I have 2 major obsessions.
Now I have minor arcana obsessions too- usually a shade of nail polish or a pair of shoes.
I make detailed list about the things I seek to acquire and I feel a real sense of complete when they are
slid in to place among my collections.
However there are 2 major, unwavering, unswayed obsessions and they are The Titanic and The Black Dahlia.
These 2 things have followed me since I was a small child and teenager respectively.
As I am preparing for the centennial of The Titanic ( we're marking it in Portland with this event: 100th Anniversary of The RMS Titanic @ The Hollywood Theatre )
I am pulled back 5 years ago to my preparations for The Black Dahlia show in Los Angeles.
It ushered in one of the darkest most fucked up periods of my life and yesterday in doing my research she sprung up and tapped me on the shoulder again.
This last weekend I enrolled in a storytelling class taught by the wickedly talented Lauren Weedman.
I always hate when people say something was "cathartic" but fuck it, it was cathartic. The process of boiling down bits and pieces of hilarious and heartbreaking stories about my father and the less than spectacular genetic inheritance that I received from him.
I learned how to say a lot by saying less and how to narrow down this great big story so it is linear and listenable.
I have a tendency to interject in to my own conversation and use the "but that is another story" and it truth - you have to cut it and stick to the story you are telling. It can be varied and all over the place but it has to be linear.
It was a strange process for me, I went in the first day and felt very confident, day 2 however- I felt wobbly, wobbly, frightened and not at all certain of what I was doing.
This lack of certainty has stalled me a lot in my life.
I feel like I need to be perfect before I walk in the door ( isn't the whole point of a class to learn?)
So I run away from things I do not feel I am perfect enough for or where I feel I am held to rules.
It's not rebellion ( as I have claimed for so long)
It's fear.
I finally sat down and did the work, I bitched and complained the whole time and said some truly terrible things to myself regarding myself and my talents but , I did the work.
We took our raw work in to the workshop and made tweaks, cut the chaff and got down to the story. I realized a lot about how I work and where I want to go as a writer. It is always a constant and hefty pull between my fairy tales and my actual fictions
Little things I discovered via this workshop:
1.) walking in to a room full of women causes insane amounts of nerves and nausea in me.
2.) I can get on a stage and say anything, but put me around a table and my voice shakes and my reading goes to hell.
3.) I am a better writer than I let myself believe I am.
4.) I love performing but I feel like I need to take it away from myself for awhile.
5.) having someone's affection and support is a hefty drug.
So I started this post way back at the end of March--- shows how diligent I am in my goals to keep writing. I have so much I want to express but when left to my own devices, with no deadline, no fear- I sit around and dick around on facebook writing witty updates and keeping myself "so busy" doing nothing.
I am taking some steps to correct this laziness and I intend to post DAILY in May. I am going to commit myself to at least a piece of a story or essay every day, some may go nowhere, some may be the beginnings of new work but I am not going to force the magic. I want to go where my mind wants to go-- not go where I think will be pretty or win me the affections of the world...
More on this soon.
