Brush Strokes, Keystrokes

My favorite short story ever--here, the link to hear it read by the author:
http://sixthcolumn.typepad.com/duckwalls/2008/12/truman-capote-a.html.

Posting Figgy's photos and realizing how much I admire the eye of an artist and/or photographer has me thinking about the eye of a writer.

A writer can't just have a good eye. She has to have a good ear, too, to hear dialogue, twang, sadness, joy, resignation, hope, emptiness, shiftiness. And a good nose, and a good sense of taste, so that she can convey details crisply via the written word. So that you can be there next to her when she sniffs sea lavender by a Cape Cod marsh, or when she eats a piece of lemon shortbread that is so buttery, crumbly and bursting with sunny citrus flavor, just one bite brings on visions of a farmhouse kitchen, a worn pan, an apron and an heirloom family recipe. So that we can be there in a Southern kitchen in November with Buddy and his old friend when it's fruitcake weather [see link above]. A Christmas Memory is a story I never tire of reading, because it transports me to another place and time.

Admiring Fig's artistic gifts made me realize that I need to brush up on my senses. I can't just pass through this life. I have to observe it closely, and capture it. I have to write about it. And I am 50 now, so I can't wait forever to do this.

Paint Me a Picture
Yet how can it be that if you asked me now, there's not one person I would really be able to capture exactly on the page with words only? Figgy, and by a much higher degree, my cousin Linda [an artist all her life], can capture people in their minds, on their pages, on their canvases. I could probably capture people for you, but it would be hard work. I have to be willing to do that.

I have to be prepared to work harder on this. I once took an evening fiction writing class at the New School in NYC. An early assignment was to write a page describing someone we knew very well. I wrote about Dad. But that was when Dad was up and around; he was in his 60s, and I still lived at home. Now he is 87, and his limited life would make my description limited, too. Or is that I don't want to face all of those details and sift through them? Am I afraid of the work the craft demands?

In a short story-writing class in college, the professor--a handsome blond fellow with rimless glasses and a light blue Shetland wool sweater that matched his eyes--told us to listen to how people really speak, when riding the subway, for instance, so we could capture authentic dialogue. A magazine editor I worked with who had her masters in journalism said the same thing--write down exactly how a person says something, their exact words.

I owe it to myself to capture life. To go beyond reporting on fashion and family and food in this blog and to really paint some pictures. That is my goal. Since I often struggle meeting goals I set, I wish myself luck. But I hope to post some portraits here.

Thank you for listening.

Good night.