This Is What I Do

Sporadica

Today's featured video comes from the hilarious series 'Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job'. Although known for its erratic hit-and-miss record when it comes to songs (yes Uncle Muscles, I'm lookng at you), you need not worry about the one embedded below. It is both memorable and utterly laugh-inducing. What more can you ask for?

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Maybe somewhat surprisingly, I have managed to keep my promise of completing the next part of my story before university starts. Because things will soon start to pile up, the frequency with which later parts will be written and published will decrease, but hopefully you'll still be as interested to find out what happens. Thanks again for those who have left a comment: quirky, insightful or otherwise. If you haven't, please don't hesitate to do so this time. As always, I hope you enjoy the story.

Story:

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I hope I did not leave the wrong impression to you when I concluded my last writing session where I did – time and weariness are not elements of this world I can control. I write until it no longer feels right to do so, and then I stop for the day. It is how I have always written, although of course I have never written anything for the intention of letting others see what it was that I had to etch into eternity. I do hope that you, having vowed that you will persevere to the end of whatever all this means, that you will excuse my discursive idiosyncrasies. What I need to make clear at this point is that this story is not about a love triangle, or a love square or any polygon of love for that matter. My relationship and feelings toward Katherine are relevant so far as to providing you with an understanding of what motivated us to do what we did. As for trying to capture the very emotion, the very essence of what we call love – that is the preoccupation of arrogant, misguided writers who have a greatly inflated sense of their own worth and ability as conveyers of meaning. Of course the world needs them. It is after all filled with millions more vapid, shallow and insecure who find solace in forbidden romances and enduring love that defies all odds in the hope that they too may someday find love. The desperate are entitled to their delusions, the deluders are entitled to their remuneration. But it will never be my intention to insult you in that most heinous of ways. I promise you at least the benefit of the doubt.

I struggle to see the right way of telling you everything. People always think the writer has this grand plan mapped with very foreseeable detail and nuance mapped to perfection. Maybe it is because I am not a writer that I am free from that curse which seems to affect the myriad of popular and successful writers. They no longer write because it is necessary, and that is what will always distinguish us.

It is like each time I stop writing, the part of me that saw things so clearly, the wordsmith that guided the patterns and constructions of my pen buries itself within me and refuses to resurface. And every letter of every word that is written not by him but by me is an imperfect realisation that transforms fact and reality into spurious imagination and tattered prose. But I write on, in the hope that this will make sense to you. This must make sense to you.

*

It was at that time a major cause of excitement and anticipatory speculation that the legendary director Carver Drangue was scouting homegrown talent in what would be his return to the theatre following his retirement six years earlier. He had revolutionized the dramatic scene, introducing and refining his own creative and instantly popular take on the discipline and craft of improvisation. His pathway to the career was a somewhat typical one, taking all the expected classes and degrees through school and university, attending productions every few weeks of his favourite plays and discussing them with those around him who shared that same, keen interest. His story during his childhood and adolescent years were widely publicized following his first breakthrough Raw. He was not the type of person who surrounded himself with many genuine friends. Of course there were those people who you would smile at if you happened to walk past them and exchange the odd line that had been rehearsed into tedium as if it were the most natural and spontaneous thing in the world – he was also a talented actor, but his dreams always lay in stagecraft and direction. Those who he did meet more frequently after school to share drinks kept up appearances until he started conversing about the latest Shakespeare production he had seen that weekend or the shortcomings of poetry that sacrificed beauty for juvenile rhyme schemes. It was usually at that point that a myriad of pre-prepared excuses would be invoked – they would naturally always require the extraction of that particular person from the conversation to deal with their more pressing matters.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’d love to stay and chat but I just remembered my dishwasher’s warranty expired yesterday. Gotta go.” “Oh, yeah I see what you mean. Unfortunately today is the fifty-third day after my cat died. So you know, it’s rather important that I don’t stay here too long and talk about what our favourite tragedy is.” “A Proscenium what? Yeah actually don’t tell me, I have to dash. They’re releasing the newest Tactical Unit Naval Assault game today. The lines are thisssssss long. I’m sure you understand.” And who could forget the “Yeah, I don’t give a shit about what you’re saying. Leave me the fuck alone, why can’t you just be normal, dickhead?” that would pop up from time to time.

Drangue never expected much from his friends. He never belonged to that artificial world of modernity where to be successful you had to be a tool or name your franchise after various fish. Over the years, those two worlds drifted ever apart until even his closest friend, the one who would never say anything to him, stopped being there and not saying anything to him. The solitude, the rejection, the alienation. He drew from these as he continued that routine throughout his first three years of university.

But the tide turned for Drangue in his fourth. He had taken up the creative component for his Honours in theatre where he was expected to write, produce and direct his own play. His supervisor took a keen interest in him like no one else had. Jessica Waithurst, a vivacious blonde in her mid-30s, had a voracious appetite for the arts. The very first time she met Drangue, they instantly liked one another, and only left after a 9 hour discussion on the works of Arthur Miller. Their scheduled weekly meetings quickly became daily rendezvous. They could meet anywhere, over a cup of coffee, on a secluded park bench – Drangue occasionally even invited Waithurst to his place of residence, who initially declined but soon acquiesced on his third offer. Their bond was never a somatic one, and because of it, became what Drangue felt to be his first real connection. One built on mutual everything. Their thoughts were always candidly expressed. When they disagreed, they did so with the utmost respect for the other. Waithurst never saw Drangue as her student nor was that sentiment reciprocated. They were the best of equals, the equal kind.

At the year’s conclusion, Waithurst volunteered both herself and a friend to feature alongside him in his production – it was a requirement that there was a cast of three. Most of the other candidates attended mingling symposia and industry evenings and recruited professional performers to feature in theirs. Somewhat surprisingly, Drangue found that he did not care about the lack of awards to be found in his cast. The year had been gratifying in a sense that he could never have expected. His experience was fulfilling and complete. And after the year was over and he moved on from Waithurst, everything that he had escaped would be there waiting to welcome him back into the depths.

And so Drangue knew what he had to do. And in knowing so, he had stumbled toward the perfect blend of reality and imagination for his work. As the only secret he ever kept from Waithurst, he engineered the concept of a shell production. The general scene progression was marked out and understood, the denouement and conclusion agreed upon. But there would be no pre-written dialogue; it would all be improvised on the day. And so piece by piece, the story of a young man’s struggle took its external shape. Personifications of the angelic and demonic were incorporated as physical representations of a mental struggle. And Drangue himself would be the epitome of the corporeal. Abject symbolism to the greatest degree, layer upon layer of dramatic trope so as to emphasize the impact of the unconventional mechanism with which it would be conveyed.

And before he knew it, the night had arrived. It was time for the performance of his life, to strip down all the lies and deception and expose himself to the world, totally and utterly raw.

Till next we sporadic,
Cynic