The New Novel

    Remember those stories I told you? I turned them into a novel. It almost killed me, but after we talked, I finally finished the thing. I had a publisher ready to send a check and a bunch of free copies, and I was like--After all that work, I’m going to sign away my baby for a few thousand bucks? It’s true what they say about completing a book, it really is like giving birth, and you really do think on it like a parent does a child. Ironically or not, when I finished, I remember feeling like--I'm never doing something stupid like that again! Seriously, writing a novel can kill you. I mean a literary novel, one that tries to take the past, combine it with what’s on the horizon, and make life relevant--that attempt to give meaning to us little monkeys who are sometimes very warm, soft and furry inside, and other times as cunning and deadly as all the teeth and claws that have ever torn something apart. Anyone says writing a novel is not the most difficult thing to do doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Anyone ever tells you they’re working on a novel, be kind to them. And if you do write one, guess what? Even though it will have been the hardest thing you ever do? It might go unnoticed. Not too long ago humanity was on the cusp between real books and e-books. I finished mine somewhere in that gap. What was funny in my case though is, remember how I told you about when I was in my twenties and how I used to sell those automotive booklets door to door in Los Angeles? Well, I found out I could sell copies of the novel out on the street. I’d walk around with a backpack full, and by three or so in the afternoon I had more for the day than if I was working for someone else--and all in cash--or things I traded for, like food and beer. In fact, I drove from Santa Barbara to the east coast and back one summer on my own little book tour. I got lucky with a nice photo for the cover, and the woman who did the interior design was a perfectionist, so it came out really good; a true book art; a book that’s an object of art. And when people would ask what it’s about I’d tell them it’s about a surfer in Malibu, Americana, rock and roll, all that. It was pretty easy to sell. Anyway, I don’t want to get ahead of myself because there’s a lot I want to tell you since all that other stuff.

    I’ll start where we last left off, when we’re in that bar on 52nd, and I was telling you about the actress. And how I went to see her in a play, and how I told her she was my muse, and how she even agreed to sit for a moment before her matinee performance the next day--to discuss things that interested her--ideas for a play. And then how a year later, I went to see her again and found out she was planning on spending the rest of her life with someone else. And that’s what I was doing in the bar in the first place, in misery about her. I left, went to the park, sat on a bench, and started balling my head off. I thought I was going to be able to handle it, tell myself it was OK, everything happens for a reason, there are plenty of women out there--all that. But then I started thinking about all that lead up to it, and how she really did inspire me to finish a novel and write my first plays, and she really was my muse. I flashed to the day of sitting outside the theatre with her, when she told me how much she loved the stage and how she couldn’t live without it. And how even before that I had always liked it when film actors commented in interviews or on late-night shows that they preferred the stage--like they’re a certain breed of people, like wild horses or something--and they need that fourth wall open to an audience, to range out into, to deliver ideas, to move people to laugh or cry. And she’s Shakespearean too, I flashed to her saying that playing Juliet at age twenty was one of the most cherished memories of her life. She’s all that--my muse--and I just sat there, all that going through my mind, interspersed with thoughts about how she’s now out in the world with someone else--gone; how I’d never wake up with her in the morning, walk hand in hand to rehearsals for the day--all that. That was the life I was supposed to be living, and not only was it not happening, the thought of creating anything new was like thinking about how to pick up the Empire State building and move it somewhere else. I shuddered, and if the loss of her was the loss of inspiration, was this really the end of my life as an artist? And if this was the end of my life as an artist, would I be able to go on? Would I actually be able to survive this? Was this was the beginning of the end? I remembered the book about the artist/muse relationship and the stories about artists who lost their muse some way or another, and how that was the end of their life as an artist. They never wrote another poem, never picked up the paint brush or the guitar again. This one French poet, who was also a playwright, and who had gotten farther than me--who had written stuff for his muse, her even starring in it--when he found out it wasn’t going to happen, he just said, “I’m out of here,” and hung himself. I was thinking to myself, like--Yeah man, you followed your heart, and now you just found out the truth, and all that gold you mined, all the effort and steam of inspiration provided by her--it was suddenly as meaningless as a bunch of ashes at my feet. Sitting there, knowing she was somewhere else on the island, getting ready for a play, and I was nowhere in mind--it was horrific. The grief came in waves and all these thoughts and emotions combined in a moment and I must have passed out because the next thing I know, there’s like three or four people crouched down around me asking if I’m all right. The side of my face was even scraped and bleeding from where I rolled off the bench and hit the bricks.

    It was the worst way the sacred alliance of artist/muse could end--or, not the worst--but one of the last steps toward the worst. And I’m not using the word sacred lightly, I mean we all thrive on the creativity arising out of the human condition, right? Think about what life would be without art, if you woke up into a Twilight Zone where you turned on your device and there was no music or cartoons on it, and you went into town and there were no theatres, no galleries or museums to wander through. Life without art is incomprehensible, like trying to imagine surfing where Earth had no ocean. Of all human art--or a lot of it--in order for it to come into existence, it requires inspiration just like tress and flowers require water. The artist needs it and when they get it, that’s when we end up saying things like--Wow, that’s an inspired piece of work!

    And it doesn’t have to be art only, but science too, because art and science are just two sides of the same coin, both are built on what’s already become known. And inspiration doesn’t have to be huge to be considered sacred, either, even if it’s as small as the inspiration from the hot shift manager at the fast food place that gives the prep cook better care in preparing a sandwich--someone who inspires someone else to excel, regardless of the endeavor or task at hand--or inspires any thought, intention, or act made towards creating a more beautiful world--it has to be sacred because anything humans have ever considered sacred is part of the world, so any striving to make it more enjoyable or understandable or both has to be sacred too--right? Unless you’d rather be robot instead of human, then maybe the artist/muse thing isn’t all that sacred.

    Anyway, I got back to California with an abrasion on the side of my face, and the next day a friend called. He was from the crew of surfers who used to walk parade routes selling cotton candy, popcorn and sodas, back when we were all in our twenties.

    “Hey man, whaddaya have going right now?” he asked.

    “Not much, I just got back from spending all my money on a trip to New York.”

    “Oh cool, what took you out there?”

    “There was a play I wanted to see.”

    “You flew to New York to see a play?”

    “There was an actress in a play that I wanted to see.”

    “You few out to New York to see an actress in a play? Nice! I guess that’s good for me.”

    “How’s that?”

    “Because you’re broke and need work--right?”

    “Yeah, ok.”

    “You know the Olympics are coming up soon, right?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Well,” he said, “I just dropped a few grand on some official Olympic merchandise.”

    “You mean sell it to people going in and out of the stadium?”

    “No, a little more adventurous than that,” he said. “You know how they light that huge flame at the beginning of the games?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Well, there’s a torch relay and that relay has a route.”

    “You mean, sell stuff along the route?”

    “It’s going to be full of people, just like at a parade.”

    The Olympic Flame commemorates when Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. It represents the light of spirit and knowledge, the pursuit of perfection, the struggle for victory, and life itself. In ancient times it was lit from mirrors focusing rays of the Sun at the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece. They do the same thing today except it’s in front of the ruins of the temple, and it’s a modern parabolic mirror that ignites the initial torch. The flame travels around Greece, and after a ceremony in Athens, it begins its journey to the host city. The relay ends at the opening ceremony when the final torch-bearer runs up a staircase in the arena and lights a huge cauldron to mark the start of the games.

    The Olympic Torch Relay was going to be a little over two months long and it was going through every state except Alaska and Hawaii. We had a passenger van. We took out the back two seats for merchandise, and took off having no idea what to expect.

    Each day the flame would head out of the city it had stopped in the night before, meaning they would have a ceremony in the morning where the first runner would light their torch and begin running the route. The runner at the edge of the city would light a flame in a sculpted bronze bowl on the back of a truck, where it would then go to another town or city to begin another route. We called it the Torch Train, because all in all it was a caravan of cars and vans. If you were waiting at the curb, the way it appeared as it passed, was: first the corporate-sponsor trucks and cars handing out sodas, and little plastic flags, passed by; then local cops blocking off intersections; then the shuttle that dropped off runners; then some Olympic Committee cars; then a small pack of motorcyclists who set the butane of a new runner, then media vans and a truck with a platform for cameras; then the runner with the flame; and finally the gaggle of support vehicles and locals.