abahr blog

Petra & Burr Lee

I just shared some pages of my new script with a new friend of mine and the warm reception compelled me to share it with the world en masse.  As some of you might know I’ve been juggling a bunch of new hats in the last few months as I’ve written for a bunch of projects I have going on, hunted for a new job, and watched a ton of movies. All told I’m feeling brave, feeling bold.

PETRA

It washes over you, me, over us rather, and into the blue we sidle uncomfortably.

BURR LEE

That’s all of it?

PETRA

(as she pokes a needle into her arm)

It’s just a dream, it doesn’t have to begin    or end in any kind of certain way — shit this stuffs strong — but I remember all of it. No certainty but I remember. For certain I remember.

BURR LEE

(trailing off)

Of course it has to begin and end in a certain kind of way. A dream is like a needle, a really good high has a texture to itself and it has — yeah — it has a beginning…a beginning and an end.

PETRA

I missed you. In the dream I missed you but I didn’t want to wake up. I was afraid that if I did we would fall back into it too fast without considering anything. Fall into each other.

BURR LEE

(considering)

My dreams are usually dirty, cleaned up enough to be classy erotic, but not philosophical. Maybe your subconscious dream parts were trying to fix us.

PETRA

Fix us. Fuck. Maybe. We should have sex baby. It’s old hat for us.

BURR LEE

(drifting off to sleep)

Yeah…yeah…old hat.

PETRA

Baby…?

BURR LEE

(gone)

Into the blue we sidle uncomfortably.

hermes, protector of travelers

This story sat beneath my chest for the longest time now but it always seemed a touch self indulgent. You see…a sadness and loathing has gripped at my heart and lead to a head space I’m no longer able to deal with. A normal person might reach out to a loved one, another might seek advice in knowledge. I have always dealt with pain by burying it deep and withdrawing from reality.  Sometimes I disappear into my own little writing world where everything is measured and tempered.  For the longest time this served as a purgative cleanse but lately its ability to heal my heart ache has waned. On Saturday night I said my final words to a man who I allowed in my life for far too long.

When I first arrived in Los Angeles I was set with a job at big company and I was almost unable to control the zeal.  The surroundings and the intensity of the Hollywood sheen was mind blowing and like most people I indulged.  Almost immediately after being hired I was laid off finding myself a casualty of the writer strike.  It was humbling and quite frightening but I did my best to get by. With little cash to my name I began to scramble and by some stroke of luck I was hired at the company I work at now.

At this job I met a man who would later reveal himself to be one of the vilest people I’ve ever encountered.  In the beginning there was this ominous feeling of ambiguous address in every word shared. I allowed him access to my sensitivies and he played me like the rube I am.  He took me into his confidence and over the course of a year began revealing every shade of darkness his greedy heart was shaped from.  His mouth spewed vitriol and the lies he would eventually weave about everyone around him were menacing.  I have never been the type with overly thick skin but this man is a product of palpable evil.  In the beginning I just went home and cried and maybe this is why I pushed so many away from me.  I’ve often wondered why it pained me so as his moral frailty was not my sin.  I didn’t say the awful things he said  and I didn’t do the awful things he did. I soldiered through his tirades and did my best to protect those who he sought to hurt.  There is nothing noble to my acts last year and for much of it I will be punished, but not yet.  I bared witness to the wreckage if only to gain a little understanding.  It was a slow burn and the panic attacks that plagued me as a boy returned.  I burned bridges through my morbid insistence on staying, lost friendships, and pushed away people whose influence made me a better person.  There was nothing spiritual or important being done in our work and at times it seemed like I was engaging in a morally repugnant character study.  I have been asked what it was that fascinated me and maybe it was all the desolate beauty.  I allowed his secrets into my head and everything about him became true, his life was the lie that I was able to give truth. Everything you hear, everything you see about this town is true and false all at once. You become an entertainer and everything is a show on the road towards money. There is a war in the heart of it all, this desire to touch celebrity. How could a man become such a satire, whose heart, in all its duality, doesn’t even realize its vying with itself. Seeing such wonderful damage is a desolate road to travel but there is a beauty to it. We are monsters in the same heart. We are coyotes all of us. In coming to this realization this weekend I was able to rid myself of the sorrow I felt all last year.

In many ways I am a changed man and all the painful moments planted roots in the heart of my mind. These strange moments, moments that imprinted their stories are all part of this machine. My despair over the last year was not the fault of the man or the tragedy of a sentimental heart.  There is no blame to share. It is, and it was all, just a moment of life, the ills of an experience junkie.  I am endeavoring the raucous wilds to become something more and I allowed the sadness to overtake the joy.  Sometimes the fantasy of a story blends with the realty and I wonder what really happened those years ago.  Sometimes it all seems so ficticous and it is funny how writing can do that to a person.  A character begins as a thought process or a physical embodiment of a way of thinking.  All of this than disappears into that person.  As the thoughts cross your path again it is almost amusing in the knowledge that you have now outgrown it.  I used to people my scripts with constructs that I thought were clever but now I approach character work from a more honest place. I am not out to be clever as much as I am trying to understand the desolate beauty of it all.