The Little Foxes of the Mind

Posted on January 29, 2004 in Writing

I noticed that I do something that thwarts my writing: As I roll along, describing a scene from my life, I pull the pen away from the sheet of paper and start talking to an unseen audience. Thoughts dissipate into unrenewable sound waves — who the hell turns on a tape recorder when he is writing and how few who do use them ever get around to transcribing them? How can a tape recorder pick up the voices in my head that I am yelling at? Who wants to walk around talking like Gollum? My mind races ahead as a phantom troupe of actors hired for the purpose of imitating people who I know steal the script and the plot.

George S. Kaufman is said to have had problems when the ever-improvising Marx Brothers starred in his play The Cocoanuts on Broadway: “Shhh! I think I just heard one of my own lines!”

That’s what the spectral cabal does in my head, “the little foxes that spoil the vines”: drama queens cry, people argue and contradict, the grapes of creative industry get spoiled.

Until I spite them by writing about them.