I played songs on the keyboard, but I played different songs. Songs I don't normally play. That sort of a day. I think I must be ready for a change.
Back in the day, they used to say that a rut was a grave with the ends kicked out. I know that a rut is comfortable. Some optimistic people would call it being in your own groove. To me it is just a good ole comfortable rut.
I guess you've heard about the program where they are calling for volunteers to go to Mars for the starting of a human colony there. It is a one-way ticket. In other words, you ain't coming back, ever. The funny thing is, they had 100,000 volunteers almost immediately. Now that would be breaking out of a rut, big time. Would you go to Mars? I could dig it, in a way. But if I were trapped in a space ship with people I don't like, I'd freak out. I am not a people person anyway. I am a loner most of the time. I work alone and live alone except for Carley.
I was just watching Morgan Freeman in the role of an aging, crippled author who has lost all desire to work or interact with anything other than a bottle of whiskey. Then, at a summer cottage, he meets the 9 year old neighbor girl, who pays him her life savings of $34.17 to teach her how to use her imagination and make up stories. Sometimes, if the rut is deep enough and binding enough, it takes extreme circumstances to come out of it. Maybe sometimes a pain in the butt can actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
The name of this movie is The Magic of Belle Isle. It is special and if you can finish it with a dry eye, I'll be surprised. Here's the recipe.
Monte (Morgan Freeman) stays at a lake cottage for the summer. It belongs to a friend of a friend. He is despondent, suicidal and a drunk. He amuses himself teaching a resident dog how to fetch a ball. The baseball career he had was cut short by a drunk driver. Then his beloved wife dies of cancer, taking away the muse he needs to write his westerns. So, he is near broke on top of everything else.
Virginia Madsen stars as his next door neighbor, Charlotte. Charlotte has three girls but is going through a messy divorce. She plays piano beautifully and Monte sits on his porch, in his wheel chair, to listen.
Charlotte's girl, Finnegan, a boy in need of a friend and Charlotte herself, begin to pull the writer back into the land of the living. The smallest of the neighbor girls wants him to write a story about an elephant for her. He can no longer write about Jubal, his western hero, but a Hollywood producer wants to buy the rights to the books.
It seems to me that Monte was in a rut. Perhaps he was in a grave, with the ends kicked out. I think that it is good for any writer to have themselves impacted by different environments and people. The neighbor girl, Finn,goes and buys his book at a bookstore. It is a paperback and only 35 cents, because the last page is missing. When she tells Monte about it, he writes the last page for her and gives it to her. He says that his readers deserve to know the end of the story.
There is only one excellent reason to be married. That would be love. There are other good reasons but only one excellent reason.
Writing is like that. The excellent reason to write would be because you are a writer. There are many other good reasons. But, we write because we want to create another world, a world that works out okay. A world where anything can happen. A world where a hero actually shows up when you need him. A world where the hero can break out of his ******* rut and move on with his or her life. A world where you can eat strawberries and pistachio almond ice cream and maybe drink some champagne with it. A world where you can watch a crippled, aging writer be reborn by love and involvement with humanity.
So, I am going to go eat some stir fry and key lime marshmallows with champagne. Here at the author's green retreat.
I'm CE Wills. Goodnight.
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