dear meg,
so how is life going for you? are you still being a great teacher concerning yourself more with students' work than your own impressive talent? i got to say that i am eager for a future that allows me to pick up your book and be flooded by that strong prose and lightening imagery.
i do not write so much right now. a shitty excuse but my job makes it very difficult for continuous work; which i need in order for the jumble and flood of sights, sounds, images to wash and rewash over me so i can make some sort of sense of it. and nothing's more frustrated than starting and stopping and starting and fighting through all that awkwardness again and again.
i do however continue to educate myself about my obsession. i have really gotten into film and find myself very tempted to write screen plays and worm my way into directoring. but then again, i am quite frightened at the prospect so in the meantime i simply hesitate and watch in awe at the tremendous amount of 'literary' films now possessing the big screen.
i have also gotten really big into classic films especially european films made in the sixities and earlier. have you ever seen jean cocteua's beauty and the beast? quite a magical film. or la commera secca. or pretty much any godard film? or fists in pocket. allforeign master pieces. their superior ability to tell a story makes me wonder how out-dated books become in the face of a medium that has as is mentioned in a recent film, out reached human imagination. truely, film has set the bar concerning story telling and as a writer we must meet this challenge but we may have only one more john henry left in us because frankly a great book on the scale of a great film may require a large number of pages and as a believer in poe's concept of being able to hit the reader quite hard in one sitting in this day and age; or as the character in the big chill satircally witticizes, "now a days we got a write an article that encapsulates the average period of time on the shitter."
my experience is that the young population is growing more and more culturally vacuous. maybe there's a bit of a wave from harry potter and it seems like in the ivory tower of instituionalized learning that so many people truely care about good literature i might add that i have delved myself in the target audience of marketeers--the twenty-twenty-five year-old male age group and it is rather disappointing. all the numbers you may have heard mentioned about the lack of taste appear to be implicitely true. of course this must continue as long as someone like raymond carver is wholly ignored in high schools where more young men might meet a writer that makes it okay for them to identify with their emotional and rational side. still in this day in age where fame and money mean so much, i am surprised how little the realization that knowledge truely does equal power. then again i have beared witness to incredible acts of great honor and discipline when the simple act of squeezing a trigger(much simpler for those of us who have been trained to kill till the desire arises in us the way way hunger resides in the stomach pangs of the sillyvillians(civilians)), makes more sense and is easier to face than dealing with someone who you truely are trying to help(all politics aside because we mostly all feel the war is bunk), people from being murdered and yet continuely murder our comrades and close friends. and yet, even in this day and age of killing sprees, movie violence and violent video games many a young has resisted training and impulse.
as a side note; movies truely do de-sensitize violnce. the resembelnce of a dead body in a movie and in real like are quite startling. maybe the only slim difference is depending on the time, the thick copper smell that emanates from them.
i'll never forget the first murder victim we came upon. he was about twenty-six, which means as an iraqie with a beard he looked more like in his mid-thrities. there was a dull peacefulness on that hot summer day. he had been stabbed mutiple times, resulting in the bright red spoltches of blood that seeped through his shirt and as is usually the mark of an assinated man in iraq he was shot in the head from close range. the thick matted, black curly mess of hair sopping wet with clotting blood and the puddle on the blazing asphalt. the quite, normal day all around. the kids selling black market gas on the side of the street. the women and children walking home from the market carring plastic bags or gallon containers of olive oil upon their head stopping ahead of our lead vehicle momentarily frightened, unsure of how we would react, take it in stride, yet another brother, cousin, father, uncle dead. revenge spreading..... anyway, the point being it didn't even make me flinch. i think the most overwhelming feeling i felt was simply, "man, yetsko. that looks just like it does in the movies. can you Believe it man?... just like a fucking movie man."
anywho, i just really want to know you're doing well or hopefully better than that. to say hey what's up there's most certainly people out there who have been influenced and stimulated by your great teaching. also people who can't wait to read megan's next story.
your friend and pupil,
chris de joe
so how is life going for you? are you still being a great teacher concerning yourself more with students' work than your own impressive talent? i got to say that i am eager for a future that allows me to pick up your book and be flooded by that strong prose and lightening imagery.
i do not write so much right now. a shitty excuse but my job makes it very difficult for continuous work; which i need in order for the jumble and flood of sights, sounds, images to wash and rewash over me so i can make some sort of sense of it. and nothing's more frustrated than starting and stopping and starting and fighting through all that awkwardness again and again.
i do however continue to educate myself about my obsession. i have really gotten into film and find myself very tempted to write screen plays and worm my way into directoring. but then again, i am quite frightened at the prospect so in the meantime i simply hesitate and watch in awe at the tremendous amount of 'literary' films now possessing the big screen.
i have also gotten really big into classic films especially european films made in the sixities and earlier. have you ever seen jean cocteua's beauty and the beast? quite a magical film. or la commera secca. or pretty much any godard film? or fists in pocket. allforeign master pieces. their superior ability to tell a story makes me wonder how out-dated books become in the face of a medium that has as is mentioned in a recent film, out reached human imagination. truely, film has set the bar concerning story telling and as a writer we must meet this challenge but we may have only one more john henry left in us because frankly a great book on the scale of a great film may require a large number of pages and as a believer in poe's concept of being able to hit the reader quite hard in one sitting in this day and age; or as the character in the big chill satircally witticizes, "now a days we got a write an article that encapsulates the average period of time on the shitter."
my experience is that the young population is growing more and more culturally vacuous. maybe there's a bit of a wave from harry potter and it seems like in the ivory tower of instituionalized learning that so many people truely care about good literature i might add that i have delved myself in the target audience of marketeers--the twenty-twenty-five year-old male age group and it is rather disappointing. all the numbers you may have heard mentioned about the lack of taste appear to be implicitely true. of course this must continue as long as someone like raymond carver is wholly ignored in high schools where more young men might meet a writer that makes it okay for them to identify with their emotional and rational side. still in this day in age where fame and money mean so much, i am surprised how little the realization that knowledge truely does equal power. then again i have beared witness to incredible acts of great honor and discipline when the simple act of squeezing a trigger(much simpler for those of us who have been trained to kill till the desire arises in us the way way hunger resides in the stomach pangs of the sillyvillians(civilians)), makes more sense and is easier to face than dealing with someone who you truely are trying to help(all politics aside because we mostly all feel the war is bunk), people from being murdered and yet continuely murder our comrades and close friends. and yet, even in this day and age of killing sprees, movie violence and violent video games many a young has resisted training and impulse.
as a side note; movies truely do de-sensitize violnce. the resembelnce of a dead body in a movie and in real like are quite startling. maybe the only slim difference is depending on the time, the thick copper smell that emanates from them.
i'll never forget the first murder victim we came upon. he was about twenty-six, which means as an iraqie with a beard he looked more like in his mid-thrities. there was a dull peacefulness on that hot summer day. he had been stabbed mutiple times, resulting in the bright red spoltches of blood that seeped through his shirt and as is usually the mark of an assinated man in iraq he was shot in the head from close range. the thick matted, black curly mess of hair sopping wet with clotting blood and the puddle on the blazing asphalt. the quite, normal day all around. the kids selling black market gas on the side of the street. the women and children walking home from the market carring plastic bags or gallon containers of olive oil upon their head stopping ahead of our lead vehicle momentarily frightened, unsure of how we would react, take it in stride, yet another brother, cousin, father, uncle dead. revenge spreading..... anyway, the point being it didn't even make me flinch. i think the most overwhelming feeling i felt was simply, "man, yetsko. that looks just like it does in the movies. can you Believe it man?... just like a fucking movie man."
anywho, i just really want to know you're doing well or hopefully better than that. to say hey what's up there's most certainly people out there who have been influenced and stimulated by your great teaching. also people who can't wait to read megan's next story.
your friend and pupil,
chris de joe