Myself
Been a journalist. Rock musician. Political operative. Speech writer. Pool attendant. Public pensions expert. Social Media campaigner. Actor. Assistant manager. Wait, no: assistant to the manager. Guitar teacher and now screen writer. These aren’t random words. I swear. It’s a weird vita, but now I have two hemispheres of my brain in harmonic symbiosis. I got the intuition AND the planning. The creativity AND the analytical ability. The audacity AND the discipline. The many hats I wore, they shaped my skull. And I’m grateful that life is a mad hatter.
My Story
When I was a teen, I went to language trip to England. A “Global Village”. Hundreds of kids up to… well, not learning a language, exactly. But up to something, I tell you that. So, on the first day, they made us write an essay to assess our skills. Topic: our fondest vacation memory. Basically, the exact same shit our English teachers would have us cook up as a homework assignment after summer break every single year. Can you imagine hundreds of kids banging their bored little heads to come up with something worthwhile about the time they stayed at fucking Vancouver with Aunt Maggie and her goldfish? We were kids. We didn’t even have our fondest vacation memories yet. (Though I will say, I had mine later that week when I ran into a Danish Goddess called Michala). And worse: can you imagine being a teacher and having to actually read hundreds of those coerced, cramped, unspeakably dull turds of fondness?
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No, I said. I won’t do it. Not on my vacation. So I sat down and I wrote: “Dear teacher! You and I both know that you don’t give a single shit about that sandcastle I build in Greece back in the days before the tide would eventually wash it away. You don’t wanna read about it, and, quite frankly, I sure as shit don’t want to write about it. Not again! With that out of our way, here’s my thoughts on Billy Joel.”
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I really wasn’t sure how my little act of subversion would play with the authorities. But – what do you know? - they laughed their asses off and sent me to the most advanced class. Now. I would love to tell you that that was the moment I knew I was a writer. But that’s not true. I always knew that much. But what I took away from it is that – at the end of the day – no matter our role or function, we all want to be entertained. We all want to read something fresh. We wall want to see a page lighten up with authenticity and the absence of fear. And that is what I will give to everything I write.