Everything is Material - Sept 2 2021

 

Everything is Material

Sept 2 2021

Everything is material.

That's what's said about writers

who need to write

no matter what.

It's a sickness, they say

like crack cocaine.

So beware your writer friends,

they will use you shamelessly

penning a barely disguised

roman a clef;

names have been changed

but you know who you are.

And in retrospect

as we filter and cull and sift

forget and rejig

fiction and truth co-exist

until the stories get fixed in our minds and hearts

and become who we are.

We have the scars

to show.

It helps

knowing that as bad as it gets

the better the tale,

just so long, that is

we live to tell.

And that with enough hyperbole

and embellishment

a good writer can take the most tranquil life

and make it sing.

It's all in the how;

an eye for the little things

ear for the sour note.

Because everything is material

no matter what,

even a poem about

nothing at all.

Like the one you read

pent-up for the big event

until you reached the end

when it suddenly stopped.

I listen to several story-telling podcasts. I find myself envious of these great and entertaining raconteurs. But often, reviewing in my head the actual plot, I realize that nothing much happens in most stories: much of the pleasure comes from the embellishment and colour. That an interesting life can be constructed out of mundane events. And that reframing, as well as the perspective of time, can make anything better.

The first line presented itself to me, and I decided to riff on it and see where the thing would take me. And toward the end realized that it wasn't taking me anywhere; but that I, too, could emulate these envied raconteurs and – like the Seinfeld episode about the sitcom about nothing – I could also tell a story about nothing much. A bit of a twist at the end; but one that proves the premise: everything really is material!