|
Tick,tock, tick,tock.
Imagine that the space in the
file is actually the time left on the clock, so that the bomb will go off
at that place in the story when the file will no longer hold anymore letters.
The time-space continuum takes on a special meaning then for both myself
and for the reader. We must, for once in our life then, contemplate seriously,
the idea of death; not the physical death that may yet be years down the
road, but the more important metaphysical death that will occur at the
end of the story, a story we both already know will be as incomplete as
our lives will be on that day when physical death comes our way.
ï Why is it that people
assume that on the day they die their life will be wrapped up tightly like
the well constructed nineteenth century novel? Has a single person ever
died without a suitcase full of unfinished business? I tend to doubt it.
In fact, I'm apt to believe that most of us die with more loose ends than
not.
Still, I need to begin peopling
this story with characters who can be blown to smithereens when the clock
ticks its last letter. How does one make such decisions? Well, one of the
ways I make such decisions is to get outside of the story for a moment
and grab something from the so called "real world." As I write this I am
listening to a Kate Wolf song, and though Kate is already dead, the idea
of killing her again in an act of literary terrorism seems inappropriate
enough, disrespectful enough, that it actually is terroristic. So now there
is me, and you reader, and Kate Wolf, all here and ready to die together
when the story goes BOOM. We are probably at one of Kate's concerts, which
means there are a lot of Kate's groupies here too, all preparing to die.
Now think about this for a moment.
To save yourself all you need to do is stop reading the story. To stop
reading, or in my case, to stop writing it, is the equivalent of walking
out the door, getting into your car, and driving home. That is a choice
you actually have as a reader, to run and save your own hide, leaving me
and Kate and several dozen, or perhaps several hundred, of her fans here
to die in the explosion.
Of course, since it is only
a metaphysical explosion we are preparing ourselves to experience, the
question of courage is lessened a bit. Most people would agree that, it
isn't entirely insane to stay around for a mere symbology, whereas if this
terrorism was of the kind say, that was perpetrated on Oklahoma City, we'd
all have to be pretty nuts not to stop reading, writing, singing, dancing,
drinking, pissing, or whatever else would be happening at a Kate Wolf concert.
To be fair however, there are those who believe that taking part in this
kind of effigy, is as bad or even worse than taking part in a real suicide.
They say that this kind of chemistry experiment is destructive to the soul,
that when it is all over we may have become strangers to ourselves, and
that we could, for the rest of our lives, be roaming the earth feeling
that we exist in an alien world. My experience shows me that this is possible,
and so, for those who think holding on to some last grain of innocence
is important, may I suggest that you read some other story of mine which
might be just as quirky but a little less of an assault on your youth.
For the rest of you who have
survived such bombardings before, who have survived Dali or Goya or the
assassinations of Rimbaud, what can something like this mean? I mean, it's
a lot like the interview I heard on ESPN tonight while driving home, the
interview with Mo Vaughn, the fine slugger for the Boston Red Sox. The
interviewer was asking Mo if he thought he would still be with the sox
when it was time to renew his contract, and Mo began to talk about Roger
Clemens, who the sox let get away, saying that Clemens was the greatest
pitcher they've ever had, a hall of famer, and if they couldn't find the
will to keep him on the team then how much could he, who was nowhere near
that class, count on such will? Anyway, I had no idea that Mo Vaughn and
Roger Clemens were Kate Wolf fans until now. As the writer, I can assure
you, they are both here for the duration. Imagine, a hall of fame pitcher
being the victim of a terrorist act, and right at the peak of his career,
near the end of a Cy Young award season, just because his name was mentioned
on the radio at an inopportune moment. Unbelievable! But it's always unbelievable
when something happens like this. The question isn't why a writer would
get to the point where he would write something like this; but rather,
how miraculous it is that more writers don't take to such acts!
Still others argue that the
metaphysical act takes more courage. They point to the hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions of gutsy workmen who have over the past century, walked
fearlessly along the beams of skyscrapers in progress, building our great
metropolises, hundred plus story buildings, or bridges, the same people
who have trouble balancing themselves on the curb of a sidewalk or on the
rail of a trestle. Yet these fearless people become like frightened mice
being stalked by a snake when they encounter the obscurity of a poem or
the intellectual depth of an idea. I wonder if this confirms the old adage
that a person who has no fears is a person who doesn't know how to think?
During intermission I decide
that the only right thing to do is to let the characters here know what's
going on. I go up onto the stage and I grab the microphone.
"Hi, I'm Bruce Haws," I tell
them, "the author of the story. I just want to let everyone know that there's
a bomb set to go off during the concert."
Actually, I've thought about
it again, and I've decided not to inform the characters about this. How
real is a terrorist act if all the people who are scheduled to die are
given the freedom to bolt? Besides, once I begin down that road, I'll have
to make choices I don't want to make, like, who decides to leave and who
decides to stay. What if Kate herself decides to leave, or take an extra
long break smoking weed in the bus or van or whatever she uses to get around
to these concerts? What if Roger Clemens decides he'd rather be pitching
that night instead of being killed in the explosion. And the many others
whose heads I'd have to enter as they try to make the decision to leave,
die, or believe it's all a big hoax, a false alarm, a toothless threat.
As Kate sings now about the
Continental Divide, I recall having backpacked on that trail some years
ago, taking the time to hoof it up to the top of Mt. Elpert which shared
that part of the heavens with several other tall peaks that from time to
time seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch with a finger. In
Colorado, each of these peaks has their own fan club, people who pack huge
rocks up to their summits, and stack the rocks so that the total height
of the mountain will be several feet higher than other peaks. What this
has to do with the bombing I'm not really sure. Perhaps the writer subconsciously
prefers another singer to Kate, and this is his way of piling rocks, or
perhaps an act like this is a way of piling rocks up for Kate, making her
a few feet taller in the eyes of the public by giving her this kind of
off color publicity. In the more traditional story it is usually determinable,
is it not, what the author's motives are? True, the debates often go on
in academic circles for centuries calling such clarity back into question;
still, we retain the belief that the meanings of those texts are decipherable,
if not by the intellect than by some strange mixture of intellect and emotion.
But a bombing like this is a totally meaningless act. It has no cause,
for instance, like in the Arab-Israeli conflict, or those perpetrated by
the Irish Republican Army. The truth is that I saw an ad in The American
Book Review for writings on terrorism, felt that it was speaking to me,
and went right to work. I had none of the problems Hamlet had, didn't need
to go around testing the validity of if that ad was actually written to
me or if it was something out of my disturbed imagination that made me
think so. I gave up that kind of questioning a long time ago. I treat my
visions the same as I would an old friend calling to ask me a favor. If
I've got the time and the energy, I do it, unless I don't want to do it,
in which case I don't. And if that friend gives me flack about it, why
hell, I put him or her right into the story, sit that person right up in
the first row where Kate's bloodshot eyes can be studied as she strums
the guitar.
One of Kate's fans comes up
to me now and accuses me of slander, libel, defamation of character. For
a moment I wonder if I've transferred myself to Paris during the thirties.
That kind of thing often happens in these stories. I make an association
of some kind and I'm gone, like a Mo Vaughn shot that some pitcher mistakenly
threw right in his wheel house. But I know that that just wouldn't be fair
to do in this story, to be sitting at some cafe near the Villa Borghese
when the bomb goes off. I don't have much respect for terrorists who don't
show enough respect to go out with their enemies. Of course these aren't
even my enemies. The young woman who is questioning me is not someone I
have anything whatsoever against. In fact she too is willing to go up with
the metaphysical bomb. What she's protesting is my continued references
to Kate smoking marijuana. She insists that Kate never did such a thing.
She says she's sat in the first row at a dozen Kate Wolf concerts and never
once saw the great folk singer with bloodshot eyes. "Never once," she repeats.
And she doesn't think it's right that I let my imagination dominate the
story like this, that I project some stereotype about the life style of
musicians into the tale and lead the reader to believe Kate was this stereotype.
I try to explain to her that
this is an act of terrorism, this tale, and that the metaphor of terrorism
has to correspond to something. "If I'm not allowed something as minor
as that, I might as well leave," I say. "Just the fact that I have allowed
you to question this puts the whole concept of this story in jeopardy."
What I don't tell her is how
attracted to her I am, that I risked the entire suspense of the tale just
so that I might meet her, though I wasn't aware of that when she first
started speaking to me. I suppose the first inkling I had was when I chose
to call her a young woman. Did the reader catch the slight shift that took
place at that time? Other than that I didn't describe her at all. I'm sure
that you saw a totally different face and figure than I did.
Anyway, I am asking her how
it is that she knew that I was a writer. "I'm not very well known."
As it turns out she was paying
attention when I made the announcement about the bomb from the stage. "You
almost erased it in my mind too," she says. "Just a little nagging something
stayed with me, led me to go back and read it again."
As it turns out, she is very hip to
metaphysical death, tells me that in a past life she knew Neitszche. She
even proposes that if I'd like to save myself, she will take over typing
the letters. "I'm just a suburban girl with bad thoughts," she explains,
"but this would give me a chance to really do something worthy."
"I've got three problems with
that," I tell her. "First, I don't respect terrorists that don't die with
their bombs."
"Just because you won't respect
yourself later doesn't mean you won't do it," she says. "Hell, if I were
to go to bed with someone like you I probably wouldn't respect myself later.
But that doesn't mean I might not do it in the heat of the moment."
She makes a good argument. "Number
two, I don't trust you," I tell her. "If I left the machine with you, you
might begin messing around with the story."
"The only thing I'll change
are the passages about Kate taking drugs," she says. "I promise."
She's much too beautiful not
to pretend I believe her. I don't even waste my time trying to convince
her that such power can easily go to one's head, that she might start off
with good intentions but once she tastes the fruits of writing fiction
she'd be enslaved
|