I stopped trying to hide my crazy a long time ago; it takes too much energy and it's like a 300lb woman who only wears black vertical stripes; it simply doesn't work.
I tend to fall in love with things that grip my imagination in a way that is very similar to having a disease. I
never get over them, I just learn to live with them. When I was in high school in the late '70's, my brother's friend, Brian, brought over some of
his older brother's Beatles LPs.
One look at the covers and one listen to the stuff inside and I was hooked, hogtied and forever a Beatlemaniac.
Not only did I spend the next few years collecting all the Beatles music, I read every book and magazine article I could find that mentioned any or all of them, including their manager Brian Epstein and Jimmy Nicol, the guy who sat in for Ringo (who was having his tonsils out) during a tour. I stayed up all night if a documentary on the band was on the tv schedule. This was decades before vcrs, dvds, tivo or on demand. Back in the dark ages, if we wanted to watch something, we were at the mercy of programming. Nowadays, of course, the second we realize we are interested in anything, there's Youtube. I swear, that's as close to time travel as any of us are ever going to get. I love it. It's way easier to be obsessive now than it ever has been.
While caught up in my Beatlemania, I also fell for other things, but not so hard. I read the Lord of the Rings five times between 1977 and 1982. I saw Star Wars 11 times in a theater. Remember; no vcrs. Once the movie was out of theaters, it was gone forever, or so we thought back them.
In the eighties, married and with two toddlers, I happened to catch Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video and it happened again. I spent the next few years collecting all things Peter Gabriel; records, books, interviews, magazines. Most of my HUGE crush on him is his voice; there's something about it that gets me right where I live. I could listen to him read the phone book and be perfectly content. Part of it is the fact that he
looks just like
this guy , who I have been crazy in love with for about a thousand years. I think that's why even though I fell in love with Jimmy Buffet's music at about the same time, I never went bonkers over him. I don't care where he went to school or where he met his first wife. What? Crazy isn't meant to make sense.
It isn't always music or musicians that fire up my brain. In the nineties (are you beginning to see a pattern, here?) I saw an ad for a tv show that looked intriguing; it involved gargoyles. So I watched my first episode of the X-files. That was 13 years ago and I can honestly say that not a single day has gone by since then when Mulder and Scully haven't crossed my mind at least once. The first dvd I ever bought was Season 1 of the X-files and I had to watch it at my sister's house because I didn't even own a dvd player.
I love books and I read all the time but books are different; they are self contained universes. There are many books I've read over and over (LOtR) and many authors whom I'll read every thing they write. Mark Helprin's writing is like listening to music. If Peter Gabriel ever read A Winter's Tale on cd, I'd listen to it every day for the rest of my life. Georgette Heyer, like Tolkien, wrote about a world I want to live in as often as possible. Louis L'Amour is the great American story teller. Anyone who wants to know
how to tell a story needs to read all the L'Amour they can get their hands on. I may wonder what Mulder and Scully did between Milagro and The Unnatural (clearly something HUGE occurred) but I never wonder how Tell Sackett dealt with losing his wife Ange because it's all there in The Sackett Brand. So, as much as I love them, books don't get a float in my crazy parade.
It took me until I was in my thirties to realize this comes naturally to me; I get it from my Dad. He spent over forty years as an investigative journalist. His JOB was to become interested in a subject, research the snot out of it, let the info consume his entire brain for weeks at a time and then distill it all into a four or five page article for the Reader's Digest for which he was paid enough to raise nine kids. He made it work for him.
I bring all this up only to explain that what I've been doing for the past month is perfectly in keeping with my personality. (When I told my sister what I had done, she said "Of course you did.") As an artist, I need to take my obsessions and channel them into creative expression. I need to make my crazy work for me.
Okay.
About two months ago, I was in Half Price Books and I bought the first season of
Veronica Mars because it starred an actress I like from Heroes and it was in the discount bin for under $16.00. It's a Noir show about a P.I and it's very dark, dealing with drug abuse, rape, incest, child abuse, infidelity and lots and lots of murder. It's so well written that I couldn't stop watching and burned through the existing two and nine tenths seasons in about two weeks.
I've never been so traumatized by a work of fiction in my life.
Heres the problem; the show was canceled two episodes shy of the third season finale.
THERE'S NO BLEEPING ENDING.
When I popped in the sixth disc of the third season and saw nothing but bonus features, I'm pretty sure I screamed "
Jesus Grampa, why'd you read me this thing?!!!"
I was so upset I had a stomach ache for three weeks.
Finally, as therapy, I decided there was only one thing for me to do; write the damn ending myself.
So I did.
Using the first two seasons as a template (tiny details in early episodes become huge plot points later on) I watched what there is of season 3 until I thought I could see patterns and then I played them all out to their logical conclusion. I also needed to internalize the speech patterns and personalities of all the characters I was attempting to write. In order for this to work, it had to be as authentic as I could make it; I invented no new characters, I gave no one talents or knowledge they wouldn't come by from previous experience and every behavior and decision by the characters that I wrote, I can justify with some scene from the show itself. The only liberty I took was that I used HBO language. I figured; let the censors clean it up.
The plot, as it developed in my head, consumed me to the point where I couldn't sleep. I sat up till 2:00 am writing the scenes I'd already figured out, fell asleep, dreamed of what had to happen next and popped awake around 6:00 am to write the first draft of the next scene. During the day, I had to keep up with my regularly scheduled life but I modified my behavior to allow nothing to distract me from the story; I stopped listening to the radio and only listened to music that kept me in the right frame of mind.
My family noticed this (more than usually) bizarre behavior on my part. Josie demanded to know why I kept watching the same tv episodes night after night after night. Jay asked me if I was having an online affair. Zack, who understands me better than they do, just rolled his eyes and went back downstairs to write his own stuff.
I told them what I was attempting to do. I'm not sure Jay believes me. Josie thinks it's hilarious. Yuck it up, kid. I'm your mom. Do you really think you'll be able to escape this behavior indefinitely?
I finished my series finale two days ago. I published it
here.
Carolyn, don't bother unless you've seen the show; it won't make sense.
I've gotten two of my sisters hooked on the show and when Katie finished S3, I told her what I had done.
I slept like a baby last night.
p.s. MJ- don't even think about peeking until you're done with the show! Every scene contains spoilers.
