Saturday, January 03, 2004

film: House of Shadow and Fog--ben kingsley will be oscar nominated

Still reading 'Don Quixote"

Author: Giles Blunt

BCPL.net/inmoskowi/holmes
Saturday, January 3, 2004
My bullshit button was stuck but there's some good advice among the turds.

Dear Michael,

There is a new book on the life of Goya (not the Robert Hughes-another) called, "To Every Story There Belongs Another," which is, I believe, the title of one of Goya's paintings. I don't know whether you, yourself, can write the first story as well as the second (another) story (can anyone)? but it is a good marker to keep in mind as you write.

Will you write a confession nuanced with exposure of false bravado? Or is it to be a memoir?

I think you will have little trouble exposing the warts and uncovering the scabs. You've had plenty of practice during your lifetime and you believe in scarification. Every scar, every wrinkle, is evidence of a life lived on the field-not in the bunkers.

But I think that something else is warranted. I am glad that it is you who has the assignment and not I. This is going to be wrenching work. Harder than honest therapy. "Harder than golf." You must write a dialog between generations as well as your biography. I think that this is what Jason had in mind.

What to leave out? Nothing. You will rise to the challenge and stick to it.

As you find your way you will guide future generations of Gross'. The current generation is asking what happened and why did it happen. It is your grand chance to save your life-and your Dad's too-from that ephemeral smoke out of which all our lives wisp. So much is lost already.

I bet Paul Gross could help.

You must reach into that lost anger, the shame, each and every different grief, and the fear; and you must deliver each of your passions to your children and to their children with honesty. Can you be brutal with yourself? Are you going to "snap, jangle, abrade?" Will the whiskey times have their part?

Long quotations can be death to the reader; but after all are any of us up to writing our story with originality? When appropriate why not quote from our betters?

Here's what Larry, the fallen Wobbly, says in The Iceman Cometh:

"I was forced to admit, at the end of thirty years' devotion to the Cause, that I was never made for it. I was born condemned to be one of those who has to see all sides of a question. When you're damned like that, the questions multiply for you until in the end it's all questions and no answer. As history proves, to be a worldly success at anything, especially revolution, you have to wear blinders like a horse and see only straight in front of you. You have to see too, that this is all white and that all black. "

Tough to say, tough to write. I know you never wore blinders and yet you were able to push through, to take stands, you were (are) able to Know the Way.

This is what you are being asked to write by your children. They want to hear from you while you can do the work.

You might also tell them what fruit you left on the table un-tasted, and the degree to which you regret it. Everything is worth talking about.

Avoid the easy temptation of sanctimony.

And now, can you write about how different things look at this age? It's not just our worsening eyes is it? Does the blurring soften everything? Does time heal all wounds?

And I hope you will remember the bowels of compassion. Keep them open and free.

And will you be afraid to share the true story and honest appraisal of your life with your family. I think that that the very writing of it will excite you. What a project. You can always keep it in your safe if you have something that must wait disclosure….