Category Archives: My life

Insights on how I got here

Costume storage

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Last week, I walked through my neighbourhood and passed a theatrical costume store called Malabar, a place through which I love to rummage for the sheer joy of the pageantry. And that brief moment would have been forgotten had not fellow blogger Madelin Adena Smith posted a hyper-caffeinated blog and vlog early this morning.

In it, she challenged her readers/listeners to consider the roles they play in their day-to-day lives and asked us to consider the real us that lay hidden beneath those performances, which made me think of my psychosocial closet and all of the costumes I have worn throughout my life.

(Before proceeding, this is not a complaint against family or friends. These costumes were of my own choosing and it is only now in later life that I am realizing what I did to myself.)

Here is the schoolboy outfit…god, I was so small back then…the dutiful student who wanted to explore storytelling, but knew that this was not the accepted route to success. Oh, I was supported in my storytelling, but only as a hobby. My real future lay in science and medicine.

And the eldest son/man-of-the-house costume…almost looks like a football uniform with its broad shoulders and firm back…heady responsibilities for a young boy growing up and not having a clue as to who he is supposed to be, let alone actually is.

The clown costume…my go-to in times of stress…a protective device against a world in which I didn’t feel I belonged or related. Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em laugh. Then run away.

The Creative Director costume…the true song-and-dance man of my repertoire. This was perhaps my biggest role in life and is a costume I still wear on occasion, if only because it is expected by clients.

My psychosocial closet is filled with these things and all of them served to block my art because they stifled the real me.

You see the problem with the bars of a cage is that they work in two directions. Yes, they keep the world from getting at you, but at the same time, they keep you from reaching your true self and that is where your art lives.

During my eldest son phase, my art would express itself in the wee hours of the morning, long after everyone had gone to bed, until my mother would finally yell downstairs for me to cease the deafening machine-gun fire of my electronic typewriter.

The clown phase almost cost me the love of my life but when the silly girl challenged that I was simply a clown, my hackles rose and I gave her reams of painfully personal poetry I had written. Her preconceptions shattered, we were married within a year and were so for 13 years.

Interestingly, it was the new costumes we donned during our marriage that led to our separation last year. Luckily, in shedding those costumes, we remain very close friends and confidantes.

Ironically, even my Creative Director guise stifled my art. Sure, I was creative, but for others, not me. This is the main reason why I chose to quit my job last year and pursue my art as a career unto itself. I had to sacrifice something, and it was the job.

With rare exceptions, my psychosocial closet is now just a relic of my past; a yearbook at which I can reflect on lives lived and mistakes made. It is not, thank goodness, something into which I feel the need to dip.

The only real costume I wear now is my Randall C Willis (please, call me Randy); the only costume that was ever truly mine. The artist has no clothes, if you will.

And because I have finally divestmented myself, my art can flow freely and keeps me warm at nights.

I am, therefore I create. It’s a great feeling.

And in the meantime, I wonder if Goodwill accepts old costumes.

So, now that I stand here naked (don’t think about it), I feel free to ask: What costumes you have worn in your life or do so now that have blocked your art?

The only costume I am apt to wear these days is on my hand

The only costume I am apt to wear these days is on my hand

Dream ‘scape

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How do you say goodbye to a dream? How do you deal with the fact that you can only start a dream but have no control over how it ends?

Dreams don’t ever end the way you expect them to. My first clue should have been dreams of the sleep variety.

So often, for the ones I can remember on waking, my dreams start remarkably well for me; I am achieving something, accomplishing something, learning something highly desirable to me. But just as often—whether positive dream or nightmare—the dream veers off the course that I would have consciously or rationally chosen for it, and I find I am not as in control of the dream as I had hoped. When the dream ends or when I awake, I find I am in a different place than I expected to be.

So it goes, I am learning, with wakeful dreams; those moments of aspiration and decision where you consciously set yourself on a path to something different.

I have spent my life dreaming of a different existence, and in the last year or so, I have been very active in making those dreams my new realities. As time passes, however, I am coming to realize that I have only so much power to steer my dream once I have initiated it. It is like climbing into a barrel and rolling into the river above Niagara Falls.

The current will do what the current will do. The rapids will buffet me as they choose. Gravity is the great roaring sound in the distance.

But as much as I talk about passively floating downstream and letting the universe decide, there is still a part of me—the human part, no doubt—that feels if I just press my shoulder this way or press my heels out that way, I can right the barrel so my head is high or somehow adjust the forces acting on the barrel such that I remain suspended above the gorge when I hit the precipice. But I am wrong.

I cannot say with certainty that upon hitting the precipice, I will plummet into the waiting whirlpools and eddies at the base of the falls. However unlikely, according to my friend Isaac Newton, I might fall sideways. The river could reverse its course at the last second. I could wedge behind a rock and simply be buffeted in place. Or I could wake up and find myself in bed.

I chose to set the wheels in motion, but that’s all I did, and to a greater or lesser extent, that’s all I can do.

The next few months will be very telling for the directions my recently initiated dreams will take me. I may awake to find they were ephemeral. They may continue into idyllic fields. They may turn into nightmares. It is not up to me.

If a dream must end, it will end. And if it ends badly, then I shall be sad and maybe a little angry. The onus is then on me to start another one. It is all I can do.

When life interferes

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It has been an incredibly slow week on the blog as far as new posts are concerned. But whereas most people slow down periodically to take care of things that distract us from our writing like work, family obligations, vacations, etc, my absence from the blog has had more to do with writing than with not writing.

The past week has been an endless series of projects, all of which require some degree of writing.

Last Thursday, I started the latest of my screenwriting classes and needed to do some final edits before bringing my pages to class to be read aloud. As well, I needed to read the works of other students to get a handle on their work and to offer insights.

Friday brought meetings with potential clients to discuss their web and marketing strategies (and a lovely Indian buffet to boot). And the afternoon was spent doing research for an upcoming article on the anniversary of the elucidation of the structure of DNA (Happy 60th Birthday, DNA!), followed by an evening at baseball (yaaaaaawn) and then drinks with my screenwriting circle. I also picked up a new medical writing freelance gig.

Saturday and Sunday were chock-a-block full of my attempts to live-Tweet two hockey games between my Toronto Marlies and the St. John’s IceCap in the American Hockey League. You want to miss half a sporting event? Try live-Tweeting a hockey game. By the time you look up from your phone, you have another incident to Tweet.

The weekend and Monday were also spent on that freelance writing gig, so I buried my head into the wonders of neuropharmacology and tried to make sense of a chimera of a slide deck, trying to tease a coherent story out of the presentation. Yes, even medical information comes in the form of a story…or at least the better ones do.

And then to rattle my brain a little, I headed back to Art & Fear; a little book on the challenges that present themselves when trying to create art (more on the book in a later post). Step One: Go, create Art. The guilt from the book was enough to make me sit in front of my laptop and churn out 3 more pages for my latest screenplay…a lovely little family drama-comedy set in Eastern Canada.

And so, my poor blog languished in neglect. No doubt, feeling unloved and forgotten.

Not so, my blog, not so.

But you will need to learn to share my attentions with others. It’s all for the best, I promise.

Lucked into a team photo with the Toronto Marlies (me=last person, second row, right)

Lucked into a team photo with the Toronto Marlies (me=last person, second row, right)

Declaration of independence

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I lost an acquaintance the other day, someone who wafted into my life for a brief period, didn’t like what he saw and wafted back out. But not before admonishing me for “being stuck in one gear…first-person singular” and challenging me to “set aside the superficial…and start ranking the real priorities in your life.”

The following was my response to him, and to all others who would see me curb my enthusiasms for what they see as a more appropriate direction for my life:

[Name], I’m sorry to hear that you struggle with my humours, but appreciate that it is not to all tastes.

I have been very fortunate in recent years (the latest of my 50) to have surrounded myself with wonderful friends who appreciate the unique package I present in life–the ability to write deeply insightful poetry, starkly analytical science, ribald comedy, biting sociopolitical ripostes, and prosaic tutelage–and while I appreciate their love and support, and hope that I return it in spades, I am ultimately happy with the person that I am and require no outside validation nor light.

As I have only come to realize in the past couple of years, I have wasted too many years of my life, trying to live the life that others would wish me to follow, and was slowly driven to self-destructive distraction in my failures to live up to everyone’s expectations, well intentioned or otherwise. I now live for me above and beyond all others.

I wish you the best in your journey and hope you find the truth you seek, as each of us must find our own.

All around, the vistas were laden with new peaks to explore, heights to achieve.

All around, the vistas were laden with new peaks to explore, heights to achieve. (Mt. Baker, Washington)

Write…as rain

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I write.

I write because I love playing with words.

I write because my head will explode if I don’t.

I write to explore ideas.

I write because I’m interested in a lot of stuff.

I write because I’m a narcissist.

I write because the stories flow through me.

I write because I’m funny (some of the time).

I write because I have thoughts worth expressing.

I write because the blank page beckons.

I write to release my pain.

I write to share my joy.

I write to add beauty to the world.

I write to keep moving.

I write to share the magnificent visions I see.

I write to exorcise and exercise the voices.

I write to play.

I write because I am a writer.

 

Why do you?

Jonathan Winters

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Jonathan Winters cameo Jonathan Winters John Wayne Jonathan Winters and Muppets

A giant passed away yesterday; a man of unsurpassed talent the likes of whom may never be seen again.

Other people practice improv. Jonathan Winters was improv and so much more.

The man could literally make me wet my pants with laughter. He could not be stopped once he hit his stride, which was usually on his second step, and the more you threw at him, the funnier he became.

He wasn’t funny for the sake of being outrageous, as so many improv people can be. He said things. Implied things. Made you think long after you stopped laughing, but without being on-the-nose or preachy. Every character he created was someone you knew, you’d met, you’d watched.

He made everyone around him try harder, to raise their game, whether he intended it or not.

In a famous Letterman interview, Winters and Robin Williams began to play. You want to see love? Look at the expression on Williams’ face. That is love, adoration, worship, friendship and a ship-load of other emotions all balled into one irrepressible face.

Winters had his demons, as most comedic and artistic talents do, but those demons made his talent that much bigger.

I love you Jonathan Winters for the joy you brought to my life. And as with Robin Williams, I too wanted to and still will do better, strive higher, reach further for having had you in my life, if only through a television or movie screen. I want to make you proud, even if you never knew I existed.

I will miss you.

(these images are used without permission)

Doubt

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I have doubt.

Not in my skills, thank goodness, or the belief that with the right guidance, I can improve them steadily, but I have doubt.

I have doubt that I will find the right people to see the merits of those skills and help me to convert them into something meaningful. A video, a television program, a film, a novel, a photo exhibit. Something that I can share with all the world. Something that will touch the souls of others as the gestation and creation of the work has touched mine.

I have doubt that I can hold on to my new fantasy life and that reality, oh harsh reality, won’t poke its head into the mix and throw me back to where I was. That I will need to find resources to live, and that the need will draw me away from my art. Perhaps irreparably tearing me from it and setting me back upon the course I once journeyed of discontent and pain.

I have doubt that I won’t continue to find supporters and friends—my oh so wonderful friends—who will hold my hand on this journey. Who will provide a tether to keep me connected and yet free enough not to anchor me to the world.

I have doubt about what is around the next corner. About the shadows in the darkness. About the approaching ground in my free fall through life.

I have doubt.

But I will not let that change what I am doing. I cannot allow my doubt to prevent me from living the life I have finally discovered.

If around the corner is an oncoming train, in the shadows lay a vicious monster, and on the approaching ground shards of glass, I will not allow doubt to slow or still me.

I may not succeed in achieving my goals, but in overcoming my doubt, I will have succeeded in my journey. And for that, I will be eternally grateful and find peace.

Travel within and without – British Columbia

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It may sound ridiculous to say, but wherever and whenever I travel, I find symbols of my inner journey, the personal transit that extends beyond airline tickets, overstuffed luggage, and souvenir shops. And it’s often not until I arrive home to look at the images within my camera, that I see the patterns.

Am I imprinting meaning where none inherently exists? Does it matter?

Whether inherent or imposed, the imagining of a pattern changes me and the pattern becomes true.

The following are a selection of images from my travels last year through British Columbia, a break before I began on the next great journey of my life, and one I take alone.

I said that out loud, didn’t I?

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Several years ago, when I was first starting out as a professional writer, I received the opportunity to work for a couple of monthly science magazines published by the American Chemical Society. Eager to impress and excited at the thought of seeing my name bylined, I dove into every project with relish…and apparently very little forethought.

A regular ritual at the magazines was for the entire editorial staff to sit down every couple of weeks and hammer out the best headlines for each of the next issue’s articles. Rather than leave the job to the individual writers, my Editor felt this was the best way to get the best ideas. In principle, I agree with him, although you also have to be wary of sliding into group-think, where the lowest common denominator wins…but I digress.

In the first such meeting in which I was invited to participate—second week on the job—we were trying to come up with a title for the health article, which discussed the sexually transmitted infection chlamydia and the fact that many women with the infection didn’t know they had it. After listening to a couple really boring titles, I decided to show how clever and punny I was, and chose to riff off the title of a movie that was popular at the time.

Chlamydia. A quiet killer. It was obvious.

Silence of the Clams!

Silence of the editorial meeting, more like. My Editor looked at mean, turned his head sideways, and said “You’re serious.”

Oh, oh. Something’s gone wrong. Something doesn’t make sense. Why is everyone looking at me like that? Why is…? Oh, shit.

Luckily, everyone in the office thought it was funny, probably more because of the look on my face rather than any inherent amusement. But that’s the point. I kept the job and wrote much better headlines—or at least more acceptable ones—for several more years.

Since that day, I have instituted (if only for myself) what I call “the 12-year-old boy rule”.

Basically, if you want to print anything, you should always say it out loud in front of a 12-year-old boy, and if he even so much as smirks, there is something salacious in your idea and you really need to rethink it.

Still, every once in a while, I wonder if I couldn’t make that title work (other than for porn).

And of course, I am still addicted to puns, much to the chagrin of most people who know me.

Hephaestus lives

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There is something magical about fire. It destroys. It cleanses. It rejuventates.

Few other media seems so alive and yet have no life. It has an almost palpable need to fight for its existence.

A few years ago, I was awoken by bright light through my bedroom window, which would have been fine, but the clock said it was only 4 a.m. Rising from my bed, I drew back the blinds and the room was suffused by the yellow-orange glow of a fire that raged in the next building. The rooftop patio of the club across the alley was aflame.

I was transfixed by the flames that shot higher and higher, dancing across the wooden frame and sending its embers out in search of new sustenance, dancing on the breeze the fire itself created.

Luckily, no one but the club owner’s bank account was injured.