Starry, Starry Night

I couldn't sleep so I've gotten up, come downstairs in my nightgown, wrapped the fleece blanket around my shoulders, and turned on the computer. I don't normally suffer from insomnia but I've had enough sleepless nights to know that eyes wide open at 4 a.m. means I probably shouldn't fight it by thrashing in bed. It's too close to our 6 a.m. wake-up call anyway.

I had strange dreams all night and the last one that woke me felt eerily real: I was at a party full of people I didn't know, except I knew ABOUT them. They were the significant others of all the bloggers I read. As I walked through the party I heard familiar tales and names: "so when Heather got depressed the last time, I started seeing a shrink, too"; or "She calls me Non-birding Bill but I actually know a lot more about birds than people think." And every time I wanted to sit down, those people made me say silly phrases like, "Can I sit, for a bit, with my friend, Brad Pitt?"

Last night I had stopped by W. A. Frost for a drink and ordered what my friend ordered: one of those Frost specialties, a Caipirinha, with Cachaca, sugar, and lime. And then I had two of them, on an empty stomach. By the time I got home, I was feeling queazy, and all that sugar and alcohol made my head buzz.

So my body revolted in the middle of the night. It's not terrible waking up in the dark, while everyone else is asleep. The stars are out.

I did salvage the evening for myself by watching ONCE again. I love watching those two sing together: Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Now there's star power.

Did you watch the Academy Awards this year? I loved it when they won the Oscar for Best Song. I loved when Jon Stewart called them back out so Marketa could finish her acceptance speech. But I loved most of all Hansard's closing line at the podium, heavily accented with that thick Irish, "Make Art. Make Art."

Make Art.

Apparently, the title of the movie--ONCE--refers to the many talented artists that writer and director John Carney knew who put off their career by saying "once" they get this and that sorted out, but never succeed because they've put it off too long.

And watching that movie made me think of Jon Hassler. He died last week. There was a line in one of the obituaries that read,

"I finished teaching my 9 o'clock freshman English class and went to the library. I badly needed to write, but I never took a writing course, so I had a lot to learn. I did that by developing boyhood memories into stories."

He was thirty-seven at the time and in his forties before he published his first book.

I keep a few other quotes from Hassler in my computer, under the folder labeled "writing." I have to say he's one of my role models. I met him about ten years after he started writing, just a few years after he took the writer-in-residence position at St. John's University and just after he had published the critically acclaimed LOVE HUNTER. It was summer and I was lucky to have him, Trish Hampl, Judy Delton, and others for a summer of writing, my first serious efforts at creative writing. Jon inspired us all. He was approachable, engaging, encouraging, funny, humble--all those things you want in a teacher. We'd write anything for him. I wrote my first short story with his guidance. He wrote and he spoke and he had us write and then speak and then he sent us away and I walked over to the lakeside cafeteria at Bemidji State and wrote for hours, completely lost in my own words. I don't think I even looked up much and I remember having a backache from bending over my pages for so long. Make art. Make art. My god, it feels so good to make art.

After we all read our work at a public event at the end of the term, he pulled me aside and asked me to come up to his office for a chat. And we had one of those memorable conversations: about art, about work, about life. He encouraged me, gave me his card, and told me to call him if I ever needed help. I didn't have enough money not to work and a few months later I got my first job in publishing.

I finally called him twenty years later. The call was about him, however, not me. I asked him to write a small set of essays for a book we were publishing, and despite his many other demands, his illness, and the little amount of money I was offering him, he said yes. He typed his own letters and always addressed them to me with grace and kindness. He was easy to work with and honest. When I asked him for an essay on a particular theme, he sent one in with the comment: "I don't know if this is what you want. I don't know what else to write." During our work together I heard a few stories about his career, his uneasiness working with the New York scene, his brushes with Hollywood. One story intrigued me: Robert Redford optioned the movie rights to Love Hunter and then called Hassler to talk about the movie. He told Hassler he loved the book but could Hassler change the main character (who has MS) so that he is not sick, could he make the guy healthy. Hassler said no, no he didn't think he could do that. Redford didn't make the movie--and has never made the movie. Some time after that call Hassler got another call, this one from Paul Newman's agent. He could hear Newman in the background. "Mr. Newman would like to make the picture. Is there any way you could get the rights back so Newman can make the picture?" In the background Hassler could hear Newman saying, "Tell him I'LL play the sick guy. Tell him I WANT to play the sick guy."

This week I prepare for a chance at a new venture that might take me further away from my time to make art. I can't burn the candle at both ends for long, the way that many starving artists do, working by day, creating by night. I just burn out too easily. But if I can pull it off a few days a week, writing while the stars are still out, I could make it work. And, when I stop to really think about it, I badly need it to work.