Learning How to Write

I have made this photo, taken, probably in the late 1990s, very large. I think the locale was The Abbey, a hot West Hollywood destination for eating and drinking that kindly allowed the creative writing class that my dad had been attending for some years to do a reading of some of their works. 

I usually did not get to attend these events as I was then working, but this day I was able to take off and share in my father's late in life embryonic success as a writer. This was what he always wanted to do, but of course, life took other directions. But in his seventies and eighties, he did a boat load of writing. Much as I hope you have seen, was wonderful. A lot of it was stream of consciousness, and some of that angry as he lamented the self-inflicted suicide of our society, which he would always remind me, he would not see. "Your generation is going to see it all end." he'd say, or some sort of apocalyptic pronouncement. I agreed with him. He's been gone nine years and if it were possible for the crumbling of society to get worse, it has, though the Four Horsemen haven't yet taken their last ride. I do wonder about my father's somewhat eagerness to presage that his only daughter would be there at the bitter end of modern civilization, but there you are. He couldn't change the reality of things, and I take my laments to God, whom I believe is the only resort given our hard times. Anyway, I digress. The reason for this picture is that this next short entry of the writings of my father, is about his writing class, all for seniors and taught by a lovely lady whom my father admired.  It seems that this was his first class, in this program, February 14, 1996, though I think he had tried others before that time.  He touches upon the reason I have been putting many of his stories on the internet, this blog. Regrettably, I am the end of his line as I did not bear children to carry on his name or his earthly memory. I have not provided descendants to give testimony to his memory, and for that matter, mine. I think there is something to memorialize. His passion. His intelligence, even his rebellious belligerence. His charm. I think that about many of the people of his generation I have been meeting of late who are passing one after another. 

I just heard that Orson Welles' youngest daughter donated diaries, letters and other items to a library for posterity. The teaser was one letter that the one day great director wrote as a teenager, taking passage on a steamer to or from Europe. How we become individuals from youth to death has always fascinated me, and I can't wait to read whatever gets into the public domain, about Mr. Welles, larger than life in every way. As to my father, he never got the prominence of Welles, but he was larger than life in his way, too. I like the idea that one day, somebody scrolling in the net might find his writing and feel a connection.  

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Bea outlined the goals of the program.  She read us those precepts that go into the making of a writer.
Discipline and depth of feeling is how I would summarize her advice.  She was a teacher, she said, in those grade years when children begin to nibble at the outer edge of the world of knowledge to be ingested, or ignored, in our lifetimes.  I doubt any of her students would have trifled with her, malingered, come unprepared to class, or failed to do the assigned homework ever again once having received a sample of her stern opprobrium.  I must confess that having looked into those very wise eyes, I traveled back in time to my desk at PS 55 and relived the apprehension of the student who had not read the assigned chapter.  "In this class," I said to myself, "I will be good."

Seated around the table were several centuries of tales to be told, of loves and hates, of marriages and children, of victories and defeats, and the terrible drive that animates our species--the need to say something, write something, build something--anything that will testify that we were here and made sounds that are not lost, but traveling forever, like pulsars, into the expanding universe.

There are impressions that require the interpretation of a Toulouse Lautrec.  I can only record a word picture of the assembly from my limited vision,  as Jack read his work for the session. Andy, seated behind the music stand that propped up his papers, clasped his extended fingers, as if in supplication to a Deity, allowing the two index members to caress his chin.  Irmagard supported her inclined head with a tightly clenched fist. Dan doodled little rectangles on the upper margins of his typewritten page; Sophia and Cindy were resolutely immobile and lastly, our teacher, Bea allowed her eyes to travel, first left, then right, keeping her head motionless until finally her eyelids closed, in surrender to Morpheus, and opened immediately as Jack's recitation suddenly ended.

I had no clear view of the others except that Nick seemed to be leaning perilously backward on his chair.  Suddenly it was three o'clock and the end of a very pleasant experience.



5-9-17 Addendum:  I have been on an all day rummage through old photos and saved memories, with the idea of doing some more paring and re-organizing for archiving on these pages. And by the by I found a second photo from the occasion at The Abbey. This second picture has dad reading his work.