Cobb

� Triscadecaphobia | Main | Conspiracy �

February 14, 2004

A Dumb Idea

I really suck at going into certain situations. One of those situations is introducing myself outside of the context of a game with fairly clear rules. So the other day I tried something silly and it ended up going, not bad.

Starbucks at Ladera is crammed to the rafters with the kinds of folks you never hear about. The one to my immediate left is Reggie Cook, a novelist and screenwriter.

Now that I'm fairly certain that I'm going to remain in Los Angeles, it makes a lot of sense for me to try and be more friendly and hookup with lots of folks. That includes hollywood people, I guess, of necessity. It also means rejoining the black coterie that I left behind long ago. So that combination made me think that I jump into a conversation about the novel I wrote 14 years ago with Reggie Cook, screenwriter. He represents my first attempt to shake off whatever it is that goes cuckoo inside my head when I hear Hollywood talk and see extraordinarily expensive automobiles at the Starbucks owned by Magic Johnson in Ladera.

I asked him if he would give my old novel a decent burial. It started off as a novel but I kept thinking of it as a film, and I hated myself. I realized my entire narrative style of writing owed everything to motion pictures and not to the craft of writing novels at all. I had what I thought were great ideas in an epic story with fascinating characters.. don't we all.. but the whole thing never came together. So I offered him the pieces.

He rejected me of course. He's a professional writer. He doesn't even have enough time to get his own ideas into final form, even though he can afford to lounge around at Starbucks. What could he possibly care about my words? He told me to hold on to it. It may mean something to me later.

I wanted to be free and clear of the need to write for money. I still do. Giving away 'Jordan Crossing' would be a kind of confirmation that I don't really care about Hollywood and their twisted cultural productions. Because 14 years ago I was obsessed with sharing my unique vision of Black Los Angeles with the world. In those days, before 'Boyz in the Hood', before the Riot, the most explosive thing about South Central was its anonymity despite its potential. I was going to describe it all, and I still may. But as a software guy who did guerilla poetry, I liked my outsider status. I enjoyed not ultimately desiring to break into 'the business' nor envying their status and influence. I didn't need the money so I could live the virtue of not wanting it and not jumping through the strange hoops Hollywood crafts for its initiates. A decent burial for 'Jordan Crossing' meant I could make the final sacrifice to my own purity.

Now I still have it. I have the epic novel about blacks actually taking over. The characters in the positions only imagined 14 years ago have become real in some ways and been long forgotten in others. So perhaps it is time to give it another look.

I swear that it is at least as good as Barbershop 2, which is pretty damned good.

Posted by mbowen at February 14, 2004 08:54 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1503

Comments

Posted by: Juliette at February 14, 2004 09:50 PM

Posted by: walter at February 16, 2004 12:13 AM

Posted by: Sandra at February 16, 2004 10:37 AM