Poetry & Blindfolds

The evolution of “The Observatory”, years in the making (or lack thereof), has been remarkably swift, due primarily to the wisest people I know, Lisa and Jennifer, the latter of which I have been fortunate enough to marry.  I know it’s pretty much ready due to the questions Jennifer has asked me.  For Draft 1, my answers were mumbles and excuses.  For Draft 4, my answers were answers. 

What was Draft 1 at the beginning of last week catapulted forward into Draft 4 by week’s end, at which time I decided, somewhat arbitrarily, to stop work on it and dumped it into lulu.com.  The form of the piece, with its act-sized first scene (25 pages) followed by fragmented scenes racing months in both directions, now seems in harmony with the story itself, as I’ve added a great section in which one of the main characters questions his sanity. 

It is no secret that my favorite composer is Mozart, though it is not necessarily for his tunes themselves, which often strike me as a bit “pop” for the 1700s.  Rather, I like Mozart because each of his compositions contains such melodies, counter-melodies, hidden melodies and other, for lack of a better word, “stuff” that I can listen to any of them in any number of ways.  Some days, I will audibly latch onto an oboe and follow it through its course; other days, the second piano.  I try to do the same with my writing, which may be why it’s been two years since my last personally successful play.  I’m pleased to say that “The Observatory” now has that Mozartian influence it was missing before, in that an audience member or reader can pick a character and basically follow their “tune”, which is independent yet harmonizes with the others.

Writing “madness”, or the fear of madness, is very difficult for me, so I admit I raced through what became Draft 3 very quickly.  To write a character truthfully, I often have to put myself in that character’s shoes, which in the case of madness, is a hard thing to do – or perhaps it’s just hard to pull myself out at the end of a writing session.

As unbelievable as it might have appeared to me in the past, I am finding that gardening is a great muse in and of itself.  While thinking about a play or a sketch, I don’t often like to talk to people.  I’m not that good at multi-tasking, and I find when I try, I feel I come across like a complete mindless idiot.  Sitting on my own certainly has yielded some good material in the past, but I find that unleashing my Inner Redneck by tilling soil and removing weed trees to be more rewarding.  And I’m pretty much left on my own when I’m doing it: if you see somebody hard at work in a yard, you generally don’t approach them, possibly for fear they will ask you to join in.

My friend-in-law Bijal has introduced me to a sketch-writing friend of hers, with whom I’ve written a couple of times.  The friend is looking for a bit of advice and has been very generous in sending me a sketch of hers.  The sketch reminds me somewhat of the sketches that my partner Robert Felker would bring into Suspicious Clowns.  Robert and I have very different approaches to comedy: I’m a strong student of the Rule of Threes in comedy; Robert tends to like the Rule of a Thousand.  I haven’t written the friend back yet regarding her sketch as I don’t want to sound professorial as much as I want to offer some bit of wisdom.  She’s invited me to a show in which she was one of the writers, but I’ve silently declined, as those kinds of situations don’t leave much room for constructive conversation.  Still, I return to the sketch in my mind at least once a day, even if my wisdom eludes me.

I find that I am struggling a bit with what to do next, and although sketch would be the easiest, I cannot see myself taking the stage doing it again.  Yet I feel I am a bit too young to just direct and/or produce, and the horror of a sketch show turning into “Suspicious Clowns: The Next Generation” keeps me from considering it too much.  “The Observatory” seems a likely contender, if it survives a public readthrough with some of my actor friends (a necessary, if pride-swallowing, exercise that has effectively killed at least two plays I have written).