Lee Perry's Blog - Posts Tagged "coincidence"
Crazy Old Hobos and Coincidence
I’ve received some very nice correspondence about my fist novel, This Immortal Day - Sara’s Journal. I’ve been happy to chat about ideas of coincidence and destiny and accidents and asked repeatedly about where the Rory character came from so I thought, I’m copy/pasting the story into all these emails, why not copy/paste it into a blog post here too?
Okay first, I had an outline for this book I played with for a few years and while I was living in northwestern Montana, I finally decided to write it. After a couple of years there I realized I really belonged where I started and lived most of my life, in California, and when I got back I had the news on one night and one of the top stories was an update on a teacher that had gone missing exactly one year before. Her car was found abandoned, parked along the cliffs at Davenport and still no one knew where this woman was or what happened to her. I actually performed one of those jaw-drops like you see Bugs Bunny do, because that was the exactly how This Immortal Day started; an abandoned car found parked at Davenport and no one knew what happened to the female driver, a teacher’s aide.
A coincidence, right?
Every once in a while someone asks me where I got that idea from and where I stand on coincidence and I have to say I don’t know. Does our imagination tune into some thing or some place outside of our own heads and that’s where our ideas come from? Is there something to that whole collective consciousness idea? Or is it just a weird similarity? An accident, a coincidence?
Hell if I know. I do find the conversation interesting though.
On the other hand, when I created the Rory character in This Immortal Day, I based him, as an homage, on a character I fell in love with in the movie, Always, a Spielberg remake of an old movie called, A Guy Named Joe. I love this movie, if you haven’t seen it, download it, it’s really wonderful, and when you get to the one hour three minute mark, you’ll see the inspiration for my Rory and have a jumping off point for wondering about these human cosmic radios who walk among us. In the movie, Richard Dreyfuss says,
“Who knows about crazy old hobos? Maybe they’re like radio stations, picking up voices from people who’ve gone off the air.”
Now, do I believe there are people out there who can, like radio stations, pick up voices from people who’ve gone off the air?
Oh yes, yes I do.
And I think some of these human radio stations can look like soccer moms and well, anybody really, and not necessarily “crazy old hobos.” I think destiny and accidents and coincidences and everything in between and outside of all that can and does exist everywhere all the time. Why wouldn’t it?
Something else I know for sure is when I catch a glimpse behind the curtain, no matter how fleeting, I am both fascinated and validated somehow. And that can make all this day-in and day-out stuff more than bearable, it makes me pay attention to the present moment and beyond, because who knows what’s coming next?
Keep your eyes open so you don’t miss it.
Okay first, I had an outline for this book I played with for a few years and while I was living in northwestern Montana, I finally decided to write it. After a couple of years there I realized I really belonged where I started and lived most of my life, in California, and when I got back I had the news on one night and one of the top stories was an update on a teacher that had gone missing exactly one year before. Her car was found abandoned, parked along the cliffs at Davenport and still no one knew where this woman was or what happened to her. I actually performed one of those jaw-drops like you see Bugs Bunny do, because that was the exactly how This Immortal Day started; an abandoned car found parked at Davenport and no one knew what happened to the female driver, a teacher’s aide.
A coincidence, right?
Every once in a while someone asks me where I got that idea from and where I stand on coincidence and I have to say I don’t know. Does our imagination tune into some thing or some place outside of our own heads and that’s where our ideas come from? Is there something to that whole collective consciousness idea? Or is it just a weird similarity? An accident, a coincidence?
Hell if I know. I do find the conversation interesting though.
On the other hand, when I created the Rory character in This Immortal Day, I based him, as an homage, on a character I fell in love with in the movie, Always, a Spielberg remake of an old movie called, A Guy Named Joe. I love this movie, if you haven’t seen it, download it, it’s really wonderful, and when you get to the one hour three minute mark, you’ll see the inspiration for my Rory and have a jumping off point for wondering about these human cosmic radios who walk among us. In the movie, Richard Dreyfuss says,
“Who knows about crazy old hobos? Maybe they’re like radio stations, picking up voices from people who’ve gone off the air.”
Now, do I believe there are people out there who can, like radio stations, pick up voices from people who’ve gone off the air?
Oh yes, yes I do.
And I think some of these human radio stations can look like soccer moms and well, anybody really, and not necessarily “crazy old hobos.” I think destiny and accidents and coincidences and everything in between and outside of all that can and does exist everywhere all the time. Why wouldn’t it?
Something else I know for sure is when I catch a glimpse behind the curtain, no matter how fleeting, I am both fascinated and validated somehow. And that can make all this day-in and day-out stuff more than bearable, it makes me pay attention to the present moment and beyond, because who knows what’s coming next?
Keep your eyes open so you don’t miss it.
