Storytellersunplugged

By David Niall Wilson

I wanted to take some time, now that the long cold winter of my disconnection has passed, to revisit one of our favorite topics. Regardless of how many times it is asked and answered, the question of where stories are found, bought, traded or raised through arcane ritual is most prevalent (even beating out ‘Do you know Stephen King,” and “Have you written anything I’ve read?”). I’ve been in a unique (and very frustrating) position over the past few months, and it has allowed me to take some notes.

Most of you know I’ve been completing my 30 year quest for an AA degree. I finished that up last week, and the sensation of freedom is overwhelming. While the college work put a strangle hold on my creative output, it did nothing to slow or stop the processes running in the background, so I thought I’d use this essay to get some of that into perspective and examine it from different angles.

I’m always a bit bemused when confronted by people who can’t figure out what to write, or by those who believe I should be dying to write what they have come up with, as though my own imagination wouldn’t have anything in the back of the bus trying to shove its way forward. If I could just write down all of the ideas and inspirations that hit me in a single year, allotting them a single sentence apiece, I’d have a novel. It would be a mess, composed of disparate thoughts and plots and elephants, no doubt, but a very large data dump indeed.

I tried to go back through my battered brain in search of things that caught my eye just over the past few months - things that immediately tripped my “writing gene” into overdrive, though I was unable to act on the instinct at the time they first confronted me. For writer’s, it’s been a banner year, particularly writer with a macabre leaning.

They have genetically combined goats and spiders to create very strong silk through the goat’s milk. This silk is hundreds of times stronger than any known material. In fact, it is being produced for use by the military.

In Surabaya, a city in Indonesia, they are repairing a wall they built to stop a mud volcano named Lusi from burying them alive. This disaster was caused by a greedy company who drilled in an unsafe manner – the company, ironically owned by the Minister in charge of Public Welfare – has fought tooth and nail against accepting blame. Meanwhile, scientists are dropping giant concrete balls into the crater (I would assume while covering their ears and running very fast) hoping to plug ol’ Lusi up. As those of us who are old know, even Ricky Ricardo couldn’t do that, no matter how much ’splainin’ she had to do.

A man in Germany, upon beginning divorce proceedings, drove to the country house he and his wife shared, cut it in half with a chain saw, and carted his half back to his brother’s yard on a forklift.

Iran has gone into mass nuclear production – but it’s just for the generation of power. I mean, they have so little fuel to heat their desert homes…and really, Charlie Brown, I won’t pull the football out. I’ll hold it, and you can kick it.

A company bought bits of junk from the wreck of the Titanic and turned them into incredibly expensive designer watches.

A woman lost a court battle to have her father’s ashes compressed into a synthetic diamond. Upon researching this, I found that this is a big industry, and you can even have the ashes of your pet compressed for a price.

Scotty beamed up.

This doesn’t even approach the tip of the iceberg of ideas, impressions, ironies and impossibilities that has frozen around me in the time since I was last writing regularly. Just from this small assortment, I can pluck a dozen stories I’d love to tell.

Let’s give it a try. We’ll take a glimpse into the chaos I call a mind and see what I can fish out of the soup.

When I first saw that they were going to make watches out of Titanic debris, I thought it was a stupid idea. What difference does it make, after all, where the metal came from? Why would that give such a timepiece more value than a good stainless steel Timex?

Of course, I know the answer. That watch ticked the seconds away within earshot of a band that played through one of the most incredible disasters of modern history. That watch might be part of the ship’s compass – the captain’s chair – the bar. It might be something carried by a passenger, or cherished by a crew member. I never walked the deck of the Titanic, but I could wear a piece of that moment – that history – on my arm and dream about its origin. I sometimes think that Alanis Morisette should study the Titanic. A ship is built to be the safest, most unsinkable vessel in history, and it sinks on its maiden voyage. THAT is ironic.

Where’s the story? How about this? A man loves a woman who is fascinated with history. One of her ancestors died on the Titanic, and she feels a strong connection – so strong she’s become obsessed. She dresses only in period clothing. Her family grows slowly alienated as she loses track of what is real, and what is fantasy, what is present, and what is past. Now she is old. She has forgotten her husband, the man she loved. His love doesn’t falter, but he can’t get her to notice him. He can’t get her to love him, or to remember their life together. He becomes little more than a caretaker in a museum where she is the center display. The one thing in his life that matters – being part of her life – has faded.

He is dying, and though she is aware, it is dim for her. Those that she believes she belongs with died so long ago, he is like a voice in her dreams, or a memory she can’t quite place.

Before things got so bad – she gave him a gift. A watch, formed from the wreckage of the Titanic – a chance to draw him in and make him part of what she feels. It didn’t work, of course, but he wears it to his deathbed, where a woman in a business suit visits him. He manages a few croaked words. A question – a test to see if she has memorized his instructions perfectly. She shows him a photo of a gemstone set in a brooch – a brooch last seen in photos of a woman who died at sea. His eyes fill with tears…and he dies.

A delivery reaches his widow, wrapped in vintage paper, and seated in soft tissue. It is a brooch – an exact duplicate of the brooch in the photo, centered by a large, blood red ruby in the shape of a heart. Her eyes fill with tears as she holds it, though she doesn’t know why. A card falls to the floor…”Ashes are Forever” – this stone is a genuine ruby created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to his life. The setting – as requested – was created from his watch….

In the background, an antique Victrola plays “Nearer My God to Thee.”

She clutches him to her heart.

There are stories all around us…welcome to my world.

Onward,

DNW
Deep Blue Journal