Stream of Consciousness in a Virtual Format (an Experiment)

Here I am, once again. Torn into pieces.

Just kidding. I’m not “torn” as Kelly Clarkson might say but I am indeed being pushed to a new frontier, into something different… by my own mind… by the need to do something “new”. When in fact of course nothing new has ever been done.

I don’t know what I mean by that. Do you ever say things and then realize that what you have said is absolutely ludicrous or just plain wrong?

I’m not sure I do. But I do sometimes hear myself talk and reply, inwardly, “What the fffffffff are you saying?”

So, here I am. Stream of consciousness. 10 minutes. Virtual format because I don’t want to have to deal with transcribing my horrific handwriting into Google Docs after the fact.

If you’ve ever read The Artist’s Way, you know what I’m doing here. (If you haven’t read it, look up Morning Pages and come back to me.) I just need to stop thinking so much. Whenever I think less, I do better. I am better. Except when I make bad mistakes. Bad decisions. Then I am worse.

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Back to handwriting for a second. It’s not that I’ve always had bad handwriting — I only sometimes do — it’s that it changes. I remember as far back as high school… is it that far back? Yes. I remember I was irritated and fascinated by the fact that my handwriting seemed to change. It morphed. Sometimes small and neat. Other times loopy, messy, large. I remember thinking I was maybe schizophrenic. That this could be a sign of an early onset, or something.

My attention was brought to it by something I read in In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I loved that book. It was one of the first times I could remember identifying the fact that I loved bad characters. Bad people. In stories. Not in life. And then I read Othello for the first time. And that was the end of that. Oh, Iago. I love you. And! I loved that class — AP Language — and my teacher. Marybeth, if ever you read this (or maybe I’ll send it to you) — I will see you again one day.

One day, I started asking myself why I loved bad characters. What was it exactly that intrigued me so much? That they were more interesting than the heroes? More complicated? At the time, I didn’t realize that other writers, other creators, realized this too. Now I can point to dozens of shows and films where the primary characters… protagonists… are not quintessentially “good” people.

These are my favorite shows.

But what does “good” even mean? They follow the rules? They don’t litter? They call their mother every Sunday? I have no idea.

What does “bad” mean? That was the question I set out to answer. So I wrote a sitcom. It’s called BAD. The pilot was getting produced back in March 2020. That never happened. But I still think about it. I still love it, though maybe not like I once did. I think I will still make it one day.

It’s about — no. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about.

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My ten minutes are up. I’m going to do some light grammatical edits and then post this as is. As an experiment.

Life is an experiment. One big one. And I’m determined to start living it that way.