Have you ever written anything down, an important scrap of information, perhaps, pr an idea for something really creative, something you didn't want to forget, and not known what the heck you were thinking when you came upon what you had written a few days later? Much to my chagrin, it happens to me all the time.
I carry a notepad with me wherever I go because I can never be sure when I will be approached by an idea (usually from the side, when I'm not looking). When I sit down to write a first draft of something original, I'll often leaf through my notepad, looking for whatever strikes my fancy. Lately, a few of the entries have not only not struck my fancy, but have actually struck no responsive chord in my memory at all.
"Pain, Pleasure and the Six O'Clock News" - now, there's a provocative title for a column if I've ever written one. Would you be interested in reading a story with the title "Pain, Pleasure and the Six O'Clock News"? I know I would. Do you have any idea what I might have meant by it? I don't know.
Or, how about "Blue Jay Hunters?" Every time I look at that, I have visions of big game hunters with shotguns next to the armchairs in their dens who have the heads of Lloyd Moseby, George Bell, Doyle Alexander and the rest hanging on their walls. I'm morally certain that that was not my original intention, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what my original intention may have been...
How often have you heard a politician talking about winning the hearts and minds of the people? When I hear that (every four years in the United States, at least once every five years in Canada), I am invariably reminded of Richard Nixon's admonition that once you have a man by a portion of his anatomy in the groinal region, the rest of the body will follow. This concept must lie behind the cryptic title, "Of Hearts, Minds, and Other Body Parts." Still, once the observation has been made, where can you take the idea?
(By now, it should be apparent that I think in story titles. It has been my experience that a good title indicates the line of thought taken in the column. It should also be apparent that this column is all about instances where that particular artistic theory has not panned out.)
Would I like to say "A Few Words About Teen Angst?" You bet I would - I'm getting sick of seeing it in movies and on television. I thought it might be funny to submit this one line as an entire column. I might have been able to successfully argue that this would be a clever innovation, a radical experiment in form and a funny joke to boot. Then again, I might not have been able to, so I didn't waste any time on it.
Often, what looks like a great juxtaposition turns out to be a humour dead end. "Setting Free the Care Bears" looks promising, a simultaneous parody of John Irving's Setting Free the Bears and the latest phenomenon in children's toys, the Care Bears. But, to do the John Irving novel justice, I would have had to write a story substantially longer than the ones I usually write; and, to do the Care Bears justice, I would have had to see The Care Bears Movie. I might have done the former, but I was not prepared to do the latter - some research comes at too high a cost!
Sometimes, a good joke will never find a proper context. Consider: "There's a new game out called Existential Trivial Pursuit. All of the questions are: "Why?" and all of the answers are: "Oh, no particular reason." What should I do with such a joke? Write a column on new versions of Trivial Pursuit? Possibly, but I don't have any others. A column on the latest intellectual fashions from Europe? I don't know - the idea just never grabbed me.
Then, there are ideas which have no discernible connection to reality. What am I to make of "Judge Not, Lest Ye Be...Rabbit?" It sounds like a comic book title (which is not an unlikely origina since I have been a comics collector for many years). The rabbit in question could be an arch-criminal, or some dastardly transformation process. Some day, I may write a comic book with such a title, but it is of little use to me now.
There are also ideas which, if the moment isn't seized, soon become irrelevant. When Frank Miller was Premier of Ontario, I had at least two columns ready to be devoted to him. The first, "The Ghost and Mr. Miller," was, as I vaguely remember it, to be about a meeting between Miller and former Ontario Premier William Davis, with Davis giving Miller advice about how to run his government.
"High 11 am" was to be a parody of High Noon, with Miller coming to Toronto for a showdown with the leader of the Liberal Party. If Miller had stayed in power, either of these ideas might have been worth pursuing - now, I'm afraid, they would be in bad taste.
"Humour - The World's 23rd Oldest Profession" is one of those ideas that would have been easy to write. Too easy. I have a tendency to make writing the focal point of many of my parodies (The Comedy Manifesto, et al), despite the fact that I find such humour to be, at best, incentuous. I intentionally forwent this one, but I couldn't resist mentioning it in passing because, well, being a pack rat, I hate discarding anything.
In fact, this entire column has been a testimony to the bulldog-like tenacity with which I cling to ideas. Hey - ideas are difficult to come by, and shouldn't be discarded just because they seem to lead nowhere.
After all, they did lead us to the end of this column.