I confess. I am an embellisher. Not a habitual embellisher, but enough of one to comment on it now. Sometimes I’ll work an 18-hour music video but when people ask I’ll tell them it was actually 19 hours. Why? Is 19 hours somehow more impressive than 18? Not particularly. So what gives?
I’m through lying about my age but there was a time when I’d always back up my age by a year. I’m not particularly vain and I don’t really care about this stuff but I’d always tell people I was 24 when I was 25. I also tell people I was an English major, when in fact, I wasn’t. Granted, Evergreen allowed you to declare whatever you wanted on your diploma (it didn’t have to be backed up in credit hours), but the fact remains it doesn’t say BA-English Literature on my diploma. It says BA-Film Production. And yet, I’ve told so many people this story that I almost believe it’s true.
Perhaps it’s to distance me from the film students of the world. I don’t want people to think I’ve actually wanted to do this stuff since I was in college. That suggests failure, I suppose. I want to be different than them. And it’s not that being an English major affords much respect in the world. So why do I tell people this? Really strange.
I am like the 74-year-old man who runs into a hot senior citizen at the supermarket and tells her he’s 73. I lie sometimes, but pointlessly. Does this make it any better? I’ll tell people I stayed up until 6 in the morning when it was actually 5:30. Is 6 somehow cooler than 5:30? Really really bizarre.
Another one of my stories is that I was accepted to NYU when I was first applying for colleges. “I was accepted, but I didn’t go,” I sometimes say. “I chose to go to a state school and it’s the biggest regret of my life.”
Now, I did send off for information from NYU when I was 18 and pored over it and dreamed about being Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese but I knew even then that I’d never get in so I never actually applied. And I DO regret not going to university at NYU, absolutely. And yet, there is a whole story to it now, hallowed by usage and consecrated by time--that I had the smarts, that I wrote the charming, witty essay, that they wanted me but I couldn’t afford it, etc. That I was afraid to enter the world. That I’ve spoiled my opportunities…if only, if only.
And during those college years I dreamed of New York, dreamed the cliché of living in New York and writing novels and making arty black-and-white short films about people smoking. I fell for the romance of the place, the romance of living in squalor in Manhattan. It’s not that I wanted to live in style or that I wanted to be where the action was but this was where most of the important artists of the world gathered and I wanted to be close to that. Maybe this city had a certain something, a certain pulse that would give almost-artists that final push toward relevance. Mainly it just sounded like a good adventure.
After a while though it just seemed like a lot of hassle. In the end I lost interest and went to Asia for awhile and enjoyed Tokyo and then got stuck in Los Angeles for a great many years. And although I have forged out a life here and wrested some contacts from others and started a steady ascent toward respectability, LA has ground my soul right down to dust, melodramatic as it sounds.
So I am moving to New York. If not in November, then in March.
Why not? I have no attachments, no family, nothing. It’s just me and my projects. And who knows, maybe great things will happen there. Maybe I’ll learn to love my job and I’ll be able to work on what I want, and bicoastally. Maybe I’ll double my contacts instead of losing all of them.
And I’m not lying here. At least I think I’m not. And it certainly isn’t pointless. Perhaps it’s a stupid move but I don’t care. I will seize control over my life. If not control, then a certain new lack of control. But at least it will be on my terms.
7 comments:
Yes, New York! I can then visit you there! My motives are purely selfish, but I also think you will do well wherever you go.
May I just suggest that if you have the impulse to lie and you can pull it off, why not go bigger? My youngest daughter, the one who's at college as a freshperson this year, is a fantastic, gifted liar. She used to tell the most amazing stories--like one time, she bragged that her big sister had amazing kung fu powers and could somersault in the air across a street. She also told her Sunday School teacher that she had been born blind, but her dad had laid hands upon her and restored her sight. Now THAT'S lying.
You're not a liar. You're a Fiction Writer. Which explains why you were an English Major. See? It all makes perfect sense from my point-of-view. But it could be because I, too, am a world class exaggerator. It's not lying. So maybe I embellish the truth a bit. Isn't that my job? You have to make the truth more interesting.
(and, btw, I promised lis I would tell you that yes, we do want shoes.)
Hmmm, move to Austin, Texas. You can be a filmmaker and enjoy the college-town-in-a-somewhat-big-city atmosphere. Then, of course, we could go hang out when I run events there :)
See ya...
Of course, I would love it if you moved to Salt Lake City. You can work in the burgeoning LDS film industry.
Move to NYC and buy a dungeon. In five years, it'll be worth a million dollars. But wait until March to move. NYC in January bites.
I will tell everyone that I planned to move there too--to help you move and scout bargain real estate but that Robert Sullvan's book on Rats underestimated that rat situation and even the squirrels were merely masquerading as rats and so I, with movie/book/TV host contract in tow, moved to Des Moines where I will be appreciated for my tall, black hair/blue eyed look.
I've thought a lot about Austin and would probably love living there, but there's no real film industry to speak of, except when Richard Linklater is doing his thing....Then again, maybe it's not a bad idea to go to a place where there isn't that something to fall back on.
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