Spurt

Sometimes, a lot of the time actually, my brain just makes up sentences of its own accord for no apparent reason.

Picture credit to friend & awesome artist Christine L.

            As temperamental as the play of light over a cathedral door, always in a state of fluctuating beauty against the tests of age and time. Separate pieces, but inherently pieces of a whole. A masterpiece in the making. Sweet one moment, playful the next, as if changing with the shifting sound waves in the air around, creating its product in reaction to its own product.

            That was the music he brought her. That was the melody she heard in her head as she scrambled for inspiration. Nothing could be better for spawning spontaneous creativity than spontaneous creativity. Every shift in the notes led her mind down a new direction, and the possibilities were endless. She can write forever, as long as there was enough song to match the gliding of her pen across paper, a dance in tandem, for the sole purpose of creation. This is where art is born, from the calloused fingertips of the passionate.

            A cascade of notes, like a shower of rain, or an early spring breeze through silver wind chimes. Music that swells from someplace far away, a place where laughs are made to add years to people’s lives, where skies are forever blue and birds in tropical colours shatter monotony with the charms of their rainbow songs. Art made between stone walls and stress lined papers, in the heart of a bustling yet troubled city. Focal point. Vantage point. Starting point, for a new study to a new Renaissance. How fitting, on this eve of Easter.

All the Unsaid

Write from the heart. Let the words breathe the same air as that of your soul. Hide within fiction all that you can
never say.

They were so young, back when their worlds first collided on a note strung high on a violin string, at some street corner in the middle of the fall months. She was just nineteen, only a sophomore in college; he was but a year older. Among the hundreds that attended the music festival that day, he drew her attention. She was intrigued by the bubble of calm contemplation around him, by the quiet observance with which he watched the violinist, by the angular lines of his face, his tall, lanky build, the delicately flexible structure of his hands. He had the build of an athlete, the face of someone who spent his days under the wind and sun, and the hands of an artist. Yes, she was intrigued, as intrigued as she was even further back, in a time of grass and open Midwestern air.

Was it even fair to him to serve six years as nothing more than an echo of what she was looking for? Because, she realizes now, that everything that she loved in him, was but an echo, a shadow of something much more, that she loved much more in someone else.

Thoughts?

My Friends Are My Muse

Things they do, things they say, the quirks of their personality. My books are made up by the compiled seconds of the lives around me.
Thanks Tiara for the quote (bolded) :)

“It’s not a good play,” he groans.

“Anthony, have you read the reviews?” Emma asks in exasperation. “The audience, every audience who sees this, completely loves it! How can you possibly say it’s not a good play?”

He shrugs. “It’s different. This is different. Performing at theater festivals and local stages are two whole different things.”

“I know, but—” Emma tries to interject.

“Maybe it’s only so successful because we’re the best, in this group of small crappy productions. It’s like a fish in a small pond. But going on Broadway is like freefalling into the middle of the Pacific! Everything is competition, really… competitive competition! It’s not good enough to go up against that. We’re drowning here, Emma,” Anthony finishes his angry spurt and sinks even further into this depressed state.

A sort of stunned silence follows. Emma doesn’t know what to do, or say. She’s already invested so much—mostly the months and months of time—into this whole thing. She believed in Anthony, believed in the play. Now, the possibility of him backing out on her doesn’t just sting. It hurts. “You’re not giving up on me, are you?” she whispers.

Anthony gives her that hopeless look she knows too well, has seen too much. Then, out of the blue… “I hate freelancing,” he tells her flatly. “It sucks the soul out of writing.” And when he looks at her again, Emma sees reflected in his eyes his secrets of the past eight years: the expectations for him to go to school closer to home, preferably the ones that offered him a soccer scholarship; the vague disappointment in his choice of Johns Hopkins, the choice of Writing Seminars, of all things, as a major; the unspoken but ever since presence of the pressure to make good, practical well salaried use of this expensive education he insisted on getting; the unpredictable job that paid decently well in only the best of times, mediocrely in the worst, and barely pressed against a talent of his that he’d once loved and found sanctuary in. Eight years have made him volatile, drifty as flyaway as the Oklahoma breezes that tousled his hair, her skirts, dandelion seeds burdened with hushed wishes. He needs stability, Emma realizes. Something to latch onto, something solid and definite and physically grounded. For a moment, a most inappropriate smile threatens to make an appearance as she conjures a mental image of Anthony secured to a rocky mountainside by a rainbow colored kite string, flapping in the wind that drives adventurous skiers down the same steep slopes. She knows Emma’s Play is Anthony’s biggest and possibly only chance to make something of his major, one that David’s wordless scoff describes so well. And if the void of nonexistent or perhaps simply unknown or unborn, agent replies is disconcerting to her, it must be frightening to his dramatically creative mind. She flounders around in her head for something fitting, something comforting to say, and finally manages to utter, “Drowning is not the same as dying.”

Anthony flashes a quick and emotionless smile. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s hope for us yet.” And it comes in a sudden moment of clarity and genius. “Matthew Eliot.”

He stares at her. “Matthew Eliot?”

Emma sighs, trying to reign in the frantic racing of her mental processes. “I don’t know how to explain, but there’s this gut feeling that his is more… valuable than he seems.”

“Emma, I think taking into account that he managed the festival stuff, he’s very valuable,” Anthony says evenly.

“No, that’s not what I meant. Think about it. He was a freelance writer, or says he was, but he’s still involved in the whole publishing and production industry. He was a writer type person, yet his official job title is administrator in one of the city’s private schools. He knows about book publishing, he knows about theater production, he’s friendly enough to most people. At least enough so people are willing to work with him.” Emma explains and pauses to see if Anthony has put two and two together yet.

He hasn’t.

“I think, truly think,” Emma enunciates slowly, “that your friend Matthew Eliot would make a fine agent.”

Anthony lets this sink in. Matthew Eliot is a strange character no doubt, but he has been immensely helpful with everything from budgeting to casting to marketing to the actual production. Not to mention, after working with him for those few weeks it became clear that Matthew Eliot is a fairly well versed with the literary industry and the city that would serve as their audience. He would do. “I’ll call him next weekend,” Anthony decides.

Emma nods. “Good. Then we swim.”

Thoughts?