I miss writing. I do. After I thought about the Budweiser Clydesdale Horses earlier, I remembered a couple of the old commercials and, because it is the modern times now, I could watch some on YouTube. And so I did. I watched the one about the World Trade Center and the one about Hank, who trained to make the cut, and the one about the colt trying to pull the wagon . . . so the two big horses secretly pushed. I even opted to view the suggested “From our house to your house” Christmas one from a year I’ve now forgotten.
I started thinking about how short scenes such as these can reach right into your soul, and the closing scene from Hoosiers came into my mind: Gene Hackman’s voice – the little kid in the high school gym. I thought about Hank again.
I choked up; my eyes teared. I think I subconsciously engineered the whole thing because last night I had terrible nightmares going to the heart of my fears and regrets. I think my body needed some tears.
It is a logical explanation, but it reminded me of something else. I can do this emotion-encapsulating thing. Heaven knows the transcribing of interviews is a pain in the neck . . . but I need to the hear voices again, not just read notes jotted down. I need to hear the pauses, the changes in tone, the types of chuckles . . . and the moments when someone’s voice falters.
And then there’s that damn first sentence. The last one can also be tantalizingly close for quite a long time before it finally sounds right. Once I thought, “To Hell with it” and just ended an article. The editor called and said I needed to add one of my trademark ending sentences that “don’t mean anything, but just make people want to think they do.” And I knew what she meant.
Come to think of it, maybe I should have been a writer of country-western lyrics. You can get a lot of money for that. And people repeat the same thing over and over again – you don’t have to come up with something new on deadline over and over again . . . after the interviewing and describing and sitting down to think once more, “Where the Hell do I begin?”
See, actually, that last bit illustrates my point. I used ‘over and over again’ twice real close together without thinking. Why? Because it’s one of those things that is best said ONE way. That’s the way you feel it.
This is not leading me anywhere really. I don’t write good stories or make succinct analytical reports; I have always just pulled some emotion out of something and said, “Here it is.” A lot of time it’s corny because a lot of real things are. And I can pull it off. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because people have a need to feel some things but want a gentle guide there – one that will put a rope around their waists to haul them back to the “Hey, I’m fine” world.
So what am I going to do? Sit down and write a bunch of corny essays? Well, maybe, yes. Hey, if it makes me feel good, why not? See, at the center of it all, I’m a hedonist.
