My life as it
pertains to writing and the events that have let me to this particular point in
my life are quite unique and complex. To
quote the Grateful Dead “What a long strange trip its been”. During the years in which you are to shape your personality and find
who you are I can honestly say that I had no interest in writing at all.
This is true in
my life from the beginning to about age twenty.
I would guess that this was the direct result of dyslexic. Reading and writing did not come easy at all
to me then and truthfully I still know absolutely nothing about spelling and
grammar. I spent all of my school years
in the special classes working very hard to be almost as good as the rest of
the kids my age. I was told early on
that I did not have what it takes to get a New York State's Regents Diploma and
that I would probably never have a very high reading level. It sounds worse than it was honestly. Looking back I don't think I would want to
change it if I could. It gives me a
sense of pride to know that I accomplished something nobody thought I could do
at the time. It also helped to create in
me a stubborn steak that I am proud of, a lot people who know me, now know that
I would die rather than give up a task I have set my mind too.
Enough about that
however, the other significant part of my childhood was and still is my love
for story telling. I say story telling
because I never wrote anything down and the same story would change every time
I told it. I would to my memory tell any
story to any member of my family at any time and keep them there listening for
hours. The other part of this is that I
was never far from the T.V. And still for that matter have to drag myself away
from it in order to get my work done.
Starting at the
age of twenty is when I say that my life changed. At this time I was in the Marine Corps
stationed in North Carolina. The change
accrued rather slowly . I had started
reading books to pass the time away while on night. Pretty soon after this I had managed to work
my way up to being a road unit with the military police. As a road unit was responsible for a lot of
incident reports (meaning domestic disturbances, thefts, assaults, everything
that a regular police officer might be responsible for) and this is where I
received my first taste of professional writing.
The Marine Corps
for me hold several different important points in my life. It taught me more than I ever wanted to know
and showed me things that people just shouldn't see. However in the process it also made me strong
enough to handle anything and holds several different distinctions for me as
far as writing is concerned. I
distinguish the Marine Corps as teaching me how to write, giving me my worst
writing experience, and also my most important works.
When the Marine
Corps decided to teach me report writing, in essence teaching me how to write
they also gave me my worst writing experiences.
The sergeants in charge of teaching me would instruct me by grepping up
my reports and saying that there was a problem with it go and fix it. There was no direction in what the problem
was only that there was one. At the time
all reports were hand written so every time they did this I had to rewrite the
whole report over again. This would go
on for about twelve times per report before they would let me know where the
problem was. It could have been a simple
as changing one word but they would still make me rewrite the report twelve
different times. In the end however I
was very proficient in report writing. I
also call these reports my most important writing experience because they
directly affected and may still be affecting someone's life. While I was writing them I never gave them
much thought but looking back now I see them as little pieces of documented
history of things that happened on the bases that I was assigned to
I left the Marine
Corps on Friday, November 13, 1992 and for the most part drank my first year of
freedom away. I did start school at
Dutchess Community College and took normal first semester classes because I had
no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
One thing to note here is that I did at this point know what it was that
I didn't want to do with my like. I had
been living that for the last four years.
This might have helped to shape why I went into the media arts. In the Marine Corps I had no control over my
life and no voice to say anything with.
Choosing media arts might just have been a subconscious way of making
sure I had these things in the future.
The media arts
program was also an eye opening experience for me. They told me how to look at the world as a
camera operator or a director would.
This helped me to see the world in a much different way, a much more
liberal way. I'm not going to say the
liberal way is the right way only that it was very different from the way I had
been looking at things. While attending
Dutchess I also did a couple of other things that I never thought I would ever
do. I acted in a children's play and
wrote short stories and even a poem or two
I know this wont sound like much to you, but for me these steps are
building blocks in my life.
Now when I sit
down to write most of the fear is gone.
I'm still going through this change that has gotten me to this point and
so I am still working out the processes of how and why I write. To this end I believe that I am a gusher,
having to write down things that come to me and go back latter to try and clean
it up and make a story of it. Why is the
harder part maybe for control I'm in control when I write and I like that.
Well by now you
probably have a better understanding of me.
I hope you don't have a complete understanding, I hope I was able to
leave enough out to keep myself interesting.
To recap it all for you what I can say is that my impression of artists
were that they were all gay's who couldn't find a real job. And now that's changed to just people who gay
and straight are smart enough to avoid getting that real job and in the process
helping to shape the world by influencing the people who see their work. The only question left to answer is can this
old dog, who never wanted to travel father than the local bar join that company
in influencing the world. I guess only
time can answer that one.
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