Screenwriting Exercise (with a trimming moral)

Yesterday we had our last screenwriting class. It went from 9am to 10 pm. We spent the entire day reading and critiquing each other's screenplays one at a time. But before that we started the morning out with a stream of consciousness exercise. The only instructions that we were given were: Write exterior, creek, day.....David skips a rock on the water. We had around 10 minutes to write. This is mine. (In the future youtube cult classic, David Barr will star opposite an animated Grateful Dead Bear/Carebear type almost twice his size in a completely realist scenic location)

EXT. - CREEK - DAY

DAVID skips a rock on the water. He hears a LOUD NOISE in the bushes and turns.

Emerging from the bushes comes a PURPLE BEAR eating from a box of Teddy Grahams.

David runs.

DAVID

Aaaaahhhhh!

The bear TELEPORTS in front of David.

PURPLE BEAR
Don't be afraid, David. I'm not going to eat you. I've got all I need right here.

David looks at the box of tasty treats.

DAVID
I don't understand what these saucers I call eyes are seeing. Golly gee, Mr. Bear. Why not eat me? I'm all alone and you're a hungry purple bear that talks.

PURPLE BEAR
David, I like you. You make me laugh. You state the obvious like you're trying to inform an audience of what they can surmise for themselves.

DAVID
Heavens to Betsy, Mr. Bear! I guess you're right! Say there, what's your name?

The Purple Bear takes a pawful of Teddy Grahams and hands them to David.

PURPLE BEAR
Well David, some call me something different than Purple Bear, but that's none of your business.

David eats the Teddy Grahams.

DAVID
(chewing with his mouth open)
Wow, I bet you've got quite a story to tell.

PURPLE BEAR
It sure does pack a wallop. Well, I guess first I should say, I'm not a natural bear.

DAVID
Yeah, you're purple. And you talk!

PURPLE BEAR
Ha ha! Redundancy is fun, isn't it, David? Well, you're right. But I'm also a cannibal bear. I only eat other bears. That's what cannibal means, David. I'm trying to get off the real thing with these here crackers.

DAVID
Cool!

The Latest

I deleted my Facebook and have been on Myspace very little, as I am trying to stay off the internet and in my books. A little over one month to go until graduation...... can I make it?

Here's the latest news, and I'm glad I didn't have to take the time to type it:)

http://www.bagpipeonline.com/?p=3084

Ten Years Gone

I started writing this song in 1997. I was never satisfied with it, but couldn't quite bring myself to throw it out completely. It went through two different musical drafts, three different lyrical drafts, and four different recordings. Finally, in 2007, I recorded the final version that I am happy with, both musically and lyrically. So, here are the finished lyrics:

Caving In

Once appraised at a price in the nice side of town,
Now the highs are low,
As low as old downs.
How did we not see our base,
Become flooded rooms warped from slow decay,
And not realize until now?

Isn’t it funny how we’ve changed,
And how we’re forgetting to laugh?
Isn’t it sad how we’ve changed,
Into this aftermath?

Now we’re caving in,
So let’s lie to ourselves again.

We’ve memorized these lies,
Like lines from a play.
Though the quips are written in,
With an ad-libbed fib we’ll stray.
We wrote a script that slips,
Through pursed and puckered lips.
It’s slightly slanted,
But deeply implanted.

We’re caving in.

Untitled kind of haiku sort of thing, but not really a haiku at all

Sleep is a blessing.
This I know because I can't.
Deep and distressing,
Night moves slow but does not dance.
Leap of faith pressing,
Might You show me in advance?
Keep me from guessing.

(January 2008)

This day, last year

Today (the last Saturday of Spring Break) marks a day I will always remember. I wrote the following blog almost a year ago. It has been incredible to look back and see what God has taught me from that sunny day in Florida to this snowy one on Lookout Mountain, GA, and to know that He will never stop guiding my every step.

Hands Across The Ocean March 13th, 2007

I just returned from the most amazing spring break I've ever had, and one of the most prolific experiences of my entire life, so what can I say? Well, a lot. So much that I'll need the help of my other 5 companions to compile it all, so as not to forget any details. Every one of our 7 days in Florida was jam-packed full of adventure, laughter, music and the undeniable nearness of our Almighty God. I don't believe that I could begin to scratch the surface of the overall feeling of the trip without typing up an entire memoir from its start to finish. I will note one significant event though, and solely because I was the only one who had the experience. I would want the collective input of my friends to get the details right for all the other highlights.

I went to Florida with a group of awesome guys to find some good surf. David is a surfer, and he was determined that the rest of us learn the basics. We all prayed together as we were going down south that God would bless our trip and our time together. The results were astounding. Here is my story from Saturday, the last day of the trip. God had already shown Himself faithful throughout every hour of every day up to this point, but He must have been adamant in making me realize just how near He is. I have never had an experience such as this.

David had been waiting all week for Saturday. According to the surf reports the waves would be ideal for surfing that morning at a prime surfing spot in Sebastian. The entire week, we had gone out to find waves, but the surf was relatively tame. This day was the one. We all arrived at the beach around 10:00am to find a slew of top notch surfers out in the ocean fighting over the steady flow of very decent sized waves. I decided fairly early on that I was not going to venture out there with a surf board and try to compete for space with the already saturated area. I sat on the shore and watched everyone do their thing for a good hour, trying to detect the wave patterns. The place where the waves broke didn't seem too far away. All the surfers were bobbing on their boards just past the break, waiting to ride the perfect wave into shore. As time passed I grew restless sitting there, and had a strong inclination to go into the ocean and swim. It is something that I have always done since childhood, and I had done it a few times in the previous days. I didn't want to be disturbed by the surfers though, so I walked about a half-mile down the beach away from everyone. By the time I decided to stop walking and get in the water, everyone else in the ocean and on the shore were specs in the distance.

I felt the current immediately pulling at my feet, nearly knocking me off balance at shin deep level. Once I couldn't feel the ocean floor anymore I started getting pushed back to shore with every breaking wave. I thought the only way I'll be able to get to a place of calm would be to swim past the break (the same distance out as those surfers who were bobbing on their boards). This proved to be quite difficult, but after much struggle I managed to get past the waves. Within a minute of calmly floating out there I decided I was feeling pretty tired and should start heading back to shore. As I tried to ride the waves back in, I noticed that I was getting pulled back with the undertow after the crash, and not making any progress. Once this realization set in I felt a rush of panic. I am not a bad swimmer, but I would not call myself a strong swimmer either. I am also severely out of shape, and my endurance is obviously not what it was when I was 17. All of a sudden I realized the weight of the situation. Here I was totally out of sight, out past the break, almost out of stamina, and completely out of my element, having totally underestimated the ocean. I started freaking out and flailing a bit, going under a wave and swallowing a substantial amount of salt water. For a good 2 or 3 minutes I really believed I had possibly made a deadly error and was going to drown in the ocean. Finally, through the unmistakable grace of God, I composed myself and mustered up what little strength I had left. I felt for the rhythm of the waves and floated with them until they broke, where I would then swim against the undertow as hard as I could. I would repeat that method of conserving energy during the formation of the wave, and then extreme physical exertion at the break, until I miraculously reached the shore, completely exhausted. When I finally left the water and set foot on the sand, I immediately got one of the worst side cramps of my life. It was so bad that I could barely walk back to where the others were. All I could think about was what if I had got that cramp even 1 minute earlier. But God was there, as He always is, and I knew it. By all logical reason, I should have died out there. Everything was against me, including my own naivety/stupidity. But God gave me the strength to keep my wits and actually come up with a plan on the spot, not really knowing what I was doing, or if it would work, and keeping my body functioning well past its normal capacity in such conditions.

That evening around 5:00pm we were walking back from the beach to the parking lot. There was the most marvelous sunset, where the sun was shining through select breaks in the clouds, piercing them with pillars of light. Whenever I see a sunset like that I imagine that what I am seeing is not the sun but the actual light of God shining down on His creation. This time was especially significant. It was a sign to me that God was watching over me, as He controls the ocean, and is accountable for every breath I take. What a reminder.

I got back to school Sunday night. Yesterday classes resumed and we had our first Chapel since being back. Mrs. Dr. Neilson spoke about death! The whole chapel was about how we don't take death seriously and always treat it like its so far away, and that we take God's sustenance for granted, failing to give Him credit for the life that He has put in us. I called my mom after the chapel to tell her that I'd gotten back safely from Florida. I related the story of my "incident" on Saturday. On Friday I had called her to tell her that we were all going to be going out to Sebastian to where the crazy waves were. After I told her what happened on Saturday, she said, "Grant, I didn't want to tell you this Friday, because I knew you were going to do what you were going to do, but I was so scared that something like that would happen to you. So, I called Grandma back in NY and we both prayed for you all day that God would watch over you." My friend Luke who was with me on the trip also told me that on that day when he looked up from his book on the beach and didn't see me anywhere for about 10 minutes, just stopped and prayed that God would protect me out there. It was amazing that I was the one person who was blind to the fact that these waves were extremely dangerous. I believe that God put this ignorance in me to show me His goodness, and also to show me the power of prayer. There are so many times when I subconsciously doubt that God will listen, but He continually and thankfully proves me wrong. This life is a gift. This is true. Thank you to all of you who pray for me.

2004 - It was the mediocre of times, it was the worst of times.

This is a poem I wrote while wasting away in the Chapel Hill, NC music scene.

The Glorious Ephemeral

To the male population of UNC:

Rev your engines, start a fight,
Knock another girl up tonight.
Flaunt the wealth that you inherit.
Spit back catch phrases like a parrot.
Go Tarheels,
Way to use conformity as a platform!

To the female population of UNC:

You are bogus,
Like an infatuation that is simply coaxed along by close proximity,
Like the inebriation that inspires the most unlikely camaraderie.
You are not bogus,
You are trying to assure me earnestly,
Well, at least as earnestly as you can be,
But I’m sorry.
Goodbye,
Not so humble cutie pie.
I can see the chump change that you’re displaying,
But I can’t hear the noises that you’re phrasing.
All I hear is a sound enrolled in flames,
Telling me to get the hell out of this place.

To the collective whole:

You siphon cyanide out of the cynics,
And spike the punch at an optimist’s picnic.
I carefully cover my shins and wrists,
So as not to be immediately dismissed.
Lost in the mirage of our misguided motivations,
We fumble in pursuit of different aspirations.
We make a horrible team.

Something Charming To Say

It is hard for me to keep a straight face and talk to people about music most of the time, as I have said before. I find the motivation for listening to music fascinating. Why do we do it? Why do I do it? Well, it stirs something up inside of me. It taps into a place inside of me that can’t be reached through that many other avenues. For a long time I assumed that this was a universal truth. When I became old enough to talk to my peers about music, I was excited. To find people who are passionate about the same things as you are is invigorating, reaffirming, and fun. When I became a teenager, it became increasingly clear that the popular view of music was not grounded in notes, composition, and execution, but almost solely in being a means of achieving personal identity. It was reduced to a mere social accessory. Not to say that I didn’t buy into this cultural norm for the majority of my middle school and high school years (it was virtually impossible to escape). But in later years I had to relearn how to love music for what it was to me personally, not just what demographic it could connect me to. So I understand the pressure to listen to the “right” genres of music, but it still bothers me that this pressure exists. I wish people could just like what they are personally drawn to, and not be forcefed something that they would naturally have no interest in, and then feel a frantic need to recognize its merits to find acceptance.

But there is something worse, in my opinion. This is what Nick Hornby refers to in his book High Fidelity as, “The Professional Appreciator.” Such a person suffers from another form of the same identity crisis. This is the person who tries to armor themselves with wider and better musical taste than anyone else. They find comfort in isolating themselves from everyone, and scoff at people who listen to “that band.” And the number one rule for this type of person is: its ok to like “this band” because no one else has heard of them. Once "this band" becomes well known and well liked by all, the Professional Appreciator can make the claim that he was listening to them before everyone else did, and now the band sucks because they have “sold out.” One of my favorite examples of this is “The Death Cab For Cutie Argument” that I love to have with supposed fans of music. Death Cab was a good little band back in the early 2000s. They were musically tight, and had a lot of energy. The songwriting was decent, the recording quality of the albums was mediocre, and Ben Gibbard’s vocal delivery was shaky. Now, those first couple albums were not bad. For a band on a very small independent label, they were fine. If nothing else they showed a lot of potential, but they were far from stellar. Along comes “Transatlanticism” and blows everyone away. An amazing album! Right there Death Cab lost some fans. “Everyone is listening to Death Cab now.” Of course from that statement it can be deduced that they obviously gained some fans too. The album was successful because it was musically better than the previous albums. The songs were better, the production better, and Gibbard’s vocals were more confident. Then “Plans” is released, and my oh my, if this didn’t piss some “hard core” Death Cab fans off. “They’ve signed to a major label. They’re total sellouts!” Ok, yes, now they can have their music distributed all over the world in mass proportions. But Chris Walla is still doing all the production in their same studio, and their approach to the process of songwriting, arranging, and recording has for all intents and purposes remained the same. They are growing as musicians. That is really the only change. They are maturing as most people do when they stick with the same thing. This does not seem to register with a large portion of “serious” fans. Before “Plans” hit the street people were trashing it.

I have a tough time picking a favorite between “Transatlanticism” and “Plans” because they are both so musically good. They are the only two Death Cab albums that I bought. I would never buy the earlier ones because there is not enough musical merit there for me to warrant owning them. I still run into people who talk about Death Cab’s “glory days” (before “Transatlanticism”) and how they “suck now.” Really? They suck now? Could you qualify that statement? I have never received any answer that has any relation to anything musical. It is always an issue of personal identity. Something that in reality has absolutely nothing to do with music at all. And this is coming from the people who make the claim, “Music is my life. Without music I would die.” This brings me to a whole other topic that I won’t go into now, but if you are claiming that one particular aspect of this life IS your entire life (meaning that this thing encompasses your whole being), it will end up destroying you, rather than enhancing your life experiences.

I drove to pick up Ben from a Death Cab show in Raleigh in October 2005 right after “Plans” had come out. There were all these fans standing outside the venue that were on this topic. I thought, “Why are you even here?” Ben is a true fan of music. He wasn’t talking to any of these kids who have numerous opinions on everything that all miss the point. He was in the back talking to the band about music. I think Chris Walla and my brother would get along pretty well in a studio.

I wrote a poem that night about this whole idea. I guess if you’ve read this entire rant then the poem might be obsolete, or vice-versa. Also, I updated the blog Spring Break Oh! Eight!, because I found a revised version of the poem Idle in another notebook. Alright, I’m done now.

The Professional Appreciator

Darlings no more,
Purists turned whore,
You used to be more beautiful
When only I knew you.
I loved you when nobody knew
Who you were.

But now they crowd
Around what I’d found,
And claim you as their own,
When you used to be mine alone.
My ears were your home
When you were outsiders.

My darlings no more,
Since everyone beats on your door.
You used to be more beautiful
When your efforts were less fruitful
In the eyes of the world.

Now you could care less,
But I didn’t used to be faceless.
Though tonight I blend in with the masses,
Of polo shirts and cell phone flashes,
And every other trust fund boy and girl.

Boohoo.

Please Sir, I want some more Clod.

I was reading William Blake's Jerusalem (which is where the title for the movie Chariots of Fire comes from - not 2 Kings, though Blake obviously took the phrase from the Bible) today and found myself doing what I always do when I look up a Blake poem: reading more. He has been one of my favorites for quite some time. I wish there were more poets like him. Totally awesome poets who are also totally awesome artists. That would just be so totally awesome. But there aren't, so there's just him, but that's ok, I guess.

This is the first Blake poem I ever read, and I still think it is one of his best.

This is my God!

I was told at the age of 18 by someone I cared deeply for that my problem was that I viewed life as if it were a movie. I started thinking that maybe this observation was correct. When my plans started to go awry, I blamed it on this philosophy that someone else had told me I adhered to (see Gums and Teeth from an earlier entry). While I continued to love movies, I made special note that I might have a tendency to be unrealistic in my assumptions about life, and subsequently took special care to look at life more practically. I strove for common sense, logic, rationality, and plausibility. This would save me from the fate of my former naivety. Even if I was overcompensating, better to error on the side of reason rather than greenness, right? As I found out through even harder lessons than before, this was not so. While I felt an urgent need to escape my idea of immaturity, I ran further into the arms of the world. But there was no realization or validation there. It was only a more mature looking fantasy. Via countless dead ends and broken noses from consistently running at top speed into the brick walls at the end of those cul-de-sacs, I finally started relearning how I am to live. How I am to approach this life in both ideology and action. I gave a devotional with my Ireland team last semester on 1 Corinthians 1: 18-31. It was where the Lord had finally led me in my own journey to real understanding. I’m not living in ignorance or fear anymore. I don’t understand everything that God is doing in my life, but that’s alright because I am certain that it is good. This last year has been especially marvelous. It is unexplainable apart from Christ’s sovereignty and providence. That preface is just to say that I have no idea what God is doing, but He’s doing something huge, and “Hallelujah!” Try to make sense of this:

I’m on Spring Break, but staying at the college to climb on my mounds of seemingly insurmountable work. Oleg is a friend from the apartments who is also here for the week. He has been bugging me for over a week now about bringing over my DVD copy of Chariots of Fire. He must have heard about it from someone else recently and for some reason he REALLY wants to see that movie with me. He has never seen it before. I have seen it probably close to 30 times (many of those viewings were between the ages of 4 – 18). It’s one of my all-time favorite films, definitely in the Top 5. Every time I run into Oleg, which is at least once a day, he asks me about when I’m going to bring that movie over. “Oleg! I’ll get it as soon as I can!” All my movies are down in St. Elmo, so they are obviously not immediately accessible on the mountain. I finally get the movie for him on Sunday when I’m off the mountain for church. Oleg is happy. Now this won’t make a lot of sense for anyone reading this that hasn’t seen the movie, and I don’t have the patience right now to give a detailed synopsis, but Eric Liddell is the main character. He was an Olympic gold medalist in the 1920s in the sport of track and field, and he was also a missionary to China. God had called him to the ministry but He had also given Eric the gift of being an incredibly fast runner. Eric’s primary struggle in the movie is finding out what his purpose is. He is passionate about the mission work and the sport. God gave him the ability and the love to do both. Yet he still struggles with the idea of having to juggle the two, or even choose one over the other. He finally comes to the conclusion through prayer and the godly counsel of his family that he can do both. And not only that he can do both, but that he is called by God to do both. It is God’s will that he do all he is given to do. In a pivotal scene Eric is taking a countryside walk with his sister and tells her, “I believe God made me for a purpose, for China, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” He says that he is going back to China, but he has “a lot of running to do first.” As he sets off for the 1924 Olympics in Paris, he is confronted with the temptation of taking his talent into his own hands and going against what he knows to be right by running on the Sabbath. He resists the temptation, and while he loses his chance to run that particular race, he is made a most unusual and generous offer to run a race that is not only more favorable being that it is not on Sunday, but that it is also a distance that he is more suited for (400 meters rather than 100 meters). Before the race as Eric is stretching, another athlete comes up to him and hands him a piece of paper. It reads, “It says in the Old Book ‘He who honors me I will honor.’ Good luck. - Jackson Scholz.” Liddell crumples the paper in his fist and runs the race with it. He wins. It is maybe the best movie moment I have ever seen. I’ve seen the movie 30 times and I still cry every single time. I love it. Why did Oleg keep relentlessly pestering me about it though? I mean, I know how it feels to want to see a movie really badly, but even I thought his persistence was a little weird.

For the last year numerous people have been asking me about the Shakespeare Sonnets album that I’ve had in my back pocket for over 2 years now. In the last 2 months the requests have increased. In the last 2 weeks they have gotten downright irritating. I don’t want to think about it. I played the Folk Festival. It was fun. But I’m through. That’s all I wanted to do. I want to hang it up. That part of my life is over. I played music for so long, and I look back on that time with a lot of disdain. Mainly, I look at how I was, and I don’t like it. I don’t like the cynicism, the attitude, the numbness, the fear, etc. I automatically associate all those feelings with playing music. I do that because I was playing music for the wrong reasons and not using my gift properly. I thought that if I ran away from it, and focus on mission work that all would be solved. When I’d tell my friends at Covenant this solution I was surprised that I didn’t get many immediate positive reactions. “But you have such a gift.” I found that through trying to convince them, I was trying to convince myself as well. “I think this is right,” I would say to myself.

My Senior Integration Project has hit a wall. I cannot make progress. I can’t even concentrate. This is not good. Less than two months to go. This is not good. Why did Oleg want me to watch that movie with him that he had never seen before? Why was that so important? Why is everyone hounding me about the Shakespeare Sonnets album, and making me feel this unnecessary pressure to make some decision about it? I can’t think about music. What about China? What about what God wants me to do?

I get up to do my devotions. I have been going through My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers and Charles Spurgeon’s Faith’s Checkbook. The entry I read in Faith’s Checkbook on this very day confirmed what I’d been suppressing. What other verse could it have been? 1 Samuel 2:30 – “Them that honor me I will honor.” Out of all the bible verses. Out of all the movies. Out of all the days.

I have to be honest and say that it’s not music, it’s me. I’m the problem. My outlook is still screwed up. God has called me to do this. He has called me to ministry, but he has also called me to be a musician. I am a musician as Eric Liddell was a runner.

I called Dr. Macallister at home and said, “I’ve got to change my SIP!” She told me that if I do this I will officially be the latest person to ever change their SIP. I replied that pretty much every decision I’ve ever made in my life has been fairly unorthodox, so this would just be par for the course. I told her my idea, and she said that if I can get my readers to approve it than it was fine with her. She sounded excited and was actually totally cool with it. I called my Dad. “I thought you should have done that from the start.” I called Ben. “Yes.” I called Riley. Within 2 minutes he said he’s taking off work and coming here for Easter Break to work on it with me. I called Dave Hess. “Whatever you need.” I just might graduate on time.

All I can say is, God might take me places far far from here to serve Him in any number of different ways, but in the vein of Eric Liddell, I have a lot of music to do first.

Ok, so maybe I still sometimes view life as if it were a movie:)

Beginner's Genius

My roommate wrote this poem a few weeks ago. He said that he had never written a poem before in his life. The only reason he wrote this was to help our friend Paul with an assignment for his poetry class. He wrote it in 2 minutes, threw the notebook at Paul and said, "That one's for free." Now that he and a slew of my other friends are frolicking in the Gulf Shores, I find it appropriate to post here.

Wearily christen a new red dawn
dogs play on the beach while turtles
menstruate on the white-washed sands of time
the dogs' hair is wet and twisted like seaweed
as they agitate obese sunbathers too early
for their own good.
I sift through my confusion as the seagulls
sort and peck through trash and cigarette butts.
I'm more lost than I was before,
and I've forgotten how to leave.

-Thomas Prettyman

Spring Break Oh! Eight!

The 1st day of spring break was such a doozy, let me tell you. I slept until 1pm, read 1 chapter of a novel, and saw 1 movie at the Bijou. It's all downhill from here. Blah. Here's an old doohickey I scrounged up from Notebook #1 that I find fitting in light of this ghost campus. Speaking of ghosts, I woke up this morning, and my apartment mates had left me a farewell message in red lipstick on the bathroom mirror: REDRUM. Funny.

Idle

Illustrated in more melancholy colors,
Here is yet another entry,
Depicting an existence that is
Rapidly racing towards sedentary.

I envision on the vanity,

A record of my family's pedigree,

And visual representations of our tree,

Posing in front of the liriope,

Captured in exquisite B&W photography.

My life is on Victorian setting:

Duller than a biscuit,

Tighter than a corset,

I made myself a rule to break this cycle,

But I never choose to enforce it.

Never have there been so many awkward stances,

Pent up words,

And apologetic glances.

Stall tactics are all intact,

Desperately waiting to crack.

Dust bunnies are collecting on the hard wood floors.

All this marble trim

Is starting to look so grim.

Too many options.

All this incessant doubting is such a chore.