Start again. I had nothing to do (uh…not true, there was plenty but it wasn’t appealing.) I watched a documentary about Wynn Handman. I never heard of Wynn Handman. Wynn Handman ran a theatre and taught acting (still teaches) in New York City. Oh New York, Oh Greenwich Village, Oh the days…the long gone days. Wynn Handman had a lot to say about acting that works for writing as well. In the terms presented during the course of the film, I am still a fraud. I haven’t done all of my work yet. There is much more to do. My bad. Wynn Handman would certainly ask me to do it over, try again. Start again.
Many years ago, in a fit of disgust and in the mood to change my life, I threw away about 15-20 years worth of writing. It filled a couple of extra large black plastic garbage bags. I don’t regret that, it was mostly a pile of undeveloped sketches and crap. I was supposed to stop writing then, buckle down and get a good job, work hard, buy a nice house, grow up. I tried to do that and it worked, sort of. I was married, we bought a house, we had a new car and a miscarried potential child. I had in-laws and ordinariness. At the last, the marriage I was in didn’t succeed since she wasn’t gay. I tried again at the ‘home and family life’ with a young fella and it took, we had a long time and a decent, respectable (if you can call homo-life respectable) life together. I saved money, worked at a job I disliked, built and renovated houses, prepared for the retirement future. A practical, work-a-day world far from Greenwich Village, far from Wynn Handman, far from New York City and the source, the answer, the reason, the magic.
The dull life went on for 30 years but I never totally stopped doing the writing. I wrote poems to my husband/partner/lover/male companion and put them in his lunch box. I wasn’t keeping a journal then, but I did keep some of the scraps of poems and the attempts at more developed prose. I continued, like a nearly broken wire connection – sometimes off and sometimes on but mostly off. It was mostly crap writing, bored housewife stuff. I finally threw that away as well when we moved between houses.
The second marriage didn’t work either, in the end. I was an unacceptable lover and husband, twice. Since both marriages ended at about the 9 year (of being officially married) mark, I called it ‘baseball’. I’d been at bat for both teams and struck out in the ninth each time. The second time, was time for a hard reflection and I found myself lacking in every possible way. I was retired from work, out of money, out of the world of family life, disgusted with myself. I determined to change. New leaf. Start again. I took up music in a serious manner. I actually took the guitar I can only half play up on THE STAGE and SANG in front of PEOPLE. Of course, it wasn’t good. My ex-husband was right about that. Sigh.
Now, I am old enough that starting anew is something I don’t have a lot of interest in. Starting anew has only one result: pennies on the eyelids half way through. There isn’t time to be a real musician or a real writer. As an artist, in any medium, I am raw, unshaped. There isn’t time to lose the excess weight, trim down the package. Wynn Handman’s advice is good, it applies to writing, to singing, it’s worth following but there isn’t time now. I have a friend who once said, “If you can’t play, then you shouldn’t”. He was right. The world only has a little time and struggling writers, struggling musicians, learning actors are clogging the system. The audience only has a little time and there are thousands of books to read, plays to see, music to hear. No time to sort through shit. “Shut up, sit down, be quiet.”
The trouble, dear Brutus is that we can’t sit down. Not totally, I keep writing. I keep picking up the guitar from time to time. I keep struggling with the piano. The pieces remain undeveloped sketches and crap but they are better crap than before. The inertia of doing it more and more means that a sort of osmosis is happening. Once in a while, a flash of something real? Rarely, but yes, sometimes. Always, in the back of my head are the Wynn Handmans of our lovely little planet. They are real, the advice they give is real, the work could be real but isn’t yet. “Try this…now, do that…lights down, do it again.” Will there be an audience (the second part of any artistic endeavor – perhaps the most crucial part)? I decide to keep moving forward, even though there isn’t enough time. There is time to relax about things and I am so very lucky that I have a living that is separate from the writing and music. I can bomb out (do, frequently) and it’s okay…the children have enough to eat, the spouse has already left. I can clutter the living room with barely-touched instruments and sheet music. I can sit at the kitchen table, adding more bits and bytes to the stack. It’s okay. In fact, it is one hell of a lot better than what Donald Trump is doing. I wonder what Wynn Handman would say to him? “…stop. Do it again. This time try empathy. Try to make it real, strip off the makeup, the orange hair, the defences. Okay, lights down…again…from the top.”
Robert On The Air 