Just a makeshift show-and-tell, playing out the lives of the lost and found

[sovay]

So I was thinking about actors, and about writing about actors, and about the ways in which it very slightly sucks that I am involved with derspatchel because it does impair me from writing about him as I would with any other character actor whose work I really like, when I realized that if we keep everything together, by the time his next show goes up in December we'll be married and I'll have that much more conflict of interest.

That blew my mind. I'm going to bed.

Comments

[muffyjo]

He has such a wide spectrum of skills that I would imagine he would be hard to write for even if you weren't marrying him, although I will admit it does make the objectivity difficult at first. But George and Gracie did it. I have faith you can, as well. You both have such an amazing amount of talent and love together that I cannot imagine it won't make the process richer in the end.

[sovay]

You both have such an amazing amount of talent and love together that I cannot imagine it won't make the process richer in the end.

Thank you. See reply to papersky below—I think this may be a familiar hangup trying to surface in new guise. Tiny Wittgenstein is shorthand for a pervasive set of self-deprecation subroutines, impostor syndrome included. The idea that I can't talk about derspatchel's acting or rushthatspeaks' writing in anything other than the most generally positive terms is a way of undercutting my ability to be intelligent and expressive as well as passionate; it's me preemptively telling myself that I'll be discounted or disregarded, oh, please, of course you'd say that, you love them. Which is really idiotic now that I look at it at four-thirty in the afternoon rather than morning, so I should probably dismantle it.

Alternately, if I have misread your use of "write for," we don't seem to have a problem collaborating, although so far more on his projects than on mine. I have collaborated on poems three times in my life so far, on a story once. It's not something I'm opposed to, but it just doesn't seem to happen a lot.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

You do some of your best writing about things you love. Why shouldn't that be the case with people?

[sovay]

Why shouldn't that be the case with people?

I don't seem to have any trouble when the people are Alan Turing or Denholm Elliott or Peter Cushing or Sappho. I think I need to start thinking of the people I love directly as more like the sea.

[muffyjo]

Having rich and honest conversations with each of them about their good and bad qualities in a safe and supportive environment where positive options are explored can be as amazing as they are vulnerable-feeling. I was thinking of more of the "playwriter/screenwriter" mode where you were writing comedy that Spatch would step into but collaborative efforts could also be included if that feels right.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Oh, hm. Yeah, frequently when I talk about the work of the people I love, it's not good because I love them. It's part of why I love them; that they make these amazing things.

[sovay]

frequently when I talk about the work of the people I love, it's not good because I love them. It's part of why I love them

This is self-evident when it doesn't have to apply to my brain!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I have a thing where if I write about the work of close friends and partners, I say that they are whatever they are to be and add "and if you think that affects how I feel about their work then you don't know me very well" ot "you haven't seen the tottering piles of books written by my friends that I've not got around to" or things of that nature.

[sovay]

"and if you think that affects how I feel about their work then you don't know me very well"

This may be a cleverly disguised problem of Tiny Wittgenstein. Thank you for providing that perspective.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Honestly, sovay, you go and meet an interesting person, one who would be great to write about, and then you have to complicate things by getting engaged!

(But I like your choice of subject line, and your listening matter)

--Okay, ETA to say I've just read the comments and realized I wasn't reading your entry quite right. I was assuming you meant using him to inform characters--but as I read it over again, I realize you were talking about writing about his acting. I'm sorry: I wasn't reading carefully. .... I might still have responded in a teasing vein, but I do see how you might feel inhibited (i.e., it's not a problem to be laughed away)--and yet I think it's much better to see it as a manifestation of Tiny Wittgenstein and go ahead and write, if you feel inclined.

[sovay]

I'm sorry: I wasn't reading carefully. .... I might still have responded in a teasing vein, but I do see how you might feel inhibited (i.e., it's not a problem to be laughed away)--and yet I think it's much better to see it as a manifestation of Tiny Wittgenstein and go ahead and write, if you feel inclined.

You should not apologize; you haven't said anything regrettable. This is a combination of T. Witt. and the fact that there are ways in which I never expected to be married to anyone.

People I know in real life inform my fiction much less that way than they do my poetry. "The Boatman's Cure" is a recent exception in that I think it is doing a lot of the same things as my ghost poems, albeit at greater length and less directly, but the only thing Evelyn got from Rob was the way he blows his nose. Mostly he's played by Roddy McDowall circa The Legend of Hell House. (He was in the dream.)