By CHARLES ANDREWS
I DON’T THINK MARK TWAIN
Done it this way.
Strictly following his outlines? No. But not stream of consciousness Kerouac either. Every writer employs a different, personal method, and it also depends on what you’re writing – a novel, short story, play, or a music review. But there are a few templates.
I can’t do stream of consciousness. Well, I can, but if it isn’t art rushing out of your brain onto the page, you’re just a garbage collector. I also can’t write under the influence of anything. I know, there goes my romantic boozy writer’s image.
I have never really given outlines a shot, but most of my life, I have written short pieces not really requiring them. And I have a love/hate relationship with the very process of writing (working on that one), which has made me, as my 5th-grade teacher, too honestly enshrined on my report card, “a master at the art of procrastination.” How did he know? I’m still figuring it out.
But enough about me. What about Sam Clemens? He was, and by most readers’ estimation, still is Da Man, the greatest American author. He certainly wasn’t a streamer, and though he often had substantial notes on characters and dialogue, it seems he never felt chained to an outline. I have always felt “less than” for not having that discipline. I guess I form a mental outline, as I ponder an upcoming piece for days, slowly eliminating most of the thousands of ways anything can be approached. But you could call that a form of procrastination, eh?
I KNEW I WANTED TO WRITE
Something about the pickles we are in both locally and nationally. But what to say, and how to say it? That I haven’t said before, that may land in a different way, and make a difference, with some. It’s very complicated. Especially when you overthink it.
I have wrestled with the same task many times before. I spent years thinking that if people only knew what was going on, especially in their own backyard, they would be moved to action. Or at least to care. But human emotions are prone to inertia. But this is my town, a pretty small city, and I’ve been here 40 years. Things have only changed for the worse, reflecting the national scene.
I can’t forget Coach Jim Valvano’s simple, powerful admonition, whether about basketball or cancer: “don’t give up – don’t ever give up.” A bookend to another of my guiding principles, from Rev. Jesse Jackson: “Keep hope alive.” I can’t rely on facts. It is faith, faith in the future. Valvano was near the end of his hard fight against cancer as he made that televised speech. Jackson was coming from 400 years of slavery and oppression. I’m only dealing with greed and corruption. Take a deep breath and keep going.
THIS TIME
I didn’t have to wrestle and choose over that next column. It was taken out of my hands. By very old video footage, and a song’s context. A simple, “bouncy” reggae song. A song Bob Dylan declared either “the best song ever written,” or “the best protest song ever written.” There is some disagreement. Either way…
It was Jimmy Cliff’s ‘VIETNAM” (1969, Trojan), which I revisited while writing about his passing for my Wednesday NOTEWORTHY column. I was letting a “Greatest Hits” album play out, and for some reason, when this came on, I took a break from typing to see what the video was. I watched for a while without too much emotion, even though, having been drafted during that terrible time, I have more involvement than, say, a five-time “bone spurs” draft dodger. Then I focused on the lyrics, also simple and repetitive, and coupled with the footage – not bloody, not men being blown apart, but standing or crouching in the jungle, taking aim at unseen “enemy” soldiers. Who were just like them. With families waiting anxiously at home. I looked at them, even without closeups, and saw the parade as part of the 50,000 Americans who lost their lives over there, thought of all the families who got that awful, awful telegram that brought strong fathers and brothers to their knees and mothers and sisters wailing uncontrollably – and I cried. Just a little, not for long.
But in that moment, it was suddenly clear there were so many big things so wrong in our world, for so long, that it seemed useless to write about corrupt City Council members or destructive oligarchs. I had in that moment a personal realization of how greatly we all suffer, needlessly, for the power and greed of a few.
I’ve written many times that I believe we spin our wheels fighting over small stuff. The folks who control the big stuff like that, of course. The big stuff is really hard to change. But in a related approach, T Bone Burnett writes, “I’m
gonna get over this someday, so I might as well get over it now.”
INSANE
Here’s my personal, hopefully helpful tool. If you stop to think calmly about some situation and it seems insane – it may well be. Can you change insane, or just hope to control it? We have so much insanity that has been normalized. That’s not by accident. If something seems “off” but now normal, unfixable, you will accept it, not fight to change it.
So what is insane? That’s a very subjective call. Heavily armed masked men without warrants or due process, grabbing people off the street, including U.S. citizens, torn from their cars, their homes, breaking doors and windows, glass flying, children inside, several large men throwing women and the elderly violently to the ground, and disappearing them? In America? Yeah, that’s insane.
Turning down a no-cost proposal by top entertainment veterans to restore our very historic Civic Auditorium to performance status? Insane. Ramping up a war with Venezuela? Insane. Building more and more dense market-rate housing here when we already have thousands of vacancies, and it won’t help the homeless crisis at all? Insane. Allowing health insurance to skyrocket, leaving tens of millions without, many to die? Why do we have health insurance companies anyway? Denying food to hungry American children? Issuing science-less vaccine misinformation that will kill children? Insane. Substituting harmful plastic grass for real grass at our schools here? Insane.
Go ahead, make your own lists. It’s entertaining, and infuriating. And you’ll have a better picture of what we need to do.
Oh yeah – war. Insane.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 39 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com
