Wednesday 25 September 2013

The Case of Crenshaw's Block #6

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 




He always liked his mornings to be slow. A long routine to help him completely surface and get his mind functioning at full capacity. 

Music was put on, coffee was slowly brewed, teeth brushed, toast buttered and eggs scrambled as usual. His playlist slowly building up to songs with drums and french horns. You could tell he felt happy today, his french horn songs were only reserved for happy days. 

Now I know what we all want, he's got the idea, so why is it taking so much time to get to the good bit, where he starts writing and we finally have our story? To this I say, how can you be so sure you know which is the good bit? And good things come to those who wait, a truth Crenshaw is also familiar with. A man who likes slow mornings isn't going to speed things up for you and me.

He needed to keep his brain occupied so that in all these tasks, somewhere in the back of that brain was a box which would begin to rattle and shake and open with a loud BANG! and out would come a grandmother, two girls and a boy. The rattle had only just begun, so he continued with his routine. A bath, washing dishes and some more coffee. He fished out his laptop from his cupboard and went on to reply some emails. 
He mainly wanted to write to his sister, that always helped. This had nothing to do with any advice exchanged, just the process of writing to her helped calm his mind. He opened his inbox and there waiting for him was a mail from her. One sentence and an attachment : Hear with good headphones, you will love this!
Once he clicked download, he didnt know that the BANG! was just about to happen. His sister never knew how many character-detonators (as he liked to call her mp3 attachments) she had sent him over the years, he of course kept count. 

Play was pressed and then it began, this strange and wonderful song of a cello, a mandolin, a violin and a double bass. And he could now see it all so very clearly. Grandmother sitting at the table with a cup of tea next to him, boy moving from room to room humming, one girl checking her phone and the other in the kitchen grumbling about how she could smell something burning but couldn't track the source.
They were here! 

Maybe this is the good bit?! 

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Feels I'm being hauled in a fireman's lift by someone I wrote

I like feeling smart. There is a sense of comfort no? Knowing you're a little bit better than someone, even if it's in small ways. Maybe you make tea better or your internet skills are crazy good.  But this comfort of being better is easy to give up for that small and ecstatic moment when you grab hold of your essence. You find that one bit of you no matter what, will never belong to anyone. No matter what anyone says it will be independent and original to you. open to only you. No matter how great or terrible it is. 

It's this terrible feeling of being dead but your physical sense doesn't seem to reflect that. The other day you told me to conquer my fear. When one day you read of the characters in my head, you will see them as what I want to be. I hope I can show the melancholy and sometimes restless torment inside my head and make it beautiful. Being in control of these people in my head who know take such realistic forms, its hard remind myself they aren't actually there. These versions of who I'd like to be. Always at the back of my head is the fact that I control them. It comes as an epiphany almost, when these beings act of their own accord. They've become these shifted versions of myself. What started out as a person I so longed to be instead of me, is now nearly alive. I feel I live so much through them. They may not be present in a physical sense but then I've never felt I am physical.

So much, most, of who I am is not in the physical. And it's when I started to live only through my physical presence that I felt my death. Essentially what I did was force myself into something I've never been. And it was what I wrote yesterday, or what I write at all that resuscitated me. Slowly being brought back to my shifted self. Not back completely.
But it feels I'm being hauled in a fireman's lift by someone I wrote. Slowly with every step the breath is easier, but I am heavy and slips will happen.

So I guess if this was a Panchatantra comic the moral would be that I tried living in the moment and being present in the now and that the now isn't mine to be in. I don't live in the now... I live in songs that echo in the mountains of the treachery I did, I live in that monastery on the side of a stone cliff, I live as a monk saving my friends and burying another, I live as an winged person sent to accompany humans. 
Mine is not the present and I wonder why I ever thought it was.


Saturday 24 August 2013

The Case of Crenshaw's Block #5

#1 #2 #3 #4




Mr. Crenshaw realized his mind had run dry. He wasn't blocked he was definitely dry. He understood the world of the woman in twenties even though it was never his reality, he could understand her world and thus could write about it.

As he massaged his cramped back he realized he was dancing around an epiphany. Like when you wake up in the morning and you know the feeling of your dream so well but what the dream was is a little hard to remember and then little by little, the dream comes back to you.
Though he understood her world, the want to be in it was decreasing. Sometimes the fantasy is so real to him, his first nature. And little by little as he remembered what his dream was he realised what was first nature to him now. His reality was becoming stronger, it was its time.

As a writer all he really wanted was to have that voice inside him translated as truthfully as possible and that voice keeps changing. The woman in twenties no longer had a place in his heart nor did her world, it all shrank away from him. In its place he could feel his own story filling his heart.
This was the story he now felt compelled to tell people. But not just yet. The characters were filling his heart but they need to reach the point where they burst out and plonk themselves next to him.

Now would come the scene where you see our writer furiously typing away, in the throws of his thoughts, creativity pouring out and music swelling behind. If we all lived with our personal production and background score team, our lives would be pretty much that scene, but we don't have those teams and neither did Crenshaw (he did often daydream this though).

Crenshaw did what all of us would do in that moment, the moment when we had decided this was the night of the all-nighter, then fallen asleep at our desk and given up on the whole stupid mission and gone to bed.  He at least had enough sense to write down this new idea for a story on a post it note and then collapsed in his bed. One doesn't begin the post-epiphany day without a good nights sleep, neither did Crenshaw.

Stuck on the keys of his Remington was a blue post it note, which said "Detective Nani and her sleuthy sidekicks"








Thursday 8 August 2013

For the Lights

My light is out
My land seems lost.

Have faith my friend
only your path is bent,
all life isn't spent.

The dim like rain keeps falling
For whom do I spark my light?
The darkness is calling
I'm losing my fight.

Do not stray my friend
Your dream can stay true
Your light was meant to shine for one
one, will always be you.

What if when I reach 
no brightness is around?
For lights which I thought were plenty,
none seem to be found.


No one to take your hand 
No one to guide towards your land.

I am not the bravest or my fire bright
is there anything can be done by my light?

There is power in your fire
Strength & Might
It will make the forest brighter still
Defeat the ever growing night.

And if you find no forest
no beacon is in sight
You can be new hope
do it  For the Lights.

Tuesday 15 January 2013

There are days with sunshine
a Bright Heart
a Blazing soul.

Days turn sour
minds turn grey
eyes search in a melancholy fire
for lost brightness

shrouded in their blanket of grey
cold tears run from ashen faces

like a spark hands extend to
beating hearts.
A swirling red pigments the grey
a Red of love, a Red of anger
a Red of heart
a Red of Human.

And like a spark again comes the yellow
its suddenness mirroring that of life's
A Bright fills in again.
A Sun warms a Soul.