creative mortality or all good things must come to an end

I have been wondering why I have been feeling blue, now that my short film is nearly done and now that things actually seem to be going so smoothly. 

Also, I had a pretty fun and long weekend.  I actually had time to see a couple of movies.  I took my son to see Miracle  - our first movie date.  He was excited but then fell asleep during the middle of the movie.  He woke up to see the Americans beat the Soviets so he didn't really miss the point.  The film, while uplifting did not lift my spirits. 

The other movie I saw with my daughter was 50 First Dates.  This mindless Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore comedy actually turned out to be pretty sad and bittersweet.  I left the movie feeling bluer.

Without movies to cheer me up, I figured TV could do the trick.  But last night's episode of Sex and the City was the strangest of them all. Poor Carrie, off in Paris with the creepy Russian, she was so blue and alone. It was a sad episode, especially because it all is coming to an end. And it was unlike every other episode in the series in that Carrie didn't have a voiceover column. It seemed so strange to see Carrie off living her life, and not being able to hear what she was truly thinking.

I tried reading to lift my spirits too. Yesterday, on a relaxing Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in the sunlight and reading the screenplay and notes for the indie film, Pieces of April. I haven't even seen the film yet, but was in Barnes & Noble last week and picked up the book, because the screenwriter, Peter Hedges, caught my attention. He has written the screenplay for two fantastic films - What's Eating Gilbert Grape (based on his novel) and About a Boy (which I loved even though I generally find Hugh Grant to be annoying). Hedges directed Pieces of April too and his story was intriguing to me, because after the major studio financing fell through for like the 4th time, he decided to go "indie" and shoot the thing digitally in sixteen days.

So yeah, this is a film that I can relate to. Pieces of April ended up being huge at Sundance 2003 so it is an example of how us little guys can level the playing field and have our voices heard admist the gazillion dollar Hollywood marketing machines. Anyway, Hedges words resonated with me. The screenplay is inspiring, and shows me the writer I hope to be - someday.

But one thing in particular struck me about Hedge's words. In the interview at the end of the book, he says: "A lot of writers I admire have a heightened sense of their own mortality.  Tennessee Williams, after he wrote Glass Menagerie, called his friends and said, 'I'm not writing anymore, I'm dying, come say goodbye.' Of course, not only did he live, the next thing he wrote was A Streetcar Named Desire. There's a relationship between that fear of mortality and the creative process, especially when you're really close to finishing something. It's at those times I feel so alive, I just know something could happen that will stop me from finishing the project."

After reading the above, I had my aha moment. Could I be feeling blue because my short film project is nearing completion, and I am grieving for my creation? If my film is like my BABY as I've already said, then isn't it almost as if I am sending my baby off into the big cruel world without me by its side?

It has been, in a way, easier for me to start my other dozen screenplays and then never finish them. Instead, they stay safely tucked inside my file cabinets -- remaining forever my babies -- seeds of ideas that never fully matured or left me. But in a way, I have taken The First Date After, as far as I can really take it. It is done (almost) - ready to be shared with the rest of the world.

And like all mommies this frightens me at the same time that it excites me. As a writer, you live with your creations. And once you are done with them, saying goodbye is a process -- similar to real life separations. It is so complex this relationship between writer and creation.

And the grief I feel is real, and I think part of the process that will help me let go and move on to other creative possibilities.

Comments

[Debbie]

Good observation about Sex and the City. I hadn't noticed the lack of the column voice-over. All I noticed was the lack of chemistry between Carrie and the Russian, and how all it takes to make the quintessential New Yorker into a rube is to move them to Paris.

[Andi]

Hey there -- I think what you're having here is a little bit of PPD. ;) I'm feeling it, too: the novel I've been working on for the last 4 months is finally done, as of last week, and although I have a ton of things I need to be working on -- essays, a book proposal, stuff for LiteraryMama -- I feel at loose ends, out of sorts, a little lost now that I'm not hanging out with my characters every day, plotting their next move and wondering if I'm pulling it off effectively once I've written it all down. Anyway, this is all a long way of saying that I think a kind of funk at the end of a creative project is natural -- it's the end of something, and the beginning of something else. More specifically, the end of your control over something and the beginning of your surrender to other people's interpretation of your creative efforts. Hang in there!