies – To Kill a Mockingbird, The Ten Commandments, Field of Dreams… It was these movies that had the most profound effects on me.  These movies (along with Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac) that made me want to tell stories.  It’s a Wonderful Life was one of these movies.

So we finished the film, and we were sitting around talking about it.  Dustin and I share the same opinion – it is one of the greatest stories ever told, George Bailey is a prime example of the type of person we should try to be.  However, I was astounded to hear dissenting opinions among the group.  A few people there actually consider the movie sad… they consider it a tragedy.  They see it as, George wanted to leave town, he wanted to do bigger things… but by some misguided sense of responsibility to Bedford Falls he was forced to give up on himself and live for other people.  His life was a tragedy.  Wow.  I was floored.  I couldn’t conceive how the movie seemed to tell that story to anyone.

So this has been on my mind for the past couple of days, and I think I have figured something out.  Something that actually has led to a bit of an epiphany about myself, and what I do –

Ever since I came to FSU I haven’t really felt comfortable.  I haven’t been unhappy, don’t think that.  There has simply been this underlying tone or idea of this place that I haven’t been able to accept fully.  I have never truly believed that I completely belong here.  And now, thanks to George Bailey, I know why.  I was raised in a place somewhat like a southern Bedford Falls.  A Mayberry, if you will.  Everyone knows everyone else and I was related to most of the town.  I came to be myself in world that based on the idea of community.  Based on relationships.  FSU, and Grad School in general is not a place based on relationships.  It is a place based on achievement, productivity and the individual. 

I am a writer.  I write.  I’m a musician, a gardener, a cook.  But I’m also a brother, a son, a nephew, a friend… and maybe someday a boyfriend, a husband and even a father. 

This place insists that you come to define yourself completely by that first set of labels.  Here they want you to be what you do.  And when the people who are comfortable in this world witness someone like George Bailey sacrifice his titles for the sake of his relationships, they consider that a tragedy.  This is where my disconnect from this place is ultimately clear –- I perceive myself through that second set of lenses.  I define myself through my relationships.  That is what is important to me. Writing is simply what I do.  The sum of the connections I make with others – that is who I am.  That is who I choose to be.

So what does this mean?  It means that I may’ve wasted some time being here.  It means that the people here may someday look at the path I choose to walk as a tragedy.  It means that my life may be much “smaller” than I thought a few years ago.

But it means some other things too.  It means my path is much clearer now.  It means that certain choices are probably going to be easier to make.  And some of those choices are going to surprise some people.  A small life is not a tragedy – I used to think it was, but I was wrong.

I may still make movies.  I hope to still make movies.  But what I realize now is that it is less important to make It’s a Wonderful Life than to live one.  

Well, another a great adventure to be chalked up to the past.  We landed in Tampa last night at about six-thirty, got home at about one.  The great London trip we have looked forward to since applying to Grad School is now over and done with.

This was one of the most interesting trips I’ve ever taken.  Let’s see… where did I leave off last time? Aha… after Buried Child.  Well, we did so much in our last week in London that I can’t begin to write it all, and do any of it justice.  Perhaps I can still talk about the idea of travel and what it means… and what it meant to me this time around.

I said, in one of my earlier posts, that we travel because we are searching for something.  We feel compelled that something is waiting on us.  And very seldom, at least in my experience, is the thing we thought we were looking for, ever the thing we actually find.  I don’t know what I thought I was looking for this time, I’m not completely sure of what I found.  However, on this trip, with a group of friends, I got to see a new environment, a new world, a new experience change people close to me.  Their expectations were met with surprising turns of events, often showing them things and selves they hadn’t realized existed or could exist.

One friend, the one who was most unsure of leaving their comfort zone here in America, had the biggest impact on me personally in London.  In another post I discussed how a vacation is often more a break from a self we are tired of, rather than a place.  This friend realized they might be doing and acting in specific ways back home, simply because that is how they’ve always operated, that is how people in their life expect them to operate.  It had been ages since this person actually asked what might make them happy.  A two-week break from this pressure was more than liberating, it opened their eyes a little more as to what their life is and what it might be… and it showed them that the choice will always be theirs.  The epiphany was a beautiful thing to witness, even if it may have been a little painful to accept.

Another friend came with clear expectations.  There was a specific something waiting for them in London.  However, once we got here, that something failed my friend and they reeled from the lack of drive in the trip.  However, few of us enjoyed our time abroad quite like this friend.  Once they removed the blinders of their expectations, they learned that they were in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, they were young, and they were there only temporarily.  Once again, combining these three ideas can be one of the most liberating notions ever.  I saw a person usually ruled by restraint and privacy truly live life in the moment.  Again, it was a beautiful pleasure to be there for this.

I don’t know how much I learned from this trip.  Clearly, I mean about myself, the lessons I learned from the classes on writing are indispensable and will have a great effect on me and my scripts.  Maybe being on the outside of these changes, seeing people learn from another environment, a new experience… maybe that was what was waiting on me.  Maybe I learned something that just hasn’t completely come to me yet, maybe there is some idea or revelation waiting in the recesses of my memory, possibly something that will come through in a story or a character.  Maybe the trip was here for me to get to know my friends and, possibly, myself better.  Maybe my eyes were opened to see how those around me see me.  Maybe I liked some of what I saw, maybe some of it needs work.  But did that really have to happen in London?  Well, could some of our conversations have occurred in Tallahassee?  Yes, of course they could have… But they probably wouldn’t have.

Maybe traveling, especially in a group, gives us an opportunity for a certain kind of honesty that isn’t possible at home.  Maybe when we’re abroad we convince ourselves that actions and words directed to and about each other are safe to let lose into the ether.  We convince ourselves that the ramifications of blatant honesty won’t follow us home.  We’re often afraid to be completely truthful with one another at home because we think the destructive tendency of truth will bring an end to our fragile environment.  But when we aren’t staying, when the environment is only temporary, then the damage is trivial… and we purge ourselves of the true opinions we hold about each other.

Getting back into the much slower rhythm of Tallahassee is going to be a trick for all of us. 

But it is good to be home.

After sleeping pretty late on Friday morning we roused groggily, shuffling around the flat without speaking.  The events of the night before seemed blurry and distant.  I couldn’t remember if dancing to Woolly-Bully had actually occurred or it was some gin-induced dream.  After the showers Bekah and Ray started describing the things that were going through my head, so I was reassured that it actually happened.

We went to class later that afternoon.  With Mark we reviewed the exercises we had done with our newly formed characters.  A few of us read our stuff out loud, some of us didn’t.  I am constantly amazed by the different ways people create.  I don’t know if I could come up with anything if it weren’t for the voices of others in my head.  However, I’ve now found out that some of the most beautifully creative people around me create on a much more individualistic level.  Let me put it this way, I have created a situation, a character, a conflict that seemed deadlocked - I couldn’t figure it out, I want the character to live and be ruled by a specific set of limitations.  However, it was just these limitations that were killing any hope of narrative.  That is until Bekah said, “Well, what if the best friend is a girl instead of a guy.”  BAM!  Within a few hours the story had fallen into place.  It feels good to finally be moving forward.

Later that night, Matt, Bekah and I went to see Howl, the new film about the obscenity trail brought against Allen Ginsberg’s poem from the 50s.  Naturally, I knew the story pretty well, I’ve studied the Beat movement pretty extensively at this point.  There wasn’t much in the events of the film that surprised, but the forms of the filmmaking blew me away.  There was very little classic Hollywood narrative to be found.  There were sequences based on interviews with Ginsberg where James Franco direct-addressed the camera, there were animation sequences, there were flashback sequences of Ginsberg living through the birth of the generation with Kerouac and Cassady, there was a sequence of the Gallery 6 reading that made the poem famous, and finally there was the most narrative sequence of the actual trial with the lawyers battling it out (Ginsberg wasn’t present at the trial, the charges were actually brought against the publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti).  It really was a fantastic film.

Saturday, Matt, Ray, Zdenka and I went to Portobello Road, Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace.  Another one of Matt’s ever-fruitful tours of London.  Walking through the park I realized how much I had missed the country.  Even in Tallahassee before I left, I’ve been surrounded by asphalt and steel for several months now… It may be taking its toll on me.  It was refreshing to get out into some green; however, it may’ve made more homesick than anything.  Saturday, we were invited once again to go hang out with our new British friends.  I headed out; however, after a few short minutes I realized I was much too tired to be much of a socialite.  Bekah and I quickly headed back to the flat.  I did some homework, and went to bed.  A full Saturday none the less.

Sunday was interesting.  After sleeping pretty late again, Matt and I went to an old bookstore, while the building was ancient and beautiful it was stocked with the same books you find at any Borders or Barnes and Noble at home… we headed back to the flat pretty quickly.  When we got back we polished off some homework before heading out on a pretty long tube ride to see Sam Sheppard’s Buried Child at a community theater.  Let it be known - I love Sam Sheppard.  He is truly a fantastic playwright and a strong American voice.  Once again I was reminded that you forget what it is to be “American” until you see a group of British Community Theater actors talking about Illinois, New Mexico, a corn crop and the sensation of driving all night through the American desert.  It was fantastic (excepting the failed southern accents).  What was probably more exciting than the actual play was where we were. 

We stepped out of the tube to be surrounded by little English cottages, cobbled streets and narrow alleys.  This was definitely a different face of London.  The air was thick with impending rain and the the heavy, rich smell of wet soil.  I love that smell a combination of rotting leaves, dirt, mineral.  I don’t know what is so magical about that scent - maybe it affects us so strongly because that smell is the evidence of the moment where life and death collide.  The dead leaves rotting and breaking down, releasing their nutrients for the living plants to reap and use.  That smell reminds me of home, maybe that is why it affects me at such a primal level.  Very interesting. 

After the play we went downstairs and had dinner in the pub below the theater.  It was good food and the cheapest prices we’ve found yet.  Once again, this pub seemed to have a little character, a little integrity.  The school houses us in the heart of the city.  While we are close to everything, it is all bland and touristy.  It felt good to get out of our neighborhood for an afternoon and see how the real Londoner might live. 

Isn’t it funny that the very purpose, or drive of most tourists is to not be just that.  That is how it is for me, at least.  We leave what we know, to experience something new, something different.  But we don’t want to experience it as new or different.  We want to see and do the things that the natives do everyday, we want to just be there just as a native.  However, we (or I) don’t feel like we’ve accomplished our goal until we find something that compares directly to the ordinary at home.  Let me be more specific.  The two times I haven’t felt like a tourist here are when we were dancing at the bars the other night, talking in the alleys and when we went to the country to the Sam Sheppard play.  Now the only reason I felt like I was doing what “real” Londoners do is because I was doing the exact same thing I do at home as a “real” American.  In the end, it isn’t that we want new experiences when we travel.  What were seeking is the same thing in a different place.  We want the familiar seen through a new lens.  If it is a new experience in a new place, then we have no bearings for comparison… we don’t know how to understand what we’re seeing.  It becomes something cultural, sensory overload.  We walk around, our mouths hanging open, unable to focus on anything in particular.  This is when we feel like tourists.  So if we’re seeking the same things in a new way when we travel, what are we really trying to get away from?  Now this next part is a bit of stretch… but go with me here.  I think when we travel the place has little to do with it, I think we are trying to escape or take a break from our selves, or at least the selves of our home.  We have usually grown bored with our routines, with the person people want us to be, with the person we think we need to be.  Therefore, a vacation is a chance to experience something familiar in a new way, as a new person. 

Hmmm… Just some thoughts… more to come, kids.

Almost one week in London down now.  It saddens me to think that we are almost half way through our time here; however, at the same time I can’t believe we’ve only been here for a week.  We’ve already seen, done and learned so much.

We woke up Monday morning and headed to Orientation with the FSU administration here in London.  The school has bought and slightly renovated a 1700s English Townhouse in central London, we sleep and go to class here.  Now, when I say “slightly renovated,”  I mean they have established only the most necessary of amenities.  We have plumbing and electricity, but no elevators or air conditioning.  It is nice and the building had a lot of character.  After the Orientation we were taken on a walking tour around our neighborhood by one of the Grad Assistants of the program.  He showed us where some of the best local restaurants, pubs, bars, grocery stores, etc. etc.  After the tour, we headed to a light lunch and our first class with our English Playwriting professor, Mark Wheatley. 

Mark asked us about our writing habits and what we knew about theater, what we knew about film.  Now, I knew theater was a big deal in London (kind of like it might be in New York or Chicago), but Mark painted a much more drastic picture.  He asked us how many professionally produced plays we had seen… very few in our small group had seen more than five.  He then asked us how many movies we had seen, we all answered confidently with numbers well over a thousand.  He quickly asked who the Hell we thought we were, assuming we could write plays after having seen less than ten plays in our lives.  He explained that America is a “Film Culture” and our country has come to approach all other forms of narrative through a very “cinematic” mental lens.  However, London is a “Theater Culture.”  Everyone here goes to the theater, whereas in America it seems like a “treat,” like something special, an odd occurrence.  This was a really interesting idea.  I assumed storytelling was storytelling, which was pretty narrow-minded, come to think of it.  Least to say, the writers and Mark were off to a good start.

Tuesday, we spent four hours of the day at a Writers’ Workshop at the Soho Theater, just a short walk from our flat.  This was something the program had never tried before.  We did some exercises with a group of middle-aged Londoners (most of them women).  While it was really interesting to meet and speak (briefly) with a room full of other dramatic writers, most of the exercises were directed at the inception of ideas.  Most of the folks in our program don’t really have trouble coming up with ideas.  If we have trouble its with making our ideas work dramatically, and making them work specifically with theater.  We had fun at the workshop, but weren’t too sure of how helpful it was.

That night we attended our fist London play, Clybourne Park.  It’s written by an American.  It centers around racial tensions in 1950s America, and their ramifications in today’s society.  It was a really well-written comedy, great dialogue.  Mark, Bekah and I discussed how London will be constituted of mostly minorities within the next few years.  While the actual story of the play is American and foreign to its audience here, the themes, the ideas, the conflicts are still very approachable.  We were assigned to read one modern play each, and bring it to class to discuss.  I actually found Clybourne Park and read it before the show.  This was a bit of an interesting experience.  You are constantly aware of where the drama is going, what the characters are going to do and say.  This doesn’t, however, ruin the play for anyone.  Since I didn’t have to constantly focus on the unimportant narrative bits I could actually see what the actors and direction were doing to convey what the writer had created.  Furthermore, when the production deviated from the written version of the play, I was lucky enough to be in the position to notice it, and question their choice.  What was the change in the play trying to express and did it succeed, which version would’ve been more successful.  I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Wednesday, we had class again.  Mark quickly questioned us about the workshop and appreciated our honest, mixed reviews.  We discussed Clybourne Park as well as the plays the rest of the class read.  Finally, we dove into a character creation assignment.  Now, usually, when I write a story I start from a very odd place.  Most people start stories from a character they want to tell about, or a conflict they want describe, maybe an idea they want to explore.  Not me.  I start with the location of the story.  I usually think, “I’d like to tell a story that happens at ____.”  I remember when I was writing The Last Summer, I knew before anything else I wanted to make a movie with scenes at a poker table, a pool hall and baseball field.  I was very interested in starting with a character.  (Oddly enough, while my assignments have gotten done and my premise is really pretty strong, by starting with a character I’ve painted myself into a very difficult, dramatic corner). 

After class and a quick dinner in the flat, Matt, Ray, Zdenka and myself journeyed across the city to Westminster.  Normally, I hate doing anything touristy.  After years of Hemmingway, Kerouac and the Travel Channel, I am obsessed with having original experiences when I travel.  However, as I walked around the Abbey taking shots of the churches, statues, Big Ben, The London Eye, the Aquarium, the city lights dancing on the Thames… I was more than happy, it was okay to be the cliche.  Now, as you all know I love America (probably to a fault), but standing there surrounded by all of that beautiful architecture, that history, that supreme achievement I couldn’t help but feel that maybe our country is lacking in a few things.  Well, not necessarily “lacking,” but… Most of the “patriotism” I’ve met in the states is the kind that believes America is the greatest political, social and religious nation in the world… a perspective that I’ve known for sometime is narrow-minded and dangerous.  However, I realized standing over that river, maybe some of these countries are doing okay to.  Who knows, maybe they’re doing a few things a little better than America.  Maybe the great nation of the west still has a few things to learn.

On Thursday, I woke up and worked on my homework until class.  We talked more about character development and Mark gave us a couple of tools to use that I had never actually encountered before.  It is these tricks for which I have come.  Mark and I discussed my problems with the workshop on Tuesday that I don’t want to know how to think situations up (Personally, I don’t think it can be taught, I think you’re born with it), I want help with making the situations I have better.  However, this is often very hard for a writer to talk about.  More often than not if you ask a writer how they thought of a certain turn of events, a reveal, a character trait, they’ll tell you they don’t know.  In the end, writing… I mean, really good, solid story is magic that the writer or storyteller doesn’t even understand.  Maybe it just comes with experience.  I hope.  But as I said, the tools Mark gave us on Thursday were just what I am excited to put into practice in the future, though my current story is still giving me quite a bit of trouble.

Thursday night we had our second play, Knot of the Heart.  Mark wasn’t able to come to this one.  Once again Matthew led us bravely through the abyss that is the London Tube System.  The play was at a theater called the Almedia in Islington.  Now, the theater was fantastic, great seating, a very modern architecture, and a rotating stage.  Between scenes, instead of clearing the stage of the set, the stage would simply rotate putting another set of furniture front and center.  However, I’m afraid I can’t speak as highly of the play.  Knot of the Heart is the story of a English woman who struggles with heroine addiction and tries to rely on her shaky family, who fail her time and time again.  This play was two-and-a-half hours (yes, you read that right) of stilted, cliched, caricture-driven tripe.  I really do hate to say that, I really wish I had connected with something in the story… just a little something.  But I couldn’t, every line of dialogue, every character choice, every plot turn I saw coming from the first scene.  I’m not going to talk anymore about that.

After the play, most of the group thought they needed to redeem the evening with a little socializing.  The girls wanted to do a little dancing, the guys all needed a drink.  The neighborhood of Soho is just about a block from the flat.  This is a really colorful side of town, lots of bars, pubs and clubs.  Our first stop was a relatively uncrowded place called Troy 22.  Up a narrow, dark flight of stairs is a claustrophobic room and a small bar.  Aretha Franklin, The Big Bopper and Jerry Lee Lewis pound out of two large speakers suspended from the ceiling.  Dim light flickers from small candles resting on a few unassuming tables around the edge of the room… Couples and coats crowd the benches behind the tables.  The center of the floor is crowded with a dozen or so people.  As you make your way through the bar you’ll lose yourself in a sea of twisting, snapping, wailing, paisley-attired English hipsters.  Conversation is pointless, you’ll only fail against the music.  After a few minutes, the girls started getting attention from some of the English guys.  They invited us down the street, to what they promised to be a much better dance club.  A few buildings down we found “The Bar.”  Down a narrow, dark, rank stairwell is about sixty more of said English hipsters.  The music is much louder here, a pair of DJs is crammed in a corner behind two JBL speakers and dual turn tables.  At their feet are several milk crates filled with sixties soul and rock-and-roll records.  The DJs were two of the most interesting people I’ve seen since I came to London.  The guy had a brown suit jacket and jeans, his dark sideburns were exquisite, and he topped it off with a brown plaid cabbie cap.  The girl wore a white pea coat which matched her platinum blond hair which was bobbed and framed her plump face perfectly.  We danced for a few hours here, escaping into the alley around 2:15 in the morning.  We talked with our new English friends there in the alley for about half an hour.  Shawn, Jason and Alfie loved our eclectic accents.  Ray and I were invited to play and sing at their concert in Northern London in a few weeks… we proposed doing a Hank Williams jam. 

Sigh, it is late… more to come…

Post Dated: March 5th, 2011

Today I woke up, groggily, after a late night with Dustin at his apartment.  We celebrated my impending twenty-third birthday over a six pack on his front porch in the seventy degree, Tallahassee, February night.  After spending almost all of our free time together last semester, our programs split this semester (Dustin is a production student).  It has been quite a change of pace for me, and quite a change of atmosphere for him.  We work well together, and I think we have both been missing the other’s presence, it was a good night.  We have begun work on our next feature script idea.  It will be better than the last, I can promise that.  Dustin is very particular about what he writes on, while I am very open to a lot of subjects and plot forms.  More often than not we work by him giving me a theme or idea he wants to work with, I throw several premises at him ( I mean lots of premises).  He shoots 99% of these down giving me quick reasons about why they wouldn’t work or have already been done to death.  You might think this is a hard way to work, but I find it very valuable.  If I can give him an idea he is excited about working on, then I think its a lot like trying to please a producer in the real world.  When he finally says he likes something, that is when I know we have something worth working on.

Anyway, I woke up this morning and put the final touches on my packing, skyped with mom and dad, picked up some things at Publix, then Matt picked me up to head to the airport.  Ray and Zdenka both rode with us also.  It is a four-five hour drive from Tallhassee to Tampa where I plane was leaving from.  I napped for a while on the trip, then we discussed how excited we all were about ou journey.  This is the first time Ray has left the country, while Matt and Zdenka are both returning to London.  Africa is the only other country I’ve ever been to, I’m happy that my first taste of Europe will be London.

After the long drive I was absolutely dreading Airport security, but the staff at Tampa really had their stuff together, we slipped right through and found our gate immediately.  I made some final phone calls before switching over to “Airplane Mode.”  My family keeps saying goodbye and asking if I’m doing alright.  Truthfully, I haven’t really given this trip much thought.  After going to Africa, England doesn’t seem like much to worry about.  They speak English, I don’t have to get shots and I’ll have easy access to my money.  No big deal.

So here I am on the plane, some 6 hours into an eight hour flight.  I just finished Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan for my in-flight entertainment.  A really fantastically, haunting film… no wonder Natalie Portman won the Oscar.  I couldn’t help but wonder if the film was Aronofsky’s response to Heath Ledger’s death a few years ago.  They probably have no connection.  I must also say… I will never enjoy flying in a plane.  Ever.  I hate it, pure and simple.  It is cramped, hot, turbulent… there is nothing enjoyable about it.  However, as I sit here… I begin to realize that tomorrow will be the first birthday I have ever celebrated out of the U.S., out of Arkansas, away from my family.  I’m not really “sad” about it, in fact I find myself very lucky to celebrate a birthday outside of the country.  However, it is just one of those moments when you realize that something is going to be different and will probably never be the same.  My birthdays have gotten tamer and tamer over the years through college, become less and less of an “event” and more and more of just “any other day.”  Once again, this isn’t bad.  It is to be expected, I guess.  However, I can’t help but look back on past birthdays and how big of a deal they were for me. 

On my eleventh or twelfth birthday I played a game of hide-and-seek that went horribly wrong, keeping me from having sleep-overs with friends for a while.  My thirteenth birthday got me a party with my best friends, and a (very) amateur jam session in my garage.  That was a big birthday, come to think of it.  When I finally started taking music very seriously, when I made a choice to express myself at all costs… they may have been a moment when I decided to become an artists.  Though the beats were rough, the chords were wrong and the songs were awful… I heard music, and I knew it meant something.  Without that night, there would’ve been no “In Crowd” no “Blizzard of ‘86” and all the defining moments that came with both of those (what I consider to be successful) musical experiments. 

A few years later I turned sixteen and could finally drive my ‘86 Chevy El Camino around Cave City.  I loved that car.  I used to hate driving around with my brother in his ‘77 Ford truck.  It seemed pointless and wasteful.  (that truck guzzeled the gas.)  But he would circle for hours, turning around in the Country Store parking lot, cruising, to the stop light, resting in front of the First Baptist Church, then cruising to Sonic, turning around in their parking lot and heading back again.  Listened to Chris LeDoux or Steve Miller.  Then three years later, there I was… only now it was Tom Petty and Blink-182. 

The only person who loved that car as much as I did was my Papaw Vaughn.  When we bought that car it was only in primer, with a camper over the bed and covered in red dust.  Papaw cleaned it up, had it painted (Metalic Cobalt Blue) and even had a dual exhaust system installed.  After I had my brother spray in a bedliner, window tint and a CD player that car was one of the sexiest muscle cars cruising the Cave City strip.  I had found my new way of self-definition.

And so now, here I am, on this plane.  Headed to England.  I couldn’t help but think I was searching for something.  I don’t think you can travel a great distance like this without thinking there is something important you’re supposed to find.  I went to Africa looking for a purpose, a passion.  I think I went to California looking for Nirvana, I was chasing a ghost, myself maybe.  I dunno.  More often than not, what I find is completely different than what I’m looking for.  In Africa I found humility, in California I found… Nothing I guess.  Not NOTHING, but really, “a lack of everything,” a simplicity, probably the essence of that Bhuddist “Void” Kerouac spent so much time focusing on.

And now, as my plane makes its final approach, I can’t help but wonder… what am I looking for in England, what is bringing me here?  I think it is that same passion of every other birthday, that passion of self-definition.  Maybe the only way we can ever truly understand ourselves is to fully separate ourselves from our familiar environment.  I constantly define myself as an “American” writer, these are the writers I’ve studied, the ones I’ve learned from.  However, how can I understand what is truly “American” without leaving the country every once in a while.  How can we appreciate our world without knowing what else it could be.  But then I also think, if I always find something other than what I’m looking for, then what is actually waiting for me?  If I’m searching for self-definition, what definition, idea, inspiration is going to strike me?

The Film School held their applicant interviews this weekend.  I drove several kids to and from the airport and their hotels.  I also assisted in one day of the interviews.  This was a really interesting experience, for several reasons.  Primarily, to be on the other side of that table, that table which plagued my dreams from February to April of last year, that table that metaphorically served as the butcher’s block for my future.  Also, I was a little taken aback by how quickly this last year has passed.

On Friday, I sat with twelve of the applicants in our large “Director’s Prep” room as they readied themselves for their individual interviews.  Just like last year, we watched a select group of FSU thesis films and discussed the groups past accolades as writers.  Not that much has changed, truthfully, it was crazy how much of myself I saw in each of those applicants. I remember my interview, I woke up and got in the van driven by one of the FSU students… there were two other applicants in the van with me, Ray and Zdenka (oddly enough, we all got in).  We got to school, got our name tags and were taken back to the room where we had our pictures taken and were introduced to one another and the faculty that would be interviewing us.  Then we waited.  One by one we were taken upstairs for the individual interview.  As we sat there, watching those thesis films, the student handlers would ask us questions, trying to calm our nerves… but you knew it was a trick… this was your chance to shine… so slowly we started coming out of our shells, not to be friendly, not to learn more about one another… but to out-show the other applicants… to make ourselves look better.  However, you couldn’t seem overanxious, you couldn’t look like a braggart… it was a fine line to walk, ending in several months of second-guessing yourself and every choice you made. 

On Friday, I sat there and saw the kids struggling with the same hard line.  They were friendly, they discussed their great accomplishments in as humble a manner they could manage.  They feigned interest in each others’ projects, accomplishments and undergrad work.  They pretended to be calm, they can’t be nervous, that would be a crime to be nervous at an interview that is going to directly affect the next two years of your life and indirectly affect the rest of it.  However, their bodies betrayed them, their eyes darted, their fingers danced, their voices cracked, their foreheads moistened… they couldn’t control themselves under the immense pressure of trying their damnedest to look like they weren’t trying at all.  It was quite a show.

Ultimately, I hold out a lot of hope for the next class of writers coming into the program.  The majority of kids we talked to were much more prepared, had accomplished much more, than myself and many of my first-year classmates.  Many of the applicants had written one if not many feature scripts (I hadn’t written one this time last year) among several other amiable projects.  No doubt that every person in the room had the creative ability to jump through the hoops of film school.  However, attitude plays a major role in why someone is selected, the pressure the faculty puts on you, the demands of the D1 cycle, the constant defense of your creative choices… these things can bear down on a person, you have to take them seriously, but not let them get to you, you have to be open-minded without being a push-over… once again this is a hard line to walk, I still have great difficulty with it.  I think this is where the Film School makes their decisions, on the attitudes of the applicants.  Truthfully, the faculty is going to be able to teach anyone to do anything; however, the attitude that a creative person approaches their work, their critics, their successes and failures… that is what is going to truly define success in Grad School… and life in general, I think… I hope.

Yes it was quite surreal to exchange that finicky, worried, hopeful position on the outside looking in, for the cool, calm, aware position on the inside looking out.

Isn’t it funny how things change.  In just a year, truthfully, my world has been turned upside down.  Just a year ago, I was still at UCA, planning on being there for three more years.  I had applied to FSU as a joke, never expecting to really get in.  Then I did, and it seems like everything has flown by since.  I finished The Last Summer, I graduated, gave a speech at my Senior Honors Banquet and walked away from all of friends, professors and projects at UCA.  Walked away from The Equipment Room, The Forum, The Fountain, Channel 6 and all the other things I spent untold hours on.  I went home first, one last summer at Sonic, and the roller-coaster of emotion, memory and grease that is that little restaurant… the incalculable, untold hours spent there… the majority of my youth.  Then I was here, with the long class days and the D1 cycle… once more untold hours lost in the groping confusions of the frantic dog-paddling to keep your head above the film school waters.  Exhaustion can’t begin to describe it.  And on one weekend I got the chance to look back at myself, a year ago, and realize the great distance that has been traveled since then.  Distance in every sense of the word.

Just before I started writing this I was chatting online with a friend of mine.  An FSU friend who I chatted with through the majority of the summer, before I ever met him.  Out of no where he said, “I just had a flashback… to all of that chatting we did over the summer.  We’ve come a long way, buddy. [George can be comically over-dramatic] Though I’m not sure which way we’re going.  Haha.”  That really sums it up, I think.  So much has changed, my life is barely recognizable to me anymore.  But ultimately I don’t feel that different… My friends, my brother they’ve gotten married, they’ve had kids… they’ve started lives… real, adult lives.  I go class, I read, I write, I watch T.V. the four things that have defined me since High School, really.  I hate to say something like, “The world revolves around me.”  But that is how it feels, my existence, my world, my life seems to shift and grow around me, ever-changing… But I’m constant - watching, remembering, writing it down, retelling the stories through veils of false situations and created characters… Maybe that is all there is to being a writer, in the end it may just be the art of being a creative observer…

Just got back from my daily run, isn’t it strange how the simplest things can trigger the strongest memories… nothing concrete, just a feeling of another time.

Just a while ago I was running in the warm earlyspring of Tallahassee’s February.  A beautiful day really, warm breeze, a slightly overcast, blue sky.  My mind was flooded by Griffin House’s “Lost and Found,”  with those streaming, epic, folk choruses.  I looked down to ready myself for a uneven split in the sidewalk that might trip me up, when suddenly I was on Donaghey Avenue… on the same sidewalk I’ve ran a million times.  That ancient, splitting sidewalk that will eventually fall completely victim to the tree roots of UCA’s campus.  The cool shade and sound of the mist from UCA’s fountain washed over me, I could almost see Stanley Russ Hall coming up in the distance. 

But it wasn’t where I was, that I remembered more than anything, it was where I might be going.  Naturally, I would find my way back across campus to Farris or New Hall, I’d change clothes, the sun would be setting soon, casting that golden yellow light over Hughes Hall, Estes Stadium, Arkansas… Conway… I might be headed to Christian Cafeteria to eat with my brother and his friends… that would make this freshman or sopohomore year… Dane wouldn’t even be married yet.  Maybe I was going to eat with some younger film students, Ron, Shawn, Camille, Patty… that would be my senior year…

Maybe I wasn’t going to the Caf at all, I would keep walking, past Snow Fine Arts, Greg or Brady might be calling me from the balcony/ smoking area of the theater.  I’d keep going, across campus, through the shaded quad, past Main, in front of Torreyson… cut between Irby and Thompson… I’d keep going, cross Donaghey, past Papa John’s, the Sig Ep House… Martin Street…

Now, if I’m on Martin Street I’m going one of two places… Probably to my brother’s house (where he lives, now (my senior year) with his wife)  They’ve made dinner… a roast with vegetables, or creamy tacos… a salad with shredded cheese and and Ranch dressing… Diet Dr. Pepper… Beth would be there too, maybe with one of her friends, Natalie or Amber… I would talk with my brother, these people… until I would say something wrong, I would get mad… that ball in the pit of my stomach making me think I don’t belong would become too much to take… I would head back out on the street.

It would be night now, the street lamps would throw little puddles of light on Martin… Estes Stadium would be glowing in the distance, loud music might be blaring from the Sig Ep House at the end of the street.  I’d walk halfway down the street before taking a left into a long parking lot, in that parking lot there is a Red Dodge… On the tailgate of that truck would be a group of people… Avery, Eric, Sarah J, Jordy… maybe Bauer and Ashly, maybe Wheeler… in the parking lot is Girlcat, the resident outcast, behind the beaten screendoor is Boycat… the screen in the door is ripped, the handle busted.  The ground is littered with butts and empties.  We talk for a while in the parking lot, as they smoke.  Later we head upstairs to lie on couches and watch movies… maybe after the movie I walk back to my dorm… maybe I drink enough to convince myself to spend the night there…

Isn’t it funny, everything a crack in the sidewalk can bring back?

It could not have been easy running a restaurant full of small-town teenagers for all those years.  I remember what it was like, working and reworking the schedule, making sure the high school’s hottest bickering couple didn’t explode into a bloodbath in the parking lot, listening to the constant stream of useless gossip that rattled between the kitchen and carhop crews, trying to keep everyone happy.  I remember how frustrated I was when I worked every night of a busy weekend, having to work double shifts, split shifts, or closing the kitchen.  It seemed sometimes that the management didn’t care about anything but the money; the employees were just faceless cattle to them.

            But then I remember a few other things too.  I remember not having much confidence in tenth grade; I remember being tall, awkward, and unsure of myself.  I remember not being any good at basketball and feeling worthless for it.  I remember my first day of work, carhopping, feeling like a stranger in a strange land.  I remember the confidence I got from my tips and the pride I found in working hard.  I remember that no one really thought I’d ever understand speaker, especially myself.

            But there was one man who always stood behind me, stood behind all of us.  Randy Hodges loved that store, we all knew it.  Sometimes, his love for the place could frustrate every other employee in the building, in High School I could never understand how one man could be suffer from such a case of tunnel-vision.  But now looking back, I realize that everything wasn’t as black and white as my teenage eyes saw them.  His choices weren’t as easy as I thought.  Despite the battles that were fought in that building, he was always there, usually willing to give all parties a second chance.  He would hire employees, those employees would embarrass him, embarrass the store and he would keep them on, they could always find a job at Sonic.  Randy believed in second chances.  Luckily for me he believed in first chances.

            We spend our lives trying to do something good, just one thing.  We just want one thing to be remembered for, one thing to know we did right, that the world is better because of.  Many of us won’t ever get the shot to accomplish anything great, and if we do get the chance we won’t see it.  You may laugh and say that nothing great could come from a greasy burger joint.  I disagree.  In that tiny restaurant, in that tiny town I’m proud to say that I once knew a great man.  A man who had faith in people, who believed that everyone was ultimately good, and wanted to show you.  He believed everyone deserved a fair chance at proving themselves, even tall, awkward tenth graders without much confidence.  Randy saw something in me, before I could see it myself, as I’m sure he did for most of us.  He helped me see what I was capable of and gave me the confidence to work for it.  For that I will be forever indebted to him…

Thank You and Rest in Peace, Randy.