9772. RUDIMENTS, PT. 23

RUDIMENTS, pt. 25

Making Cars

When I learned  -  whatever I learned  -

about writing was about the same as I

learned about theater and acting. Just

by the doing. Back in the seminary days,

as foolish as it all sounds, the whole

ex-cathedra religion thing, for me,

had gotten taken over by the greater

rush and good-feeling of the drama

department stuff that went on there.

Guys, teen boys really, with a gay

teen-boy acting coach who also had

a Roman Collar on, doing all sorts of

weird plays and recitations on a fairly

nice  -  and not at all makeshift  -  stage.

Overhead light brackets, pulls and lifts,

curtains and scrims and all that scenery

stuff going up and down, controlled

lighting, and real audiences too. It may

have been nothing or it may have been

a lot, but I know it wrecked me up some

good. Bus-loads of screaming crazy south

Jersey high school and junior high school

girls coming in on Saturdays and Sundays

to scream at us, and our performances, as

if we were some jerky form of boy Beatles,

to them, in those very same years. Any

time I spent there was soon overrun with

all that instead of holiness and revival.

The only thing I ever gave up for Lent

was the idea of NOT having such adulation.

That was all some real cracker-barrel

dreaming, but it sure took the cake for a

year or two, and, by the time I knew what

had hit me, I was out of that place for sure.

In fact, I was on  my way back to little old

Avenel, NJ to finish off a most-miserable

slicing of a last year of high school in the

local town dump. Boy, I hated that.

-

Darkness and bleakness became my

categorical friends. I couldn't believe

I'd gotten dumped unceremoniously back

into a place like that. Nor could I believe

how so many of my once-kid-friends had

by then just turned into regular gung-ho

guys, doing the happy high-school shuffle,

buying into all that career and college crud,

walking about as if the days to come were
all going to be magic for them. Somehow, I

managed to remain completely unknown and

unseen to any of them. I don't know how I

managed that, but it happened. A few of

my friends from then, old guys like myself,

now, have told me, against my memory, of

course, that it had not been them ignoring

me, rather the other way around. I had become

unapproachable, walking right past them; in

a complete tunnel-vision of self, I'd suppose.

Perhaps there was more than a touch of

idiosyncratic behavior, an early form of

OCD on my part, obsessively separating

those wild, eye-high useless weeds in

front of me so as to pass through un-fettered.

I tried saying I was sorry for all that to

one or two guys, but I don't think they

ever thought my apology was genuine.

Whatever. On another note, one of the

girls from those days, seen since a few

times around, always regales me with

her stories of those days too  -  never

mentioning me at all, she just says,

'What do I remember? All I remember

is I was having sex with every  boy on

the block at that time, in all of Avenel,

and then my father threw me out.' So,

I guess it's all a matter of degrees. I

do suppose my enforced solitude made

me miss that one.

-

It was all for a lot of reasons, and once

I got to new York it was all forgotten

anyway. I tried washing Avenel, and

those seminary days, out of my

plastic-like skull with a steel-wool

brush. I figured every third person

I'd see walking past me had probably

come out of the same sort of situation

-  people in the city all seemed twisted

over something or other. Compensatory

behavior takes many forms  -  some sell

wishes and securities, some bet on markets

and try to buy the future, and others,

like myself, just fume and try to be

artists, or writers. Or even rioters.

It's a very disproportionate place, this

bruised, sick city : disproportionate anger,

or rage, disproportionate wishing or wanting.

-

So, back to writing, and what I learned,

and all. I learned the feint. It's a fake

move in one direction, and then a sudden

dart into another. A real roller-coaster

ride for the reader, who's just assumed

to be able and willing to make those

terms and jumps with you. Last chapter,

by the way (that was a feint; I'm pulling

you right now in another direction with

a head fake still towards the place we

just were), I made a quick mention

of the NY guy who came to the

Barron Arts center with that poem

'Rasta man, Rasta.' I realized only later

that it might have made no sense

to you. In the context of 1982, a Rasta

was shorthand for a Rastafarian, that

quasi-religious sect within radical

Jamaican politics, and religion too, I

suppose, which used marijuana (referred

to as 'Ganja'), as a component of the

religious tactic or rite. Very difficult

to precisely set down, but they too were

all part of that Michael Manley era's

political trouble. (Maybe in the same was

as a feint, does a theater person use, from

the stage, the uttered aside, to secreted

speech or cluing-off to the audience

(that fourth-wall breach). Monologues

and soliloquies are too formal for that,

and they consume too much of the

playwright's effort and time to be just

cast off like that). And that's another

thing, I never understood why the

person who writes a play becomes

the playwright and not just the

playwrite, or even the playright,

since, after all, it's he or she then

who has the rights to the play.

Sure is something to think about.

-

One last thing here, one final feint.

still in a way having to do with what 

I learned of both drama, and of writing.

I've known 2 or three people, over time,

who have killed themselves by blowing

their brains out. The first one shocks, I 

guess, and then after that it all just

becomes old hat, and pretty ordinary.

For, in the course of a life, a drama 

always gets enacted and from such 

does always come a dissolution of 

one form or another. Or, in the 

formulation of Chekov's Rule, as 

it's put, in writing a play : 'The gun 

which is introduced in Act One must 

go off in (or by) Act Three.'