Hmmmm. This is new, but it’s becoming apparent that my portal opens at the breakfast table – specifically, at the big round walnut table where the Greek and I drink his exceptional cappuccino while trading back and forth sections of the two morning papers. By portal I mean a momentary throughway to creative flow that is blessedly different from working at it…where stuff sort of bubbles up from silence. For whatever reason, reading the newspaper helps to trigger it, even though the ideas worth catching often have nothing to do with what I am reading. And the trick – a hard one – is to grab the moment just right, walk away from the paper, and turn it into a decent work session, because that portal - for me anyway - can be a fleeting opening.
Recently, I was reading a review of The Answer Man - a devastating review: “everything slides around like a plateful of half-set jello, convincing you of nothing” and “never shows enough passion to be interestingly bad”… OW – and, without knowing the film, I knew what it would take to make its pieces dance. Its individual elements almost spoke to me. No, that was a hedge to keep from sounding strange. Let me correct that: Its individual elements actually spoke to me. – “Place me like this”… “Reveal that I…” …”Put this over there” -- Really, it was just so striking. Almost enough to make me consider going back to being a script doctor. Only almost. Think I’ll just fix my own stuff for the duration - what with there being so much to fix and all.
That was on C9. Then, on C14, another striking moment, as I answered a decades old question. As a college student, I directed Calm Down, Mother, 42 pages of play by Megan Terry, in which a variety of characters are played by three actresses, who shift into new roles throughout different sections. Here’s the thing: I never got the costumes right. I really struggled. What do I put them in that will work for all these different parts and places? In the end, what I chose – loose pants & tops – didn’t work, but I didn’t know why and I couldn’t figure out what would be better. But there – on page C14 – in a picture from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, were dancers in a mix of dresses that would have been just exactly right. As I stared at them, I had a flood of long-lost memories of ways my unconscious mind had tried to let me know what was needed back then – but they were all symbolic messages, and I could never decipher them. Until that morning. When I “got” all the old messages all at once. Saw the perfect costumes. And understood the very specific why of what was wrong with what I settled for.
Even now – thirty years later - I feel bad for letting my actors down, and exhilarated by the clarity.
Funny how time converges to make then alive now.
I'm thinking the portal doesn't live in a place where there's time. Or where much of anything could be called strange.