Saturday, January 22, 2005
The way I feel right now, I'm about half determined to pack a bag — just one, that's all I'm allowed — and catch a plane to Montreal. Just a city I chose at random. There I would take up residence at a seedy hotel and spend the last year of my life with a boy whore and as much alcohol and heroin as I could consume. I can't speak French, but the boy whore could, so that works out. It would make a nice ending to the story. I'd take Spooky along, but she'd do something noble and pull me out at the last minute, saving the day and ruining the story. So she has to stay here with the cat. She'd miss the freezing morning when I wander out onto the street, fevery and delirious and half-dressed, and have a conversation with a ghost, a kindly ghost, who finally leads me back up to my rooms. I would not take my computer. I'd accept calls from no one.
It probably wouldn't be half as much fun as it sounds.
Anyway...yesterday, I wrote only 1,019 words on Chapter Two, which isn't so bad, but isn't really anything to get excited about either. There were too many distractions again. Today should be better in that regard.
The worst of it — of yesterday — was that I sat here in this dreary room and wrote the day away when it was nice outside. I'd not left the house since Sunday, so I went out on the front steps and put on my boots, and Spooky and I went to rent movies. Today, it's nasty out there again, and it will stay nasty for a few days. Missed my chance.
I'd meant to see The Forgotten in theatres, but things kept coming up. It wasn't bad, though a) we watched the extended version with its "alternate" ending, not what people saw in the theatre, and b) it's almost the same film as the far, far superior Dark City. It had its moments, though I think it wasn't quite certain if it was a film about paranoia, the ultimate unreliability of consensus reality, or the bond between mother and child. I think it should have chucked that last theme, found something other than a lost child to act as the catalyst, and all would have been better. Certain unfortunately smarmy moments might have been avoided. The Forgotten has one of the most effective car crashes ever filmed — the scene captures the unexpected suddeness of such things flawlessly, and it also foreshadows the film's most unnerving moment, when an entire cabin is suddenly snatched skyward by unseen forces. It's a movie that would have been better had the unseen forces remained unseen. The sounds we hear after the cabin is snatched away are far more disquieting than the sight of any actual "alien" could ever be. When the film was over, we watched the ending of the theatrical release. It made for an interesting comparison. The theatrical version is much more Hollywood. It presents a clear villian. It allows the main character to become the Strong Woman by calling the Bad Guy a bastard. Never mind that she was already a strong woman. The studios know a lot of people need things hammered through their thick skulls. Ultimately, the theatrical release ending does pretty much the same thing and leaves us with pretty much the same resolution, but also with some slender hope that the people responsible are being punished, that the system might work after all, that we might all be rats in a maze, but at least the maze builders are benevolent and can be trusted to govern themselves, that force of will can defeat the darkness. Seeing these two endings, knowing that the studio most likely chose the one that would close the film after polling test audiences, makes me a little ill. What if I did that with my novels? What would you think of me, if I were to so subvert the act of storytelling and mythmaking in an effort to make more money (by, I might add, perverting democracy)? Okay, at the end of Low Red Moon, I can kill Chance, or I can let her live. Which ending do you prefer? Check the box, and let us know. Should Orpheus make it back to the surface without looking to see if Eurydice is truly following him, or should he look? Should the mouse pull the thorn from the lion's paw, or should he mind his own damned business. I can only hope that it is self-evident that this process is as alien and destructive to art as anything ever could be. Yes, I'm sure it makes people more money, and money is nice, but it has very little to do with telling good and true and useful stories. We also watched Paranoia 1.0, which was odd, forgettable, intent on having a look and a feel and not particularly interested in having anything much to say, so I'll say nothing more about it.
Yes, that was a very long paragraph.
I feel asleep sometime after 3 a.m., and somehow slept until noon. I never sleep that late. It's left me feeling even more out of sorts than usual.
I love this quote I found yesterday from Sydney's The Austrailian, regarding Mr. Bush and the inauguration: He and those around him do such small-minded things that it detracts from the grandeur of his purpose, whether you regard that purpose as grand folly or grand mission...And we have the demeaning, disgusting innuendo constantly from the Bush administration that anyone who disagrees with their course, or opposes the severe restrictions on civil rights in the Patriot Act, is an appeaser, is disloyal, is un-American.
1:05 PM
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