Lancaster and M&C 8/27/12

In my last AW I discussed “killing the snurk.” I feel this is getting more to the heart of the matter with what seems to be blocking me from continuing with my my writing projects. I have real proof that my projects not only are worthwhile but also viable. The fact, for example, that [omitted] decided to “investigate” M&C is a true message from the cosmos that I am on the right track. He is a ready made character in the novel, Drum. And the fact that the Cranes contacted me regarding their Lancaster-designed cabin is also an amazing bite of freshness in the story I would like to tell. It is worth noting here, too, that nothing is particularly “out of the blue” with either of these developments. I had planted my name and interest years before in both cases in the hopes that someone would be interested. It is the timing of these two developments that is fascinating to me. How interesting that both of these parties contacted me just as I begin to write earnestly on these two stories.

The thought again dawns on me how similar the M&C and Lancaster stories are in respect to the unknown layers of context around the subjects. They are obviously very different stories, but I wonder how the methods used in one might unlock those for the other. I feel I have much more information on M&C, and so Drum seems the obvious step forward. Uncovering clues invariably leads back to the story teller, the life that finds the story a necessary one. The Lancaster story is far more remote in terms of who the man was and what his motives were; yet in some way, I feel I have a firmer grasp of his personal struggle and the trajectory of his life through alternating negative and positive views of Michael. 

Lancaster might be seen as someone who struggled not only with his physical deficiency, but with his spiritual identity as well. In fact, regaining the ability to walk as a teenager purely through self determination and ingenuity is a strong symbol of his “walk” through life. He is in my mind a giant, a hero; Michael, too is a hero to me, but for very different reasons. It occurred to me yesterday that because I only knew Mike for 12 of my 49 years (almost a quarter of my life, to date) my memory of him is diminishing at every turn, images stagnating and distorting like creatures in a tide-pool. Michael also is a giant, but a sort of missing giant, someone I have missed and mourned for a very long time. By contrast, Lancaster does not hold this place in my psyche. I do not grieve his loss, as calous as that sounds, and I do not feel the same pressure to finally say good-bye, as I do to Michael (the book, Drum is this good-bye). The Lancaster story is quite different in nature, much more of a dabble in historical fiction than plumbing the depths of absence. However, both stories hinge on the main characters and the manner in which they lead their lives, both taking very active, bold steps into the unknown.

And this fact of these two people I think is at the heart of my fascination with them. What ultimately defines both characters is that they took action when they realized the thing they needed to do. This, as opposed to their endings, is the central journey they share. Michael is one who believes in his heart that by breaking away from the mainland with his Cordelia he will find the freedom he is after. Lancaster, by turn, is one whose agonizing wish it is to share what he sees as a paradise on earth with the vision of protecting it. Two very different sides of the same coin: one the song of the self, both hedonistic and generous of heart; the other, evangelic about his mission and sense of God within nature, but inwardly (perhaps) frustrated or perturbed at his inability to be present with family or perhaps even with himself.

I wonder if I am stumbling across a formula for working with these characters, respectively. I need to develop their dark sides. Michael’s experimentation with drugs needs to be seen more clearly, and perhaps his feuds with Cordelia need to be more intense. Mike did indeed have a dark side. I think I was attracted to the Doors once so much because I recognized in the music--especially in Morrison’s persona--something of Mike’s rejection of religion and his embrace of the pagan, the raggedly sublime, the incalculably precise wildness of the natural world. I need to include the poem he wrote in high school on Death.

Michael’s dark side to me was not all that apparent as a child. I think I was shielded from it by my mother and by Mike himself. But I do recall Mom crying at times in the kitchen in the old Boones Ferry house, and I can only suspect it was her oldest son who caused her so much grief, even before he had made his plans to build Drum and depart. There was always tension around Mike at home around my parents. They wanted too much from him, they wanted devotion and a committed future. They cared about him intensely, but they were also learning as they went, praying for guidance and for Mike to embrace Christianity, which of course he did not. It wasn’t until a few years later, after Mike and Cordelia had gone missing, when Mom had the dream of her son sinking into deep green sea water, down into darker depths, that she saw him face her there underwater and sinking, heard him say or signify to her that everything was ok. I may have this wrong, but she saw that he had in his hand the Bible she had given him and Cordelia during the visit in March of 1975. This scene, both the gift of the bible and the dream need to be in the book. There is also the chilling recollection of Mom waking up one evening, shortly after Drum was to have departed from Kauai, of Michael calling out to her: “Mom, Mom,” the voice loudly said in her mind’s ear. This, too needs to go in the book.

I am thinking also of seeing an empath, intuit, psychic with the aim of getting closer to Mike. For some reason, I am being pulled into this story and the hairs on my neck stand even as I write this. Call it a psychosis, obsession maybe, but I sincerely believe that Mike and Cordelia both are calling me to figure this thing out.