Diamonds in the
muck
Things grow in shit.
Modern gardeners use processed cow shit to ,make their
greenery bloom. Bat shit known as guano has been harvested and sold for
centuries as fertilizer for farmers. In many countries human shit has been
saved and harvested for use by farmers as long as farming has existed.
What – if anything – does any of this have to do with
writing?
Everything.
Shit is a vital part of farming for
chemical/biological reasons. But there are equally true reasons why ephemeral
experiences/trash from a cultural viewpoint are just as vital to a writer’s
development.
Ray Bradbury, one of the greatest writers and
definitely one of the greatest fantasy authors of the twentieth century, wrote
about his childhood in mid-western America during the early part of the 20th
century. He said everything he
experienced – comic books, comic strips, movies, action/comedy/horror - settled
into his subconscious, became part of the underlying sub-strata or ‘muck’ that
resides in every human being.
Everyone in this psychologically obsessed age knows
without needing elaboration that the emotional events of our life affect our
lives, can scar us in ways that may last a lifetime. The transient cultural
world in which we live affects us – maybe not as dramatically but it provides
the soil in which our dreams, our ideas, our inspiration grow.
A long time ago I read a brief wire news story about a
man piloting a small plane that crashed in a forested area only a few hundred
yards from a highway in Georgia. With both legs broken, he crawled for two days
to the highway and flagged down help for
his wife, whom he had left in the plane. When they found her she was dead. What
haunts me to this day is what happened to the man. How does anyone survive something like that?
I’ve read and loved comic books most of my life. Of all thousands of comics I’ve read, one sticks in my mind. I think it was “King Conan” or it may have been “Kull” It was a short story about the barbarian Conan or Kull leading a group of mercenaries to sack a ghost ridden castle rife with riches – and death.
One mercenary, brave and smart and fearless, fought his way to the central treasure chamber. When Kull gave the word to retreat with their riches, everyone fled. Except the one man who knew the value of petty things like riches and gold that could always be replaced, but did not know the value of important things – like his life which could not be replaced. And so he slept the sleep of death surrounded by treasure he would never enjoy.
Recently I’ve acquired a firestick for access to all
kinds of television programming through some eclectic viewing. One of the
programs has been a gritty British cop drama about an undercover Irish cop. It
has the required tension and good writing to make it compulsively watchable.
But its lure is so much more. It illustrates the way the undercover life he
leads literally strips away every reason he has to go on living.
This cop is the good guy dealing with cold blooded
murderers, But, he smokes constantly, drinks enough to pickle anyone’s liver, and
has sex with any woman he finds attractive and some any decent cop – any decent
human being – would leave alone. But he smokes and drinks and beds women because it is the only way he can keep going.
His young daughter had her throat cut in front of his then-wife by Irish
terrorists. He gets his best – and only true friend – killed by involving him
in an undercover case. A female undercover cop he’s had a relationship with is
kidnapped, raped repeatedly and driven insane in a case involving police
corruption. And then there’s his mother he's losing to dementia and his father
who’s been worn down and likely to die sooner than his wife.
In other words,
he has no one and nothing worth living for. Except his job, which he’s lost
faith in. The last scene in the series shows him alone in a car putting a revolver to his temple, then sticking it in
his mouth as if he can’t decide which way he wants to go out. I’ve never been
able to watch the last few minutes. To show him surviving seems fake. To see
him put a bullet into his brain would be the ultimate – what the hell is the
point of it all – depressing end to a
good man destroyed by a job we asked him to do. I don’t see any, happy ending.
And then there’s
“Storm”, another Brit show- I
love Brit television and its cop shows and mysteries. If the Irish undercover
cop show is depressing as hell, Storm is the ultimate feel-good viewing experience.
Its star is the big Norwegian type actor who’s made a career playing a
scientist in the Marvel’ “Thor” movies and later the first Loki tries to
conquer New York Avengers flick. So I didn’t expect too much from him. Here, he
is a stolid unemotional cop who seems to be going crazy talking to the ghost of
his murdered partner. He talks to someone no one else can see and insists on
investigating the murder of the cop who has ties to a powerful criminal family.
But he can't or won’t stop investigating even when his
job is at stake and his questions lead him to his partner’s family for answers
– even though he desperately does not want to go there. It’s a limited run so
he solves the case and finds justice for his former partner and friend. But
that’s only the traditional who-dun-it.
The true ending occurs when this hard nosed cop dances
with his dead partner in the middle of the street. It’s elegant and lovely and
then the camera pans back to show him dancing with no one in the street,
smiling at thin air – it could make a hard man cry. Then we see through the
cop’s eyes and he is holding the woman everyone knew he loved and tells her for
the first and last time what he should have done long ago – that he loves her.
And whether true or a figment of his mind, she smiles at him and tells him she
loved him.
Now, some of this has slowly become part of me. Being a hero and doing the right thing
doesn’t mean you get that happy ending; sometimes there are no happy endings,
Sometime there could be a happy ending, but you say the right thing too late
and now it doesn’t matter anymore. And perhaps most important, you have to know
what matters in this life. You have to get your priorities straight.
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