Ramblings (#1)

OK - I'll admit it - I'm a novice blogger. I had a similar blog about movies a few years ago. A couple of people read it now and then (one young lady in New York was a big fan), but I know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs that are read more frequently and by more people than this one. I don't have fancy graphics or tons of links (okay - no links) to other blogs or sites. I don't have advertisers. I'm barely savvy enough to get the damned thing posted. Hell, I don't even have any photos to post (well, not yet, anyway).

So, what do I have? Not much other than my personal opinion. And who really cares about that, other than myself? But that's not really the point. Long before I knew that Theatre was my great passion, I always wanted to write. When I was about 10 or 11, I told my father (and the less I have to say about him, the better) that I wanted to write a novel. "You don't have the vocabulary," was his typically non-supportive response. But I ignored him and struggled on. There are probably hundreds of lined notebook pages lying about in dump sites of my early attempts at fiction. I wrote, and wrote and wrote. And, hopefully, I got better at it.

And write I continue to do. Lately, I have been concentrating on screenplays, though I am currently working on my third musical (book and lyrics only - don't ask me to come up with a melody - I can sing, but I can't even read music, let alone write it) and have the beginnings of a couple of novels stored on my hard drive. I can write short essays and my "Director's Notes" for plays I have directed usually make sense (at least to me). I am happy to be able to construct a sentence which usually follows the rules of basic English and, depsite my father's pronouncements, I think my vocabulary is above average. And those who read (or at least those who tell me they do) this blog, usually find what I have to say interesting (or at least they tell me they do).

So why do I write? Those who know me well, know I will probably never have children. So I suppose it's just the desire to leave something behind. Something that, after I am gone, others can look at and say "So that's who he was!" Something that says "I was here." I guess one could equivilate it to graffiti or even ancient cave drawings. A granite marker atop an obscure gravesite with a name and dates of birth and death may be enough for some, but I guess I need something more than that. And that's probably a little selfish, but I don't care.

Yikes! This is getting heavy, isn't it? Okay - enough of this moroseness. Maybe I should ask you (all three of you reading this - hah) what I should write about. What topics would you like me to discuss? What do you want to know about what I think about movies, theatre or whatever? Leave a comment and let me know. Until then, I'll be trying to come up with an interesting topic or list for my next post.