"Who am I This Time?"
Feb. 8th, 2002 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elionwyr..Title of a film starring Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon, where he plays a character who's an actor. When this character doesn't have a role assigned to him, he's bereft of personality; when he has a role, he becomes that personna.
So when a role is given to him, he asks, "Who am I this time?"
I was speaking with Rochelle a while back. She was describing a skit she's doing soon - a soliloquy, really - and her relationship with the character she's to play.
She's talked like this before to me; I'm aware that she is a person who welcomes different people into her Self to use her voice and body. She's not a writer, but the process she describes reminds me very much of what I've felt as a writer, or what Reive has posted about so lyrically, thoughtfully, in her journal.
I don't know that I've had this happen, necessarily.
I don't know that I can say a certain outside character shares my skin, or represents a part of me.
Characters have become my friends, in that I feel like I know them; but perhaps it is indicative of who I am in so many facets of my life that I don't fully embrace them - we exist side by side, but not inside.
This is probably a failing on my part - an aspect of my desperate need to be in control.
When I focused on creative writing, I found it very distracting to have a character whisper-shout its story in my ear. It was a rough, demanding process, and I think I even resented it a little...being forced to get out of bed and write the words because if I didn't, that voice wasn't going to let me sleep.
I mainly wrote poetry because it was easier - it came easier; it was less demanding, frankly.
And now I wonder - as I've said before - if I can even remember how to court the voices.
So when a role is given to him, he asks, "Who am I this time?"
I was speaking with Rochelle a while back. She was describing a skit she's doing soon - a soliloquy, really - and her relationship with the character she's to play.
She's talked like this before to me; I'm aware that she is a person who welcomes different people into her Self to use her voice and body. She's not a writer, but the process she describes reminds me very much of what I've felt as a writer, or what Reive has posted about so lyrically, thoughtfully, in her journal.
I don't know that I've had this happen, necessarily.
I don't know that I can say a certain outside character shares my skin, or represents a part of me.
Characters have become my friends, in that I feel like I know them; but perhaps it is indicative of who I am in so many facets of my life that I don't fully embrace them - we exist side by side, but not inside.
This is probably a failing on my part - an aspect of my desperate need to be in control.
When I focused on creative writing, I found it very distracting to have a character whisper-shout its story in my ear. It was a rough, demanding process, and I think I even resented it a little...being forced to get out of bed and write the words because if I didn't, that voice wasn't going to let me sleep.
I mainly wrote poetry because it was easier - it came easier; it was less demanding, frankly.
And now I wonder - as I've said before - if I can even remember how to court the voices.
