This weekend marked one of my typical (and apparently bi-weekly) mid-mid life crises. Yup. I seem to go through more crises than DC Comics does each summer when they realize that Marvel is outselling them 2 to 1 and their books need a shot of adrenaline. God, I need to stop sounding like a fanboy.
But yeah, every so often I'll wake up at 2am in the morning and ask myself the $64,000 question: where the hell am I going after I graduate? I mean, for the love of Pete, I plan on going into a field where "intelligence" and "talent" mean nothing as opposed to practicality and connectedness.
So it seems like I'm only using the present to worry about the future.
I mean, Michelangelo painted the Sistine ceiling at 33. David Lynch directed Eraserhead at 31. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane at 26. And Dwight Howard was drafted #1 at the tender age of 18. At 20, I'm getting to the point where I actually have to worry. And although it looks like my days of leading the NBA in offensive rebounds has passed me by, I still have to compete with the likes of Welles and Lynch.
Classic parental advice tells me to take a deep breath and just enjoy the ride. There's no reason to wish my life away. They tell me to take my time, since it won't be long now till I drag my feet to slow the circles down.
So I try this. I try to focus on today (since as Sammy Haggar once ranted, "tomorrow may not never come.") and not worry about what's going to happen. The future shouldn't be my concern. I just have to seize the carp and stop this damn kvitching.
And then the past starts to destroy the present.
It kills me that every idea I come up with, well, has already been done. I'm not sure where to draw the line between inspiration and plagiarism. I'll come up with a new superhero...and find that Alan Moore already wrote it. I'll come up with a strange new twist...and Chuck Pahlaniuk already used it. First day of screenwriting class we were greeting with Robert Masello's treatise on sharing ideas: Some people hold theirs close to the vest. But let me assure you, someone else in the world already has it, so don't think yourself so special.
It might be that I'm in good company with other writers or maybe I was exposed to so many different sources as a child that it's only expected that some of these ideas will pop up again.
Most recently, I had a concept written out for the next great "LOST"-type drama. It was about a detective named Noah who was able to solve crimes since he had multiple personality disorder. But not in your classic Tyler Durden sense. It was as though he had 13 different people inside his head, each with a different career and life experience. And they would talk to him and guide him on his path.
And at the end of season one, it would be revealed that he wasn't crazy: there were actually people inside his brain. They were fugitives on the run and somehow got hidden inside Noah's head so that they could eventually make their way back home. *Insert Noah's Arc comparison*
Yes, there's the obvious Charlie Kaufman/Malkovich influence. But then I read about a Harlan Ellison penned episode of "The Outer Limits" from 1964. Entitled "Demon with a Glass Hand," where the final reveal is that the protagonist robot (Robert Culp) carried inside his abdomen a digital copy of the entire human race. And when the horrible plague that had destroyed humanity was cured, he would be able to revive them.
Yup, kind of the same idea. And this is Harlan Ellison we're talking about, the same guy who sued James Cameron because "Terminator" was a little too similar to one of his short stories (They settled out of court for six figures, I should add).
Are there no new ideas? Are we doomed to repeat and trod through the same sludge until through divine intervention, our primate brains can come up with a new concept and then throw our typewriters to the sky in sheer Kubrickian glory?
But hey, tomorrow's Monday Night Football and after Donald Driver gets held out of the endzone and I'm ensured a fantasy W, I'm sure that I'll stop worrying about all of this.
Song you should download for the day:
Love is only a feeling - The Darkness
A completely overlooked gem from "Permission to Land," the album that featured the more popular "I Believe in a Thing Called Love." This one brings back memories of 1970s ballads by Boston or the Steve Miller Band...only, you know...for straight people.
Death to the infidels,
MGD
But yeah, every so often I'll wake up at 2am in the morning and ask myself the $64,000 question: where the hell am I going after I graduate? I mean, for the love of Pete, I plan on going into a field where "intelligence" and "talent" mean nothing as opposed to practicality and connectedness.
So it seems like I'm only using the present to worry about the future.
I mean, Michelangelo painted the Sistine ceiling at 33. David Lynch directed Eraserhead at 31. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane at 26. And Dwight Howard was drafted #1 at the tender age of 18. At 20, I'm getting to the point where I actually have to worry. And although it looks like my days of leading the NBA in offensive rebounds has passed me by, I still have to compete with the likes of Welles and Lynch.
Classic parental advice tells me to take a deep breath and just enjoy the ride. There's no reason to wish my life away. They tell me to take my time, since it won't be long now till I drag my feet to slow the circles down.
So I try this. I try to focus on today (since as Sammy Haggar once ranted, "tomorrow may not never come.") and not worry about what's going to happen. The future shouldn't be my concern. I just have to seize the carp and stop this damn kvitching.
And then the past starts to destroy the present.
It kills me that every idea I come up with, well, has already been done. I'm not sure where to draw the line between inspiration and plagiarism. I'll come up with a new superhero...and find that Alan Moore already wrote it. I'll come up with a strange new twist...and Chuck Pahlaniuk already used it. First day of screenwriting class we were greeting with Robert Masello's treatise on sharing ideas: Some people hold theirs close to the vest. But let me assure you, someone else in the world already has it, so don't think yourself so special.
It might be that I'm in good company with other writers or maybe I was exposed to so many different sources as a child that it's only expected that some of these ideas will pop up again.
Most recently, I had a concept written out for the next great "LOST"-type drama. It was about a detective named Noah who was able to solve crimes since he had multiple personality disorder. But not in your classic Tyler Durden sense. It was as though he had 13 different people inside his head, each with a different career and life experience. And they would talk to him and guide him on his path.
And at the end of season one, it would be revealed that he wasn't crazy: there were actually people inside his brain. They were fugitives on the run and somehow got hidden inside Noah's head so that they could eventually make their way back home. *Insert Noah's Arc comparison*
Yes, there's the obvious Charlie Kaufman/Malkovich influence. But then I read about a Harlan Ellison penned episode of "The Outer Limits" from 1964. Entitled "Demon with a Glass Hand," where the final reveal is that the protagonist robot (Robert Culp) carried inside his abdomen a digital copy of the entire human race. And when the horrible plague that had destroyed humanity was cured, he would be able to revive them.
Yup, kind of the same idea. And this is Harlan Ellison we're talking about, the same guy who sued James Cameron because "Terminator" was a little too similar to one of his short stories (They settled out of court for six figures, I should add).
Are there no new ideas? Are we doomed to repeat and trod through the same sludge until through divine intervention, our primate brains can come up with a new concept and then throw our typewriters to the sky in sheer Kubrickian glory?
But hey, tomorrow's Monday Night Football and after Donald Driver gets held out of the endzone and I'm ensured a fantasy W, I'm sure that I'll stop worrying about all of this.
Song you should download for the day:
Love is only a feeling - The Darkness
A completely overlooked gem from "Permission to Land," the album that featured the more popular "I Believe in a Thing Called Love." This one brings back memories of 1970s ballads by Boston or the Steve Miller Band...only, you know...for straight people.
Death to the infidels,
MGD
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