Brendan Nolan's Blog, page 4

Writing money in three months

I agree to teach some people how they might get started in writing, maybe even be published.
I go around to see why each person is here. Each has a torrent of memory awaiting release.
Then we come to Alice; that is not her name, it's in alphabetical order in the interest of confidentiality.
For Alice is broke and would prefer nobody, outside of we strangers, to know that. We nod, uncertainly, and wonder who we might tell in a way that might make for a sane recounting of what she says next.
She wishes to write a novel. Fair enough, we nod in agreement.
That will make a lot of money in a short space of time.
By when?
In three months, otherwise she loses her house and her apartment in Portugal.
She took a second mortgage on her home to buy an apartment in an up and coming area that neither came nor arose higher than the hallucination of both buyer and seller.
Now, she cannot sell the apartment nor rent it and her unpaid home mortgage means she will have to quit her nice house, anytime soon.
I try, with the help of the assembled concerned citizens, to say it might take as long as four months to get this rich.
Has she written a novel? No.
Stories, essays, articles, letters to the editor, a shopping list, all draw the same enthusiastic and implacably negative response.
The day wears on, I finish to polite applause from most of the people. I leave but overhear Alice on a phone saying the day has been no good.
They will have to buy shovels and dig up the back garden, she says.
She smiles silently at me as you would to an idiot to assure that all is well.
Shovels.

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Blowing steam

A man on television is showing me a steam cleaner that will clean most things in my home, he says.
I could care less; but I notice he is not trying to sell it to me. He simply wants to share the wonderful things it does.
The machine is shaped like a large lozenge on the end of a long stick. It is light green in colour. I expect this is to show it is environmentally friendly; but this is not mentioned in any way; so I understand this is a subtle message I am to assimilate.
I pay attention; there may be questions, later, for the free draw.
This machine spews steam out below a cloth underbelly which, in tandem, makes an unbeatable team when it comes to cleaning the cess pit that is your home.
Steam loosens and cloth gathers it up, like a maniacal mother in a teenager's bedroom.
That would be enough I expect for most people; but this man seems to be under-appreciated in his own marriage for he then pulls off the lozenge itself; a bit sternly I felt, and reveals a trade secret.This extraordinary invention is but a pipe with steam coming out of it in a jet.For some reason not apparent to me, he then enters a bedroom and proceeds to clean the pillows on the bed with the steam jet.
I lose interest around there for it is no business of mine to see a grown man disintegrate on television holding a large lozenge in one hand and a steam jet in the other while contemplating an empty bed.
He leaves it to the rolling credits as to how we might buy it; for by then he is past caring.
As I am myself. Even for a free draw.
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What did he say about me?

I meet a man I know who asks me where I have been.
I say that yesterday I was working with Sam Browne.
He asks what Sam Browne said about him. I say: he said nothing.
Next day he asks me the same question. He wants to know, with more intensity, if Sam Browne mentions him in conversations.
I tire of interrogation and say, untruthfully, Sam says hello. This satisfies him, for now.
The following day, I walk along and though I try to avoid him, he asks what Sam Browne says of him today?
I am finished working with Sam Browne so feel it safe to respond that Sam Browne says he is a wise and a good friend.
He is pleased with this and says he knew that all along. He says he will visit Sam to say hello back to him.
I am content that I have removed my interlocutor from my hair and walk on.
He calls me back. I return and silently await the question
Where does Sam Brown live, he asks, and what does he look like?
I say: he looks like you so much he may be your twin.
He goes off to seek himself, leaving me alone.

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A cast of thousands

Cineplexes are no fun at all. The inventor of multiple screen cinemas has missed the point. People do not go to the cinema to see a moving film with sound and colour and to eat overpriced popcorn. They go to be with other humans in the dark and to listen to a story and see actors play the story out before them.

Once, our local cinema ran continuous programmes with no lights up in between for shuffling bodies to stumble out of or move in to the rows of seats.
You arrived with half a torn ticket stub, sat down to watch the end of the film, waited for it to start once more and pieced the story together on your way home with your date, who thought you very wise.
The fun part was when the cinema left out a reel to shorten the programme so the night could end before midnight. Then you filled in the story for yourself, your own bespoke movie with film stars in it under the direction of your mind.
The bad times were when the over-enthusiastic projectionist put the reels on in the wrong rotation, between pints. People were killed half way through in a spectacular gun-battle and then, undead, rode into town to parlay before the shooting began.
No point in complaining to management for you would be earmarked as a troublemaker from then on and watched by the usher with the torch in the dark, who really only wanted to go outside for a smoke.
Computerised ticketing with credit card booking and films done to death by focus groups before you ever see them is not the answer. Where now the "cast of thousands" when computer generated images abound?
Bring back anarchy and mayhem, I say. The story deserves no less.
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I don't remember that

I tell a story at a funeral. Not the actual internment; but at the tea and sandwiches afterwards.
I wonder aloud, as they carry a smallish coffin in to the church, if they measured for a man with no legs or if it is a low-cost coffin that his estranged family has ordered?
His legs were amputated, one at a time, to halt a medical condition. It did not work.

To make amends for any offence caused, I tell a humorous story about a pair of neighbours of his. Dead Woman Haunts Ball Player is in my book. The stories therein are based on real people and real happenings. These people lived beside the recently deceased man with no legs and a small coffin.
At my table are Frank and his wife, two others, and a single man. All smile for they remember the woman with fondness.
The man says he does not remember. I wonder who he is and explain who the lady was and who the terrified boy was and still he shakes his head. Frank asks me to tell the story once more.
I tell how the woman threatens to haunt the boy if he does not stop bouncing a ball on the roof of her house. She dies that night and the terrified child screams for three nights until his mother takes a hand.
Still no reaction from the man. I ask what his interest in the exact memory of the story might be?
He says he was that boy and can remember none of it.
I fear the trauma of the story has wiped it from his memory. Anyway, he no longer looks like the boy he was then and I wonder how his legs are? Next time I will ask for names before I start to tell.
I need to stay away from negativity.
Storytelling here

Is that a true story?

I am telling stories in a socially-deprived area which is another way of saying the cats travel in pairs around this place at night.
A warning bell should have gone off when I took a call on Monday asking if I was free on Wednesday?
I said let me check my diary, the one I cannot find for weeks on end; finally I say yes I am.
On Wednesday I am replacing a puppeteer who is not answering her phone after last week's visit to this summer camp.
None are aged more than 12 years chronologically but aeons old in street smarts.
Out went the cute stories; cosy romances passed them by, others followed until one said she wanted to hear stories that were "gross"
She could wrestle a weightlifter to the ground and win.

[image error] So, I tell 'em the story of the boy who is called out at night in country-side darkness to help carry a coffin.
Coffin?
Yes and he is to be the corpse.
I wrap it up and tell a few more short stories that stand the test of time, mostly about fools besting wise men.
Finished, I prepare to leave when the wrestler sidles up and without speaking tells me she wants to ask a question.
I say what? She asks in a low voice with eyes darting around for eavesdroppers, if that was a true story? I ask what she thinks? she says she does not know; I say if she thinks it's true then maybe it's true for her?
I suggest she tells it to a few pals and see what happens. She says yes and walks away.
I wonder what happened to the puppet woman?
Storytelling here

Writing on walls

I am writing my sixth contracted book and realise that publication of the others was a mistake on the part of the publishers.
My preferred length is as short as possible; the three sentence story being long enough to say most things.
I love you. Marry me. Let's have children.
Which is how, somewhere in that marathon of writing a book, I hit the wall.
I used to think the wall was an affectation of runners who chase shadows to trump their personal best.
I am not a runner, preferring the sure determination of the long distance walker over the histrionics of road eaters.
I do have the wall of endurance in common with marathon runners, that point when sanity says give it up, have a smoke and a cup of tea, in a china cup.
But, so far I have written through it and submitted the manuscripts on time and the publishers were too busy to notice that it was the work of a chancer bent on admiration and a royalty cheque.
Then readers say they like the stuff. Try as I might I can never re-find that wall that bothered me so much that I took the dog for a walk instead of writing any more.
Maybe I'll take up painting and see if that's any easier, after I deliver this book, and the one after that which is also contracted by another foolish publisher.
I can write anywhere, mostly in my head, and painting requires you be somewhere, which is a bit too much bother.
Storytelling here

Diving child

A child dives out of its mother's arms and heads headfirst for the concrete path at her feet.
She catches her by the ankles just as she is about to re-arrange her brains on a busy city street.
The child goes over the mother's shoulder in this manoeuvre. The tall slim mother catches the falling ankle, sight unseen.
I say: it was close; she says yes and laughs; someday I will miss.
Are you circus people, I ask; no she says it's just something she likes to do.
This she says as if her flying daughter is a household cat that likes to wrap itself around her ankles at night.
I look at the child whose eyes are aged beyond reason.
She was here before it seems and perhaps was an acrobat who used to swing upside down and view the world from there.
Hello I say to the child; she smiles and turns her head away, bored of the ages-old question.
Who are you and why do you do that.
Why not; she would say if she was old enough to speak; but she is not and the conversation with her mother is impossible to resume.
There is little else to say to a pair of falling women on a busy street.
I move on, and try not to stumble on the cracked pavement.
Storytelling here

It says in this letter

I know a man who can neither read nor write but who watches television and listens to radio to keep up his end of the conversation.
He knows I know he cannot read and since his last parent is dead and he has no siblings nor sweetheart he asks me to read his post for him.
I tell him what the letters say and leave him to deal with them.
He pays all bills through the bank on-time and never receives cut-off notices.

But he would also fight with his shadow, me excepted.
So, when he shows me a note from his doctor to a mind specialist he is to go see, I demur.
But he insists, saying he does not trust his family doctor and what he says about him.
The letter says, when I read it to myself, that he is an obstreperous man given to sudden fits of anger and as a doctor his GP passes the information to the other in a spirit of caution.
I tell him it is just a note to the specialist.
He says: he dug the pen into the paper he says more than that, what is it?
I say his doctor told the new doctor to treat him with respect and to listen to him.
He says: Honest?
I lie and say: Honest.
He puts the letter back in his coat pocket and walks away, he says thanks.
Respect.
Storytelling here

Wardrobe malfunction

Most of the time we are invisible. Nobody pays attention to us, unless we skip the queue; when feral reaction kicks in.
A man seeks attention for himself by wearing odd shoes in public.
For privacy and peace of mind he wears matching shoes.
Then, he matches a nice left-footed brogue to a scruffy right-footed trainer underneath a natty suit.
People step to one side when he comes along the street with a smile on his face. Some ask if his foot has been in an accident?
But; they are the adventurers; those who want to know something they do not already know.
Others shuffle away in bus lines and supermarket checkouts when he taps the toes of the brogue, while standing still. Once, he stepped out of his shoes and walked home barefooted. Nobody touched his empty shoes for ages.
Nobody likes the odd, outside of the circus.
He sometimes confides that his wardrobe has malfunctioned and he forgot the code to open the dressing room in his mansion for other footwear.
Do I look odd, he asks, no they say not at all, wondering why they have no such security on their wardrobe.
Malfunction.
Storytelling here