Redemption

It’s redemption you’re writing about. I said.

I want to share my story and be an inspiration for others.

But it sounds like you want to explain yourself and get pity. Also you eulogized the life. 

But I don’t mean to

I know but you do. 

Your story is that of the prodigal son. To the pig the muck was good and tasted good but the tale focuses on reunion and the fatted calf.

I’d like people to read my story and avoid what I did.

But you want an audience. This is a journal and at times it reads as a journa one would keep locked by the bed and hope never to have read.  These are private thoughts but when you make them public you must polish them.  We all say we want the unwashed truth but the libraries are full of that. What sells is the gossip column and the afternoon television. If you want an editor or publisher to like your tale you must wash it and dress it up.  It’s even better if there’s work clothes and panties.  A flavour of sex and violence and suffering. All that sells. Not the suffering of poor weather. Perhaps in the 18th century but not today.  Even the prostitutes and warriors have fallen and told all. Aurelius is still on the shelves along with the Story of O.  What does your personal tale add to the cacaphony of sound the audience must choose from.

“It’s my story,” he said, sadly.

“I know but you’re asking it to be ‘their’ story. You want them to buy it and own it and share it. This is a dirty business. Not for the sensitive. Remember that lovely girl who wrote such beautiful songs. One of them was so heart wrenching, Look what they’ve done to my song, Ma.”  Or consider Joni Mitchell. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

The only way you can keep your story your own and pure is if you burn it.  There’s smoke of empires still lingering in the air .  IF that’S what you want you can.  Dying poor and unknown is no novelty. It’s the tragedy of the unsung masses. But you said you wanted to be read.

So your narrative must be moving and interesting. You must get out of your head and provide description.” The master mistress said, moving to the espresso machine where she rinsed the ports filter before filling it with fresh roaster coffee. Placing her cup beneath the spout she flicked the switch.  Watching the tasse fill slowly with that favourite of rushing sounds she shut off the machine when the black liquid gold had reach just the right distance below the rim. Taking the Billy Bee honey from the counter she squeezed a few drops into the steaming brew.   Opening the fridge she took the cream and topped up the espresso to create a crude cafe au lait. She rarely made time to use the steamer. 

You see she said.  Telescoping and Microscoping. Moving in and out of the story.  You are thinking without showing. There’s a flat terrain to your delivery. Your experiences are rich and wonderful like any knight of the realm but in medieval times even the king hired poets to write their exploits. The Irish story tellers were the best adding dragons and describing the world of men in mythical tales. We don’t quite know what is true looking back. Were giants slain or just tiny men telling fish tales in their days claiming to have killed thousands in fields of combat when indeed the numbers were mere dozens.  Mark Twain himself said never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.  Life is fiction when retold. So we simply must get rid of the boring bits as much as the writer cherishes those.

But you cut pages and pages of my work.  Do you know how many years that took to live and how many nights it cost me to write those.”

Yes. I’ve edited myself like a surgeon cutting huge chunks of flesh from a very fat lady to change her rotund featureless person back to the hourglass shape that attracted men to her before her gluttony and sloth took control.  Your excesses of thought and detail, explanation and commentary have no place in the modern world where tv and movies and Netflix compete with the written word more and more often sold in audio.  It’s as outdated as Chaucer and as hard to read.  No wonder the publishers rejected the mess. They couldn’t see the gold in the dross.  You must find the pearl in the clam or it will remain forever on the bottom of the ocean or be set aside by the fat guy at the table who much prefers the tasty bit to the shiny bit.  You must make the distinction and bring the gemstones from the earth to the jeweller or he simply won’t put them on display. It’s no longer about the art. It’s all about marketing. The greatest art is on the refridgerators placed there by loving mothers.  The Louve and all the galleries of the world hold the lesser works.  But they’re polished and mature and we don’t have to change their diapers.

I see

You don’t really. But you may. And if you cut away the fat and make your tale lean you can even through in a touch of commentary and sage wisdom out of the lips of those grey people you skipped in telling the POV of yourself, the lead protagonist, of course, in the memoir. But I want to see and hear what you saw and heard. I don’t want to just listen to your ‘despatches’ as if only your frowning father were the reader. The audience is everyone and the truer you are to the experience the more can join in and pay you for the pleasure of sharing your life. The greatest of movies about art was Being John Malkovetz.  Malkovetz found to his horror that his brain was being rented out for viewing as at a carnival. The best depiction of art ever made in the 20th century.  

A bit like Carry’s movie of his life as a movie with all the others as actors and actress. 

Yes, that was truly perfect. Before he went mad himself.  The artists moves so close to the insane it’s always well to remember Icarus.  Pride is like Avarice much more subtle and sensuous of sins than mere lust. Anger hides so well in passive aggressiveness and neglect that folk today hardly see the ugliness of it. They claim it’s righteous anger when it’s just sordid bitterness.

I don’t agree.

I wouldn’t think you would.  You’re writing on redemption.  That means you’re still seeking. Nothing wrong in that. But it s far from the end of the journey.

Meaning what, they answered in chorus, offended liking squawking baby birds sensing the end to the parents vomit.

Redemption is just the beginning.  Another tale follows that one.  When you simply tell the tale and don’t explain it you will know from your audience what is good.  Watch when they laugh in unison.  Now you feel they would mock you and worry they won’t understand. But the readers always the best critic. I’m just and editor. I’m no further along then you. Just a parallel path in the story. They’re the ones who will pay or not pay unless they are forced to read your work because some institution buys it and insists the young read it. That’s where the real money is, right up there with guns, flags, religious symbols and hats and gowns.  I’d rather a Lamborghini.  You don’t need to be good to get one of those. You can buy it yourself and thumb your nose at the worldly who feign erudition behind closed walls.

You mock academia.

No I envy it.