CampbellTrain

Today’s sure was an emotionally-charged one two years ago…absolutely not a good night for me.

I really have a darn knack for remember specific dates.

JC

Whenever I write something, I almost always want to then go on and talk about what inspired me and why I wrote certain things and how it came together. Like spilling the secret ingredients to how something was put together, or giving an inside tour of the factory or something. At the least metaphorical, an author’s discussion about his brand-new book or short-story, however form it’s in. Perhaps it’s the non-fiction, factual chronology-interest in me that wants to talk.

I can’t help myself. I’m going to talk about it here.

—-

Something like one or two things inspired me to start writing. For one thing, which is big, I did not write it knowing how it would transpire or end; I only knew as far as my next sentence, as well as the next reference I knew I wanted to include at some point. Sometimes sudden, unprecedented writing without an idea can lead to some pretty imaginative results, and I like doing that now and then; I’ll bet it engages and encourages creativity and spontaneous mind-flowing.

I only had three concepts when I started: 1, it had to be as unusual and absurd as possible; 2, it had to include everyone I knew around me; 3, it had to include or tie together as many pop-culture references, new or old, as possible.

The first thing that inspired me was something a friend, Duncan, had written in a Facebook status: it had humorously predicted that in the season finale of House, the main characters would board Oceanic Flight 815, crash-land on the mysterious island from Lost, and being present on the island would miraculously fix House’s leg.

I loved how he’d tied those two different series together, joining pop-culture like that, tying it up, and mixing House up with events that would happen with John Locke. 

The second thing that got me going was an idea for a movie poster wherein the main character is surrounded by all the other secondary or tertiary characters in the film, sometimes in pairs, around the edges of the poster. Movie posters like Matilda, and Lord of the Rings, and particularly the Star Wars film ‘Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace’ have similar styles. Imagine if I wrote what I would end up writing, include everyone I know in it, and then go into my second year in September with the perfect movie poster idea fully formed in my mind? Creating a movie poster (and a magazine cover) are assignments in the second year of my photography program. Huge prints of several past movie posters re-created by students are framed outside the studio at school.

I began this story both moved by the idea Duncan had used in his status as well as the idea of creating a faux movie poster based on the events and people in the story. The thing with most students in the photography program, for one thing, is instead of creating their own concept or idea for a poster, they just re-create the movie poster of their favorite film or TV show, inserting themselves or a friend into the poster instead of the actors. The posters are amazing and pretty impressive, but not nearly as fun or creative as doing your own thing. 

I had very little when I started, as I’ve said, and began by writing down the names of everyone I wanted to include in it. I wrote a premise to help me out, starting with the idea that two main characters drive around looking for excitement - providing situations for people I know to appear in the story. I did create the fictional character of Leonard, because I didn’t want it to be simply told only from my own point of view - I wanted to write from the perspective of someone else, as well as be able to write down their resulting perspective of me (and narrate my and other’s actions in the third-person, even if it’s still technically first-person for the Leonard character).

I installed references right away. I related Leonard and Justin’s driving around for excitement to Dean and Sam’s driving around the U.S. as supernatural hunters, so I made Leonard’s car a black 1967 Chevrolet Impala. I have Justin asking if he should push the red button - a ridiculous call-back to Agent K telling Agent J to push the red button in their 1989 Ford upon entering a gridlocked tunnel to Queens, causing the car to transform into a gravity-defying rocket-car that blasted overhead on the tunnel’s ceiling. I changed the common names of stores or restaurants or TV shows to something more unusual or mundane - Wal-Mart to Fall-Mart, McDonald’s to ‘Donald’s Foods’ (which sounds more like a supermarket than like a restaurant) and I incorporated in-jokes between friends into the story (my friend Shawn acquiring tea-bags from the 4th dimension). I added in my usual sense of humor by having Greg boast that his skate boarding skills are “30% better.”

The story changed when I decided to have a time-travel element to it - wouldn’t it be more neat if my characters would run into people they (and I) know in reality, but those people would have no clue who they are? And they’d be different in subtle ways. Time-travel, and a sense of emotional sentimentality. An idea of having everyone wake up on a sunny morning in a field, and the first thing they hear is this music playing in their heads, appealed to me, so I decided to add in a reason - the songs would represent how each character saw the world and what kind of outlook they had. That’s where I started delving into their personal problems or issues, and had them bouncing about in a whirlwind to their own personal sentimental places or scenes.

I didn’t enjoy the idea of what I wrote as being looked at as science fiction - I’d rather it be adventure, emotional breakthrough, and absurd-ist comedy - so I think what came afterwards really helped push it back in that direction. A small fact I never revealed in the story, when Leonard bounced and saw his father at the fireplace, he was physically there. His father would have noticed him if he’d been standing there more than a split second. When Justin went to Calgary and Merivale and elsewhere, he really went. His ex “looked right at him.” She did, and saw him. A mistake I made was in stating that John and Brian went to their own sentimental places, when would become apparent further in the story that John wouldn’t have any emotional issues and Brian simply wasn’t a part of any of it at all, he was just along for the ride.

I set the field they landed in in the year 1978 because I’ve always liked the year, and for very irrational, color-based reasons. It has to do with film colors and a song by Republica, tied together with synesthesia.

Brian’s character as the warm, positive, grinning guy was something I derived from my real co-worker’s easy-going nature and easy smile, though he doesn’t get songs wrong, nor does he constantly bring them up. The idea of that stemmed from an episode of Bedford’s College that I never wrote the proper script for but often thought of - the Sam character hears Feargal Sharkey on Ian’s i-Pod and ludicrously goes, “oh, no, it’s Firgie Sharkbait!” If I wasn’t going to get on and write that darn script right now I might as well use the often thought-of joke in this story, and Brian’s incorrect naming of songs or artists became the running gag, as well as his inevitable “damn it!’s” after my character routinely corrects him. The real Brian does often use that phrase when he’s wrong.

The story culminates in a philosophical meeting with this group of people who sit around drinking iced-tea. That idea is an older one and it wasn’t as absurd originally. A couple of years ago, during the summer, I would often put in about four huge spoonfuls of iced-tea drinking crystals into a large glass, add three ice cubes, and fill it with water. Then I’d sit out on my porch and sit in the shade while enjoying the drink. Then came the idea of a small group of people, with nothing to do, sitting on a porch discussing their problems or issues or what they thought was wrong with the world, all while drinking the iced-tea mix. It wouldn’t be “high-cultured” or philosophical, but they’d sit around figuring out their problems with each other, almost as a self-help group, and in the end those meetings would turn out to have been very helpful and a great time. The idea never went further than an outline, but it stayed with me, and, again, I liked 1978, so I’d intended on setting it in that year.

In the story, as soon as I’d finished writing about the group discussing my character’s problems, it had a resolution and a foundation for why and how everything had transpired in the piece, and where it would go. I elevated the Iced-Tea Drinkers to a sort of celestial, kind of supernatural state, wherein they exist in this limbo and appear differently (and in different places) to troubled young people, and they have to power to send those people to other places and confront them with what they have to deal with in the most efficient, and emotional, way. My transforming the group into something that was celebrated, high-cultured, philosophical and celestial was one thing; just the fact that the main characters in the story are forced into their situations by a group officially calling themselves the “High Society of Iced-Tea Drinkers” was the biggest, most ridiculous idea, and cemented the absurd (and therefore, different and unique) aspect of what I’d written. That was the icing on the cake that made the story its own, I think.

The whole plot line with my character being forced to observe the root of his emotional issue by being sent to my ex’s birthday may be odd or obsessive - but I’m poking fun of myself (I don’t obsess that much) and I’m saying to myself, well, if I associate the year 1993 or notice it so much because of that, why don’t I just force myself to go there if I do that so often? That’ll teach me not to be so irrationally focused on something that’s ridiculous and not really even connected. Putting people like my class mates in the positions of doctor and nurse, etc. were pretty surreal, especially having my real co-worker Brian acting supportive and happy with her parents. In a way it forced me to do something that I didn’t want to do so I wouldn’t look that way anymore - like looking at the sun, which hurts the eyes and tells you looking at it or focusing on it isn’t a good idea. That was the whole point behind my character having to deal with that situation.

Then I had John (who in real life is a class mate of mine at Algonquin) learn adversity by killing off his ‘version’ of Brian, and I had Leonard being forced to observe his estranged, recently rich father who turns out to be the step-father of his ex-girlfriend.

In the end, after having other people read it, I’ve been told that I give a good, separate sense of personalities between each character. One person, who only read the first three parts, ended up telling me he enjoyed the different perspectives between Leonard and my character, simply because they were actually different from each other. This is a really good thing because I created Leonard simply to act as a different character to develop in the first-person, instead of centering everything on me (and, by big extension, my own personal issues) and having a separate, well-developed problem concerning Leonard. Leonard and John were the outlets of diversity and creativity, and they created a dynamic for the story that kept it interesting while Brian provided the comical side of things by always bringing up an incorrect song or artist, or simply being so genial and positive that he looks more like an ebullient clown than like a down-to-each character. Plus he serves as the group’s moral support and each version of him created alongside John, Leonard, and my character highlights that.

Changing some (not necessarily all) of the names and developing it, expanding it, and adding more history and backstory to the characters, I really could develop it into a proper novel manuscript…I’d be up for that.

JC

I used to say “I don’t have any friends.”

That’s not true, I just didn’t have any best friends.

And that’s not always true, I had one when I was a kid.

I cannot talk to any of my cousins when it’s more than one at a time.

Impossible for me to break their talking by getting a word in edgewise

My father says I just never listen

When in fact I do listen, he and I just endlessly misinterpret each other

I have someone who cares about me

but they’re time-zones away

Would I make it work if my life depended on it?

Of course I would, barely anyone else like her exists

I am worlds away from the people I work with

I can’t stand the music they listen to

No one has any interest in my interests

They don’t consist of Family Guy or some girl’s behind

I don’t do anything social, no

I have no one close enough to want to do so with

I may now have a cell phone

It is not very useful though

I look at people who have lots of friends

I look at people who do fun things with them

I look at people who are social and well-liked

They’re people I happen to be related to, or someone I love

I try not to feel small or an outsider

I know I don’t experience as much social drama at least

But I wish I could be more

I wish I actually tried things

I wasn’t anything in high school

Not interested in people falsely saying that’s not true

I fail at every day things that I should do

Like keep a clean house

Like keep a clean face

But if there’s one thing I do like about myself,

It’s that I am happily eccentric, quirky, and different

I sit here by myself, my mother upstairs

This is what every weekend’s like, if not at work

Sure, I have people around me that like me

I just have no relationship with any of them.

I don’t like only being known as the guy with a camera

Or the guy that used to have a bald spot

I often think my father is in some aspects ashamed of me…

I’m not like any of his brother’s children, my cousins

I haven’t been to Africa

I’ve never won any competitions

I never had exceptional marks in high school

Except for English, no effort required for me there.

Everyone around me goes to university

Or they’re in the private schoolling system

They’re smart, they’re bright

They beat me in every debate

Will I pass college…a second time around?

I was a clumsy idiot; I dropped my laptop.

I should be doing homework, but never do

I cram things in at the last second

I’m not very good at self-discipline

I eat junk, crappy food all the time

Can’t cook that creatively or healthy

Can’t say in class, “do you want to be my partner on this assignment?”

I can’t approach people

Can’t seem artificially interested

I come off as aloof

When I’m crying out for human connection

I push people away, I worry too much

Why bother, it’s done in a rush

I don’t understand what great stuff

the one or two people in my life see in me

Perhaps i don’t observe well enough

And notice that there are a lot more that worry about me

Nah, that’s frivolous, a dream, an absurd optimism

But at least I’m not dumb (not really, I hope)

I’m just different, socially handicapped, and lazy.

So many things I can’t stand about myself,

but it’s a cycle, too lazy to do anything about it.

Or sad, whichever one.

I wish I had a real happiness in my life

than the one I love…that shouldn’t be the sole happiness

And it’s close to being the sole happiness

Thank god for her

Like the heavens felt I deserved a lucky break

An angle

Come to rescue me

Nourish me

Make me feel loved

Wanted

Make me feel at peace

Make me find the love in my life

Make me feel fulfillment

Make me want to do so much better.

I hope she sticks around

I’d feel burried under ground

if she left.

And I hope I’m not too much of a burden

Or I don’t do the same thing and push her away

She doesn’t realize her power

Her strength, her brilliance.

If there’s something I’m called to do in life

It’s make her feel like the angel she is

Yeah

Yeah

Yeah.

I’m different, eccentric, weird, lazy, easy.

But I’m not shallow, careless, or distant (though I appear to be).

I’m different, not (that) dumb.

—-

Note: The ‘angel’ talked about at the end has actually left.

JC

What do I do that sets me apart as myself?

Well…

When I’m full of useless time I don’t spend with anyone…

-I write

-I read

-I sit on Facebook just in case someone does something related to me, or directly talks to me

-I used to watch Home Improvement

Unfortunately, that does not fill up all my time, and when I’m not working (often) I sit alone in my house on Facebook…and/or I write.

I don’t mind being introverted. I just mind having no one at all to have any interest in having anything to do with me. And I mind not having a special person, a girl, to fulfill me by simply being their wonderful, beautiful selves (made even more deep and pretty with whatever faults they have). I know what it feels like, after all, I used to have one.

JC

You’ll lose more people in your life than you gain them. Definitely. That’s why it’s such a big deal to keep those special ones close by…and if you still lose them despite your best efforts, that’s their problem and mentality, and trying to change it won’t work. People are unpredictable, rarely think for themselves, unstable, and above all, largely self-interested. That’s why there’s something like a billion of them on this planet and we live longer than the average fruit fly. The odds of finding the true, amazing ones are SO in your favor!
Keep looking. You’ve got the whole wide world, just to find them…

JC

I have decided to refrain from posting the rest of that ‘Unusual Events’ story, because it contains certain plots heavy on people I’d rather not talk about on here. But I’d be happy to put in a synopsis of the rest of the story though.

—-

Justin, John, Leonard and Brian discuss their personal, emotional issues with the High-Society of Iced-Tea Drinkers. They eventually realize and confirm that it was the group that generated the songs that had been playing in their heads, and had brought them to the realities they’d experienced thus far. To help each character, Brian not included, with their issues, they send each of them (with a version of Brian) to an event or situation that attacks their emotional vulnerabilities - the idea of confronting a fear, or the saying ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Leonard is sent to his father’s recently-purchased mansion in late 1995, where he is confronted with the fact his ex-girlfriend is his father’s step-daughter. Justin is sent to December 1993 to observe the birth of his own ex-girlfriend in a method of helping him move on from connecting the year, number 3, and the hospital with her. John, having absolutely no disappointments or adversity in his life, is sent to Bayshore Shopping Mall in 1984 to witness an armed-car robbery and watch as his version of Brian inevitably gets shot down by one of the robbers. After each character concludes why they feel the way they do, or realizes the point and moves on, they each separately hear a new song in their heads that illustrates the point of moving on/obtaining a new and better mentality, and return to John W.’s backyard in 2012, to an applauding, happy crowd of friends that had assembled there in wait for them (and to see the machine). The epilogue has Justin, John, Leonard and Brian visiting the theatre to watch a musical they mysteriously acquired tickets for, only to find that it’s a musical based on all of their separate problems at once (except for Brian, who enjoys it thoroughly).

I have no doubt and real interest in developing the full short story (which is completed and has 21 parts) into a longer novel, wherein I’d change some of the names and expand a few parts. I’d also change the title as it’s too similar to ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events.’ One candidate could be My Unusual and Absurd Journey As Predicated Upon The Will of the High Society of Iced-Tea Drinkers - As Told by Justin and Leonard, With Some Material From John

That’s too long but who knows. I’d be interested in properly writing a full story out of this neat little piece. After all, it does already have a beginning, middle and end. I just need to expand it and change a few things.

JC

“Why don’t they do what they say, say what they mean? One thing leads to another…yeah tell me something wrong, I know, I listen too long, but then - one thing leads to another.”

-The Fixx

JC