Writers Jam

In the wee hours of the night when sleep is a rare commodity, you play the faithful second fiddle in my imagination. I, the perfectionist director yelling for "ACTION"s, "CUT"s, and "PACKUP"s. You, the scurrying actor, running pillar to post to meet my demands.

I'm Cameron, manifesting entire worlds into existence, without the resources today to bring my dreams to fruition. I'm Anderson, staging and mis-en-scene, painstaking framing and blocking only for a 30 second cutscene. I'm Kumararaja, dreamy edits of bizarre plotlines crashing into one another, no space to breathe. I'm Bala, whipping up my actors and stories into submission, traumatizing watchers with my perfectly tragic renditions.

Int. My House. Night
We hold hands, we kiss, we smile into the kiss. RETAKE
We meet, we talk, we meet again, we talk some more, we keep running into each other and we never stop tal- CUT
We're in my bed, I lay my head on your lap, You touch my hair like they're rosaries and every graze against your finger is a prayer. FROM THE TOP AGAIN BUT WITH MORE EMOTION THIS TIME

We've kissed in thunderstorms, waltzed in the middle of forests, found each other at the end of times. We've outdid every cliched portrayal of every romcom to ever exist. We've lived a thousand lies all in my head. And yet I keep adding a thousand more.

You're a bad actor. You never listen. You fumble your lines, your eyes betray you, you're awkward with your hands. You don't understand my creative vision and try to put your own spin onto it. You'd rather sit in my seat and make me dance to your tunes.

You're my muse. You care. You bring out magic in front of my camera, a raw ouevre that I might never visualize again. You method act your way through my plotholes. You teach me tangents and techniques that I might never put to use. You engage me so much that I never consider for even a second that I could work with other people.

No matter how many takes, and days on the call sheet, your spirit refuses to be captured on the screen. I spend days on the edit table, poring over every nod and flick of hair, syncing it to music. I call out pack-up time to these creations at every dawn with a heavy heart.

The audience might never empathize with your role. The critics might pan your performance. The distributors may never buy our story. Maybe my execution is weak. Maybe my justifications flawed. Maybe the narrative is doomed. Maybe I just don't have enough experience trying to build something out of nothing. But that's never going to stop me from trying. That's all I ever do. Try.

Try to arrest the way the sun shines on your face. Try to bottle your heady scent that I can never get enough of. Try too hard to recreate what we had. Try incessantly to pull you, this made-up version of you that never once did any wrong, with no logical precursor to it. Try too much to bring you to life in my room where you can never exist.