Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Dancing on an Escalator

Last night, I took my daughter to Barnes & Noble to enjoy a cookie and peruse the children’s book section. When leaving the store, she stated that she wanted to go down the escalator. We walked to the escalator, and, holding her hand, I stepped on first. She, at that moment, decided that she wasn’t so interested in the escalator suddenly, and dug in firmly, refusing to step on, but still holding firmly to my hand.

What followed was a most interesting dance as I tried to not pull her over and not go flat on my own face at the same time. My Chaplain-esque moves were, I’m sure, the highlight of the evening to anyone watching.

Virtual Theatre

Concert lights, attributed to iurte under Creative Commons

Sometimes I feel as though I’m glued to a computer screen way too much.

Now that I’ve changed careers for my day job, I spend most of my day in front of a computer writing code or designing page layouts. It’s fun, don’t get me wrong. But I lament (as does my back after several stationary hours) the loss of the chances to be more physically active that I used to have. I’m still involved in theatre, and this is a huge outlet for me to be physically active…something that I desperately need, now. Between those two things and trying to keep some kind…any kind…of writing rhythm, I stay incredibly busy.

And I continue to be amazed at how much everything is alike in so many ways.

I listened to an interview with a web designer several months ago. She, too, had worked in theatre before beginning a career in the web, so there was immediate common ground for me there. She likened scenic design to web design, and I’m inclined to agree with her. There’s a creative component and technical component to each. The scene designer begins with sketches for what the setting of the fictional world should look like. Then, logistical issues are considered. Models are built. Working construction drawings are made, and then the lumber and drills and saws come into play as the sketches begin to take shape. Everything I know about power tools I learned in a college scene shop. In my experience in the theatre, there is almost always a technical director who oversees the construction of what the designer envisioned. He or she works off the drawings the designer provides and handles the technical details of the building.

The web designer also begins with drawings, but of a digital variety. Wireframes and prototypes are built in software like Photoshop and result in a visual model of what the website will look like. A developer then takes those prototypes and begins writing the code that will build them for your browser.

I began my theatre experiences on the technical side. I spent a lot of time doing the technical work of implementing others’ designs. I did my share of designing, as well, but me and a sketchbook were awkward companions, at best. I do the same thing for the web. I do some design work, but generally only page layouts, not real graphics work. I spend a lot of my time coding what others have designed.

Another similarity is that the web has its own sort of rehearsal process. As I write this, I’m getting ready to move a big project to a testing server for a dry run of how it will work. This is only for a select few people…the world won’t see the site until we’re settled that everything works the way that we want. It’s the Internet’s version of a dress rehearsal. A tiny audience will preview what the real event will look like before the curtain goes up on opening night.

There are a lot of other similarities, as well, too many for one post, I think. Isn’t it so fascinating, though, how different disciplines are so much alike the more one gets to know them?

Photo Attribution: iurte under Creative Commons.

Re-Living Adventures

Running with the theme of letting the imagination run with ideas, I remember something that an old friend once told me. I was frustrated then with having little time to write (ironically, I think back to that period now and wish I had that much time….funny how everything is relative that way), and found what little creative spark I could find squashed by my day job. That was before I had been able to find the interdisciplinary melding points in what I did, and I was looking for some way to let everything fall into place.

His advice to me was to let everything be “grist for the writing mill.”

It was difficult to take his advice then, but in the years since, I’ve began to appreciate his wisdom. One of my resolutions for the new year (or was it the year before…?) was to make time to work on some side projects, projects for which I had good ideas but have never set aside to time to truly develop. Those sorts of projects, I think, are the best sometimes for getting the writing spark lit. As Karen and I have had some quite interesting experiences with living arrangements over the past year, I remembered a shelved project that has been sitting on my desktop for a bit. It’s a collection of humorous experiences that we’ve had at different apartments since we’ve been married. It’s one of those projects for which I’ll very likely never seek publication, but that’s worth compiling if only for a family memoir of sorts to be a source of good memories later.

Or, perhaps the adventures that I recount there will end up on these virtual pages. Who knows?

I think that I’ll carve out some time in the next week sometime to outline some of our experiences and begin writing them down. It will get me back in the frame of mind in which words are flowing out onto the page, at least, and that can lead to all sorts of wonderful things.

Sonic Screwdrivers and Green Monsters

Sonic Screwdriver, a piece of Dr. Who Memorabilia

Karen gave me a sonic screwdriver for my birthday.

That was a couple of months ago, and I’ve been carrying it around zapping things that won’t work ever since. When I have an obsessive compulsive issue and begin worrying that the door isn’t locked securely, I’ll use the sonic screwdriver, because everyone knows that when the Doctor fuses a lock with that gadget, it stays locked.During the move, Karen shook her head at one point and referred to it as my security blanket.

Don’t judge.

This isn’t a reality distortion field, it’s just letting my imagination run a bit. It’s healthy, I think, letting yourself engage in the “what if” sorts of fantasizing that leads to good storytelling.

Over the weekend, I drove by a dark green Hummer that was parked on the curb. In true Bostonian fashion, the license plate indicated that it was a “Green Monstah.” I glanced at it in my rearview as I drove by, and pretended that I could hear it rumbling, the monster beneath pawing the ground to be let out and wreak its havoc at its master’s bidding. Or, perhaps it was a Decepticon-like evil transforming robot that would morph into its true shape to leave collateral damage in its wake as it carried out the mission known only to itself.

As I said, I don’t permit myself to become absorbed in these fantasies at the expense of reality. I will let myself dwell on them when I have some downtime, or when I’m laying in bed trying to fall asleep. This is the stuff from which good writing is born.

What I don’t do is let myself run with it enough. Part of that is a timing thing, but part of it is that I tend to get so bogged down in the tedium of finishing a project that I’m stalled on (like my novel), that I get stubborn and won’t let myself take a break to write other things. The truth is that letting those creative impulses flow uninhibited for even a little while flexes the creative muscles. Just writing this stuff down, without structure or a plan, just to see where it could go, is an excellent exercise, and could turn into an excellent story in its own right at some point in the future.

Being observant of what’s around us is part of what makes a writer a writer (or, for that matter, makes an actor an actor). Letting yourself do something with what you observe, though…that’s where the discipline comes into play, and its that discipline that I’m hoping to cultivate in the coming months.

Un-Packing

Dave, you ask, why is it that you haven’t posted anything for nearly a week?

You weren’t asking that? Oh, well…just pretend that you were for a moment and I’ll humor you with a response.

You see, we’ve been moving.

Again.

I wrote more than one post about the apartment in which we lived for several years in Virginia. I still miss it, actually, because so many huge events in our lives occurred there, not the least of which was the fact that it was where we brought our daughter home to after she was born. I’ve never experienced an emotional problem moving from one apartment to the next in my life, but that particular time I did. We packed our lives in a truck and off to New England we drove, where I have since gone to school for a quick certification and changed careers. That was the first time we had moved in at least four years. That was one year ago.

In that year, we’ve moved two more times. Three moves in one year, one of which was a state-to-state move. First we lived with some family (there comes an age in one’s life beyond which you shouldn’t try that…), then a tiny little apartment reminiscent of our first apartment together that barely fit our basic necessities, and now, finally, into a nice, full-sized place again. I feel as though I can breathe for the first time in a year.

I also feel more than a bit discombobulated.

I’ve always believed that where you are is more that just where you are. Where you live molds some part of who you are, and certainly has had it’s role in molding who Karen and I are as a couple, and now as a family of three. We’re choosy about where we live (which is part of what made the last year so stressful, because being a full-time student drastically limits your ability to be choosy), and choosing to conform our lives to environments that were inhibiting to that negatively impacted us emotionally and spiritually. Such is the sacrifice of going to school, but I hadn’t anticipated that it would be nearly as difficult as it was with a family.

This week, however, though completely exhausted, I’m feeling, for the first time in a year, a sense of normalcy in our lives. As more of our furniture arrives from storage and we can place more and more books back onto shelves and art back onto walls, I begin to feel like Karen and I are regaining a huge part of us to which we haven’t had easy access for a long time. Again, it was a sacrifice, and one that has ultimately paid off, as education always does. I’m just very glad that it’s over.

I’m also very glad that I have hauled my last heavy load upstairs for at least a few days.

And, as the dust settles and my back-aches go away, I’ll be writing more regularly here soon.