The Experiment

Okay, so the pseudo-prose poetic intro over and behind me, time to get to work. 

I guess what I have is an image looking for a story. Well, the image is really a collection of images, which could be filed under "the experience of the Plains": those long empty vistas and the way the weather takes over with nothing there to stop it. 

I grew up in the Plains and then spent my college years making that seemingly endless drive in rain or snow or sleet or dark of night, so it has great resonance for me. And by now I've spent enough years away to mythologize both the good and the bad of that place. I feel like there's a really great story to be told based out of this concept of transit over the flat, open land. 

But an image alone does not a story make. I've been writing sketches under this idea, but nothing holds together so far. It may be that there is no story here, but I can't seem to get away from the idea. So for good or ill, I'm assuming this means that there must be something to be written here. I just need to figure out what that is. 

The experiment is to amass various sketches and approaches to this story and see what emerges. For me, I think the most important aspect of this story is to find the right way to tell it, the right style. This may be the key, or it might just be the exact fixation that's kept me from moving forward with this project. The goal is to post two (or more) writing exercises pertaining to this project a week. 

Why not just keep it to myself? No good reason. I'm assuming there will come a point when I'll be ready to commit to a certain telling and so I'll have to work alone. But right now, the idea of the  accountability, the imperative to produce, and the possibility of feedback that comes with a public forum has gotten me excited for what's become a stymied project. Well, not that there is any public so far. But eventually perhaps...?

While the main goal is to work on this project, I also hope to post as close to every day as I can manage. Photos, random thoughts, perhaps even guest posts (?), I want this to be a daily excuse to indulge my creative life, a life that's become kind of unfocused over the last little while. 

The view outside my window this fine rainy evening. Yep, dark before 5pm. At least it's not snow. Yet.

The King of Infinite Space

It's the drive, the long night ride home and the space that your mind makes there. I want to write it, and maybe the logic of the road weary, which is to say none at all except the fluency of memories shuffled like dreams. All that time to think can be a sentence or a fascination. You are the king of infinite space in your little nutshell. What are the qualities of your dreams?

The thing that I can't escape is the idea of all that sky, all that land. It does something to the quality of your thinking. It does something to the way you create yourself. 

I don't have a narrative as yet, but I hope to try some out here. Which I guess is as close to a mission statement as I currently have: to use this space for a multiplicity of selves, to wait for the good stories. 

I will also be one of the selves here. On slow idea days, how much easier to simply put my own thoughts here instead? It's inevitable. But the hope is that a story will emerge. Not just sketches scattered through several notebooks or ideas that may or may not be captured in words, but to collect the threads here, in one place. Perhaps the proximity will allow them influence each other. To see if I can't take this suspicion of a story out of my head and suggest a way to tell it, a way to organize it. 

Right now I'm operating in a vacuum (with the possible exception of my good fiend Pete). But if you're not Pete and you've happened to make it here, please tell me what you think. Of anything. (I already know Pete'll leave me some good pointers.)  Thanks.