This may look easy, but it’s not. It’s hard. Coming up with a fresh new subject for the old “Letter from Home” column … I start writing and I get a few paragraphs into it and it’s looking really promising then a small voice says, “You wrote about that in 2008.” Or, I start with a flourish and then fade quickly with nary a point or conclusion in sight. The deadline approaches and I cast about for inspiration and enlightenment.
For years the hours I’ve spent driving have been fertile ones. For a decade I worked as a telephone serviceman and at the end of my work day I would find myself in Bullhead City or St. Johns with a three-hour drive home ahead of me. The often spare scenery would turn my thoughts inward. Ideas for songs and stories and nicely turned phrases would pop up like the mole in the whack-‘em game. And just like the mole they would quickly drop out of sight and mind. With my eyes on the road and one hand in my lap I would blindly scribble notes on envelopes, napkins and pocket calendars. I have boxes full of these indecipherable hen scratches that fail to deliver the ideas that were so profound in the moment. A story is told of Henry James. the author of “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” It seems when he first experimented with nitrous oxide gas he was transported by an epiphany about the nature of the human condition. Realizing how fleeting this knowledge might be he wrote out the insight on a tablet by his bed. On awakening next morning he eagerly read what had been revealed to him the night before. This is what he had written:
Higgamus Hoggamus woman’s monogamous
Hoggamus Higgamus man is polygamous
I tried using a small cassette recorder to save my thoughts while I attended to the business of driving. I’m sure I looked somewhat demented talking to myself as I barreled down I-40 but I didn’t care. But the truth is I’m a visually oriented person and I never listened to the tapes. Yes there are boxes full of cassettes in the shed just full of great ideas.
So when I got my new iPhone 4 smart phone I was intrigued by a feature my tech savvy daughter showed me. There is a note app complete with a yellow lined note sheet and a keypad to type notes and a little microphone icon. When you click the icon your voice is converted into words on the sheet. I can then print that out on my wireless printer. I thought I had found my solution at last. The next time inspiration struck while I was rolling down the highway I set up my phone and dropped it in my shirt pocket and with hands at 10 and 2 I expounded. I arrived home and wirelessly printed out my notes [I’m living in the future].
Here’s what was recorded:
“Blood drain the full and that mother was Brian and account I was Shakespeare on the simulant bag and a row where long and hard rain oh I dream by the fool Moon and thatmother was bright I drill I was Shakespeare on a CMU and our night and highroadwords of longleaved release saying love songs sadly while the 19 Gail cry builtrpm’s in our ink pots while the wild win side waws a dream from mid somber fed bymoonlight and rain whole much ado about nothing for a Royal Danish brain”
I was stunned. There was no punctuation, arbitrary capitalization and the hearing accuracy of my deaf granny. I could vaguely remember that I talked about words Shakespeare had coined but I didn’t recognize this. Waws? Did I coin a new word? “Thus the unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude …” James Joyce has nothing on me. I tried reading it aloud. It had a certain rhythm. I read it again with feeling. I added a little angst and foreboding and shook my head with world weariness. I tugged a phrase here, punched a word there—I was finding the fit. I fantasized reading this at a poetry slam and rocking the house, but a column?
I thought if I speak slowly and distinctly the machine will perform better. It did, somewhat, but still it takes flights of fancy and poetic liberties that make me blush.
I have not arrived, but I am on my journey.
