Hello again. I'll get on with the news. I posted my original work of fiction for class on Monday so that it could be evaluated on Thursday. Well, the class pretty much stomped me like a narc at a biker rally. Practically all of the feedback was of a negative nature so I suppose that there must be something to it. I'm starting to wonder what made me ever think I had talent for writing anyway. Once again I have those nagging feelings of being in a place where I don't belong. One person even went so far as to insinuate I was not very well read and should consider reading more fiction. That was a punch in the gut I really didn't need I suppose but it's not totally unexpected. I know that as an artist you must not be too sensitive to criticism but I've also heard that if everyone gives you negative reviews there must something to it as well so I don't know.
Anyway, I suppose I'll keep going and doing the best I know how. Maybe I should try screenwriting. Dialogue and plotting seem to be my specialty anyway. Prose just doesn't seem to be my cup of tea.
I was hoping the class would provide some sort of moral support that might inspire me but that hasn't happened either. The class seems to be divided into two types; those who won't talk at all and those who don't want to talk to me. Believe me when I say I've tried to strike up conversations with classmates on more than one occasion but they seem to go nowhere. I'll keep going as I've said but I can't honestly say my heart is in it at this point but maybe my opinion will change. We'll see. If it doesn't I must say that I'm more than used to my share of disappointments.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Celebrity Death
Full confession: I'm a Howard Stern show fan. I know there are many who hate the words "Howard Stern" but hear me out. I think there are brilliant observations on life that are touched upon on a daily basis on this show if people could just patient enough to get past the sexual content of the show.
One recent example of the outstanding observations that are made on the show by Howard and his staff is a comment made by co-host Artie Lange. Lange is an excellent comedian with keen observational abilities. A guy who had called into the show and had written a song for Howard to be used at his upcoming wedding had died very suddenly when Lange made the comment that when someone who was well known died he always liked to be the first one to tell his friends and family. He said that he liked to be the first one to know just so he could get people's reactions.
I've never admitted it to anyone nor have I ever heard those feelings articulated before but, as much as I hate to admit it, I feel the same way. When someone famous dies, I also like to be the first one to tell others about it to see what their reaction is.
This was never more true than when Heath Ledger died recently. Now, I'm really sad to hear that he died. He seemed to have so much promise careerwise and I'm truly sorry for his family but when I heard it I couldn't wait to get to the phone so I could tell my ten year old daughter as we had watched a trailer for the new "Batman" flick only two days earlier. I wanted her reaction and I wanted to be the one to tell her.
Another thing about celebrity death that bums me out is when celebrties that you grew up with start passing away. Roy Scheider is the latest case in point. He was a brilliant actor who delivered what I believe were four of the greatest performances from the 70s. "Jaws", "All That Jazz","Sorcerer", and "The French Connection". When people like Mr. Scheider pass on, it reminds us that we are getting older, and that one day all of the people who made our essential pop culture list as a child will also one day be gone. Time moves on and I really hate it when we lose those who meant so much to us but it is nice to be the first one to know when it does happen.
One recent example of the outstanding observations that are made on the show by Howard and his staff is a comment made by co-host Artie Lange. Lange is an excellent comedian with keen observational abilities. A guy who had called into the show and had written a song for Howard to be used at his upcoming wedding had died very suddenly when Lange made the comment that when someone who was well known died he always liked to be the first one to tell his friends and family. He said that he liked to be the first one to know just so he could get people's reactions.
I've never admitted it to anyone nor have I ever heard those feelings articulated before but, as much as I hate to admit it, I feel the same way. When someone famous dies, I also like to be the first one to tell others about it to see what their reaction is.
This was never more true than when Heath Ledger died recently. Now, I'm really sad to hear that he died. He seemed to have so much promise careerwise and I'm truly sorry for his family but when I heard it I couldn't wait to get to the phone so I could tell my ten year old daughter as we had watched a trailer for the new "Batman" flick only two days earlier. I wanted her reaction and I wanted to be the one to tell her.
Another thing about celebrity death that bums me out is when celebrties that you grew up with start passing away. Roy Scheider is the latest case in point. He was a brilliant actor who delivered what I believe were four of the greatest performances from the 70s. "Jaws", "All That Jazz","Sorcerer", and "The French Connection". When people like Mr. Scheider pass on, it reminds us that we are getting older, and that one day all of the people who made our essential pop culture list as a child will also one day be gone. Time moves on and I really hate it when we lose those who meant so much to us but it is nice to be the first one to know when it does happen.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Single in a small town (Part One)
It was last Sunday morning when I decided to make the trek to the church that I've called my home congregation for the previous three plus decades. I had not attended my home church for the past several weeks for various reasons. The main reason was that I had had somewhat of an epiphany during the last week of 2007 which had lead me to make the decision to give my home congregation a rest and try visiting with a neighboring congregation where the majority of my family attends.
I sat down at one end of the table in my sunday school class, in between two members who have been happily married (my guess) for quite some time. The two women don't acknowledge me for at least five minutes. They continue to talk over me, acting as if I'm not even there, involving themselves in some meaningless and frivolous conversation. After five minutes of this, the woman on my right stops long enough to pat me on the arm and say something to me and then continues once again to talk over me until the class starts. No one else acknowledges me at all. Not even when the class is over and I make my exit.
The moment leading up to all of this had been when I found myself totally alone at the annual Christmas Eve candlelight church service. During the Christmas Eve service I had been forced to sit alone while happy couples with their perfect little families sat all around me. There didn't seem to be another solitary soul in that church on that Christmas Eve night who looked to be as alone as I felt. If they were they were doing one hell of a job hiding it.
I felt then like I do just about everywhere I go these days. With that I mean that I felt totally out of place and unwanted. Of the 200 or more people who were there that night, none of them made any effort to erase my doubts and fears and welcome me into their celebration of the holidays. Instead, I sat there and remained the social pariah that I felt myself to be. My children were eighty miles away with their mom and the rest of my family were doing their own thing with lovers, spouses, friends or what have you. I could have gone with them I suppose but would have been the fifth wheel. I, on the other hand, couldn't have found a lover or a friend that night if my very life had depended on it.
I'm digressing I know, so let me get me back to the subject of the one person in our congregation who best sums up my feelings of anger and contempt for this small town trap that I seem to have been born into. I had broken up with my girlfriend eight months earlier due to the fact that we simply wanted different things. She was a good person but there were many things that our relationship was lacking so I had decided it was best that we just cut our losses. I cared for her and would never have purposely hurt her but I felt it was for the best. We had remained friends even after the breakup and now eight months later she was taking a job in a town that was two hours away. One of her close friends, who also happened to be a member of our church, decided to give her a going away party. It was no surprise that members of our sunday school class would be invited since we had been introduced by that same class at a party.
This one person is a regular in our sunday school class and when I arrived at the party I found her in a group on the opposite side of the room from my ex-girlfriend. After speaking to my ex, I decided that I would go over and try to speak. I had no more than gotten the word hello out of my mouth when this unnamed and very self absorbed person loudly announces to the group that they should move into an adjoining room where the fireplace is located because it was warmer there. The woman never acknowledged my presence and then proceeded to lead the group into the adjoining room while I was literally in the middle of completing my greeting to the group. Talk about rude. After leading them into the adjoining room she then proceeded to tell the group about how well her daughter was doing in college and how she had applied for 10 or 12 jobs while she had been home from college and yada yada yada ad nauseum. I stood there speechless and very hurt. The aforementioned offender was so clueless that she has yet to realize how rude she was. I simply told my children that it was time for us to be going.
This woman, unfortunately, represents the majority of the people I come into contact with in this town that I seem to be a prisoner of. I was so disgusted with her that I skipped sunday school so as to avoid being in the same room with her. When I did decide to return I was greeted with the aforementioned experience of the two chattering women talking over me. This is what I seem to have to look forward to these days. It's been almost ten months since I've had a date. Sometimes I have to wonder if lonliness has it's own scent. Maybe people smell my loneliness and feelings of isolation and being misunderstood. Maybe they're afraid that it's contagious and that if you get too close to a lonely person, everything and everyone that you love will disappear from you.
I sat down at one end of the table in my sunday school class, in between two members who have been happily married (my guess) for quite some time. The two women don't acknowledge me for at least five minutes. They continue to talk over me, acting as if I'm not even there, involving themselves in some meaningless and frivolous conversation. After five minutes of this, the woman on my right stops long enough to pat me on the arm and say something to me and then continues once again to talk over me until the class starts. No one else acknowledges me at all. Not even when the class is over and I make my exit.
The moment leading up to all of this had been when I found myself totally alone at the annual Christmas Eve candlelight church service. During the Christmas Eve service I had been forced to sit alone while happy couples with their perfect little families sat all around me. There didn't seem to be another solitary soul in that church on that Christmas Eve night who looked to be as alone as I felt. If they were they were doing one hell of a job hiding it.
I felt then like I do just about everywhere I go these days. With that I mean that I felt totally out of place and unwanted. Of the 200 or more people who were there that night, none of them made any effort to erase my doubts and fears and welcome me into their celebration of the holidays. Instead, I sat there and remained the social pariah that I felt myself to be. My children were eighty miles away with their mom and the rest of my family were doing their own thing with lovers, spouses, friends or what have you. I could have gone with them I suppose but would have been the fifth wheel. I, on the other hand, couldn't have found a lover or a friend that night if my very life had depended on it.
I'm digressing I know, so let me get me back to the subject of the one person in our congregation who best sums up my feelings of anger and contempt for this small town trap that I seem to have been born into. I had broken up with my girlfriend eight months earlier due to the fact that we simply wanted different things. She was a good person but there were many things that our relationship was lacking so I had decided it was best that we just cut our losses. I cared for her and would never have purposely hurt her but I felt it was for the best. We had remained friends even after the breakup and now eight months later she was taking a job in a town that was two hours away. One of her close friends, who also happened to be a member of our church, decided to give her a going away party. It was no surprise that members of our sunday school class would be invited since we had been introduced by that same class at a party.
This one person is a regular in our sunday school class and when I arrived at the party I found her in a group on the opposite side of the room from my ex-girlfriend. After speaking to my ex, I decided that I would go over and try to speak. I had no more than gotten the word hello out of my mouth when this unnamed and very self absorbed person loudly announces to the group that they should move into an adjoining room where the fireplace is located because it was warmer there. The woman never acknowledged my presence and then proceeded to lead the group into the adjoining room while I was literally in the middle of completing my greeting to the group. Talk about rude. After leading them into the adjoining room she then proceeded to tell the group about how well her daughter was doing in college and how she had applied for 10 or 12 jobs while she had been home from college and yada yada yada ad nauseum. I stood there speechless and very hurt. The aforementioned offender was so clueless that she has yet to realize how rude she was. I simply told my children that it was time for us to be going.
This woman, unfortunately, represents the majority of the people I come into contact with in this town that I seem to be a prisoner of. I was so disgusted with her that I skipped sunday school so as to avoid being in the same room with her. When I did decide to return I was greeted with the aforementioned experience of the two chattering women talking over me. This is what I seem to have to look forward to these days. It's been almost ten months since I've had a date. Sometimes I have to wonder if lonliness has it's own scent. Maybe people smell my loneliness and feelings of isolation and being misunderstood. Maybe they're afraid that it's contagious and that if you get too close to a lonely person, everything and everyone that you love will disappear from you.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Friendships
This is a post that I originally intended to run last week but computer problems prevented me from doing so. You see, I'm taking a creative writing class and we're supposed to blog at least once a week. I've been making a conscious effort to keep up with it and I hope the lateness of this post isn't held against me. As I said, it was something that couldn't be helped but we'll see what happens.
I was originally going to post a blog featuring some of my random observations regarding celebrity death in light of the recent and shocking death of Heath Ledger. In the midst of getting my thoughts together on that subject I decided to take on another one instead, the subject of longterm friendships. I promise (or maybe it's a threat) to follow through on my feelings about celebrity death at a later date.
What made me think of friendships you might ask? Well, for one thing I don't have many of them. I've spent my entire life trying to connect with the world and making new and lasting friendships but as each year passes by it seems that the world needs and wants what I have to offer less and less. This may not be true in reality, it could be just the way I see things but nevertheless it is the way I feel.
I'm a loner for the most part but not by choice. Even though I have a few frienships I still feel isolated and out of place most of the time. Maybe I just have a chemical imbalance or something. Maybe it's because my love life is a joke. I really don't know. It's not that I hate my own company or can't stand to be alone. On the contrary, I enjoy solitude to a certain degree but I feel there has to be a balance or else one may lose their zest for life. I've heard some folks say they fear solitude even more than death and even though I can't quite say that I share the sentiment I can certainly understand it.
Now, back to the subject of my friends. I have three friends that I see on a fairly regular basis and all three of these folks have one thing in common. I've known all of them for a number of years. Two of them I've known almost twenty and one of them I've known for twenty six.
There is something nice about friends who have known you a long time. There is an unspoken history of memories and shared experiences that you draw on when the present world starts to get you down. My friend David was eleven years old when I met him in the fall of 1982. Now we are fast approaching the big 40. David and I have a lot of history beginning with our days in junior high school and continuing on through high school. We continued to be friends until our five high school anniversary and then we lost touch. Fate threw us a curve when we wound up at the same traffic light on a gloomy looking November Sunday evening late last year. We pulled over, exchanged numbers, and have been in touch ever since. Hardly a week goes by when we don't touch base and usually we wind up taking in a film together at some point. It's true that our lives took somewhat different turns and yet I've always treasured our friendship. I always felt like he was the brother I never had all through our school years together and even though time has passed and we have changed, our friendship still feels the same. It's nice to have friends like these.
And then there's my friend Sam and my friend Tara. They both serve their purpose in my life and have been with me in some way, shape, or form for nearly two decades. Sam loves exercise and cheesy pop music while Tara is big fan of intelligent cinema. These two individuals allow to indulge my passions on these subjects, something that I was never able to adequately accomplish with my family.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say other than the fact that it seems harder to make new and lasting friendships. So maybe if the world is so plugged into technology that it's forgotten how to listen, maybe having friends that share a history is the best we can hope for.
I was originally going to post a blog featuring some of my random observations regarding celebrity death in light of the recent and shocking death of Heath Ledger. In the midst of getting my thoughts together on that subject I decided to take on another one instead, the subject of longterm friendships. I promise (or maybe it's a threat) to follow through on my feelings about celebrity death at a later date.
What made me think of friendships you might ask? Well, for one thing I don't have many of them. I've spent my entire life trying to connect with the world and making new and lasting friendships but as each year passes by it seems that the world needs and wants what I have to offer less and less. This may not be true in reality, it could be just the way I see things but nevertheless it is the way I feel.
I'm a loner for the most part but not by choice. Even though I have a few frienships I still feel isolated and out of place most of the time. Maybe I just have a chemical imbalance or something. Maybe it's because my love life is a joke. I really don't know. It's not that I hate my own company or can't stand to be alone. On the contrary, I enjoy solitude to a certain degree but I feel there has to be a balance or else one may lose their zest for life. I've heard some folks say they fear solitude even more than death and even though I can't quite say that I share the sentiment I can certainly understand it.
Now, back to the subject of my friends. I have three friends that I see on a fairly regular basis and all three of these folks have one thing in common. I've known all of them for a number of years. Two of them I've known almost twenty and one of them I've known for twenty six.
There is something nice about friends who have known you a long time. There is an unspoken history of memories and shared experiences that you draw on when the present world starts to get you down. My friend David was eleven years old when I met him in the fall of 1982. Now we are fast approaching the big 40. David and I have a lot of history beginning with our days in junior high school and continuing on through high school. We continued to be friends until our five high school anniversary and then we lost touch. Fate threw us a curve when we wound up at the same traffic light on a gloomy looking November Sunday evening late last year. We pulled over, exchanged numbers, and have been in touch ever since. Hardly a week goes by when we don't touch base and usually we wind up taking in a film together at some point. It's true that our lives took somewhat different turns and yet I've always treasured our friendship. I always felt like he was the brother I never had all through our school years together and even though time has passed and we have changed, our friendship still feels the same. It's nice to have friends like these.
And then there's my friend Sam and my friend Tara. They both serve their purpose in my life and have been with me in some way, shape, or form for nearly two decades. Sam loves exercise and cheesy pop music while Tara is big fan of intelligent cinema. These two individuals allow to indulge my passions on these subjects, something that I was never able to adequately accomplish with my family.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say other than the fact that it seems harder to make new and lasting friendships. So maybe if the world is so plugged into technology that it's forgotten how to listen, maybe having friends that share a history is the best we can hope for.
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