How It Will Be

It Will Be Like This

So I'm heading off, on Monday, to an artist's colony in New Hampshire and a friend and very talented writer/musician, Brett, suggested I journal each day before I get there as though I was there, and then journal each day when I'm there, and then compare the two.

This is a great idea, but I have failed to do this. However, I do have one image of what I'll be doing on at least one day when I get there. On day 17 or so, or perhaps day 23, thereabouts. I will harness the inimitable former poet laureate and Pulitzer prize winner Charles Simic and get him to come to the colony for an interview for Gigantic. I will have befriended a filmmaker by this point and the filmmaker will help me record this on film so that we not only have a transcript of his interview but a film. The film will take the form of a documentary and it will be fantastic, though I have no filming or editing skills at this point. I have a super-8 camera. One quality of the film will be grainy black and white images of the inimitable Charles Simic.

The inimitable Charles Simic will come to the colony and everyone in the dining hall will be shocked and awed by the presence of the inimitable Charles Simic. They will talk in quiet tones and will wonder how I, a nobody, was able to harness the inimitable Charle Simic and bring him to their quiet abode, though granted there will be no short supply of 'somebodies' in the dining hall. I will have all the people in the dining hall sign hand-scrawled releases so that when this film gets wide-released (as all films about poets do) we will not get sued.

Then the inimitable Charles Simic and I, along with my friend Mark Bowen, a very gifted poet who will also be in New Hampshire, will walk in the woods, which will be covered in snow. I will film the inimitable Charles Simic's feet as they walk through the woods, for about five minutes. No one will speak. All we will hear is the sound of the inimitable Charles Simic's feet, walking. Then we, Mark and I, will engage him on various subjects such as living through war, being stolen by gypsies and three-legged dogs. The interview will, at first, be stilted and filled with awkward silences. And the inimitable Charles Simic will wonder why he ever agreed to do this. But eventually, we will all begin to loosen up and chat about topics that we had not prepared to talk about and he will even be entertained by us and regale us with stories of his childhood. By the end, we will have solicited at least one or two smiles from the stolid poet, known for hunkering down for long stretches of silence with nothing but Holderlin, and at least one profound moment of thought in which we will close in on his face in order for the viewer to see better the inimitable Charles Simic in a profound moment of thought.