And as long as we are on the subject…

Yes, delicacy. Delicate. I mentioned a play I wrote about this in yesterday’s blog. That play was called the ‘Delicate Task of Listening’. A really great title for a play but I am not really sure that I made my point or not. I have gone back and reread the play many times and each time I feel a little less satisfied then the last. The play simply just isn’t good. If I have to make an excuse as to why, avoiding the obvious excuse of lack of talent, I would say that a lot of it had to do with the situation in which I was writing. I was working at a youth hostel in Vancouver BC and as I was seen as a real point of arrival for the campers, I had almost no privacy at the time. So in the end there wasn’t much time for any deep thought and examination, and I think that this shows quite a bit in the text.

But I think what I was trying to bring out was the tragedy that is our worlds incessant desire to manipulate, own, corrupt and inevitably destroy anything of beauty that may even for a brief moment exist. I was using as the end of communism as my backdrop and had as my principal characters two fellows who had been familiar with ‘the honeymoon’ as life in the old times here has been nostalgically named. Both men in their lives have seen better times and a chance meeting at a flophouse rekindles in them a sense of gentility that both thought was gone from their lives forever. They expound upon this in their discourse and story telling and even though they are really from two very different worlds, they find great similarities in their lives. Probably they are drunks, but I tried to create some sense that regardless of current circumstances, there is still apparent in them at least the shadow of what was once a great fire.

Eventually though they are interrupted from their ‘drink’, they are of course drinking vodka together, by a young street couple who comes crashing in on their reverie. These two have never had even the slightest moments of grace or comfort and the stories from their lives and intrigues intertwine with our drinkers who in the end become entangled in the couple’s chaotic world of drugs and street survival.

Like I say, I am not sure that I made the point with this play that I wanted to and to be honest, I have tried for years to “fix” the play, though I have never felt that I have succeeded. There are of course some cool moments I think. And in the end I think that there is drama there, I mean, it is not unplayable. But I have written since then some better things.

Now I think that I had the same sorts of problems with privacy when I was doing the writing for the book BEING HAD. I at the time I had no computer on which to write other than the computers at the internet club. So that was where I did it. And you have to know that trying to write, correct and edit 500 pages of prose while you are sitting in a public place with music and talking and your computer breaking down and contracting viruses every three days sort of plays with a guy. And it did. And I am sure that that had a lot to do with my difficulty finding a home for that book. Again discounting lack of talent.

But I did find the time to do some rewriting on that book, this before some new computer catastrophes from several months ago put an end to my piece and quiet. I had been working on one final edit and I think I made some real progress on increasing the readability of the book as well as making several points a bit more clear.

In any case, I am putting what work I have completed on the internet today in place of the text of the version that is currently on line. It is the same story again to be sure but the writing is a little tighter, a bit more to the point and I think at least a bit more readable.

I have a lot of things going on right now here and sadly, I find I really don’t have the time at the moment to devote to this. I hope I can finish this and get to the new book some time, as I had before this current bureaucratic episode sort of became the center of my life. Actually to be frank, I would simply like to be able to do the things I want to do in general and this includes having enough money for food and diapers. But I am working on it as best as I can and with any luck something might break sooner or later.

But anyway, just click on the link below that gets you over to the HOMEPAGE and from there, check out the rewrite of the book and then let me know what you think. After all, this is what I do these days. Might as well keep things current, right?

I will be at the farm Friday and so I will write more when I get back.

Write me at:

beinghad_mail@yahoo.com

and/or click HERE to return to the HOMEPAGE

More soon.