Like Augustine
[Pan around the inside of a coffeeshop, standing in the central point of the shop. Focus on random customers who don’t know/pay attention to the fact that they’re being “watched” by the camera. The coffeeshop is about half full, so go to each customer (whether alone or in a group) individually. If there is a group of people (whether 2 or more people), stay with a group until everyone in that group gets their face time. Finally, go to the person sitting in the middle of the shop. This is to provide the impression that this person sitting there is trying to find solitude in the midst of a bustling crowd, a futile attempt at best.]
[Sitting down in a chair, with a coffee cup, bottle of water, pen, pad of paper, and messenger bag on the table in front. Scribbling furiously on the pad, until just as the camera gets there, Simon looks up, vaguely, yet the purposefully into the camera to his left.]
Simon: I read a lot, too much sometimes I think. There are times when all the plots run together, all the points mesh into one, all of the characters resemble each other. Then, when I shake my head, they all fall back to where they were in my head — fractured and unconnected to their greater whole. I’m not sure which is worse — a mush of memories from everything I’ve read or a smorgasboard of too many divergent snippets of text, quotes, characters, and purposes knocking about in my head with some sort of literary Brownian Motion.
[Change angles to his right and Simon’s vision follows]
Simon: I think that it was Steinbeck, in his travel memoir Travels with Charley, who said that the oppressive heat of the Southern US is stifling to creativity, to the point that good art & good authors are scarce commodities throughout the South. He even went as far as to say that William Faulkner was probably the greatest writer from the South, and even he was influenced by the climate in which he lived. Now, while I would add Flannery O’Connor to that list of his, I would agree with him in intent and substance. We are influenced by the locality of our origins and subsequent raising.
[Simon leans head back, not looking into the camera]
Simon: Granted, that’s not really anything new or ground-breaking. Any undergraduate sociology or psychology student should be able to make that assumption, unless they haven’t been reading their textbooks, which is another problem all together.
[Simon looks back into the camera centered in front of him]
Simon: The problem arises when people forget their pasts, or worse, try to say that they weren’t influenced by their upbringing, that they’re totally new people with totally new circumstances. And that’s a very large load of crap, mixed with a healthy side dish of denial, for good measure. You can always leave where you used to be in the physical, but you can’t quite try hard enough that you’ll leave behind the emotional and psychological baggage of your upbringing. I would know. I’ve tried.
[Simon stands up, grabs his coffee cup and heads up to the counter where two baristas are cleaning blenders.]
Simon: Hey there Matt. Hey there Regina. Could I get a refill of my coffee if you’re not too busy?
[Matt turns to face him as Regina keeps cleaning.]
Matt: Sure Simon. I’m just glad that you’re not yet another person ordering yet another Venti Frap. I think our blenders have overheated here.
Simon: You know I don’t drink that crap Matt.
Matt: I know. I just know that I can complain to you and you don’t care.
Simon: Good point. I don’t care when you complain. You don’t care when I complain. We’re even.
{Matt takes the coffee cup, refills it, and sets it in front of Simon.]
Simon: What do I owe you?
Matt: Nothing. As usual. When do any of us make you pay for your refills?
Simon: Yet another good point. Thanks as usual. [Heads back to his table]
Matt: You’re welcome Simon. [Turns back to the sink of dirty dishes as Regina splashes him with water. Water splashes in the background as Simon sits down. He looks into the camera on the right.]
Simon: Good literature gives us examples of how our surrounding affect our work, our craft, how we approach practicing, performing, creating anything artistic. Look at work by Doestoevsky & Tolstoy. You can almost see the seconds click by on the clock as the pages turn slowly, one by one. I had a History professor who once said that Russian writers could take 800 pages to describe Tuesday. I would agree with that assessment, mostly because I think that over-attention to detail and literary minuteia can be both fascinating and mind-numbing at the same time. Seriously mind-numbing.
[Shift gaze to the center]
Simon: Contrast that with Hemingway. He could spend 30 pages on 30 minutes of a conversation and then leap over months at a time to the next pertinent scene in his galloping story line. Hemingway spent great detail on the immediate point being made in the conversation between the characters and then move forward great expanses of time to take part in the next conversation deemed to be of any importance. The reader has to play catch-up with the characters because so much time had passed in between scenes. Hemingway’s books lived as Hemingway did — from place to place, conversation to conversation, person to person, event of major consequence to the next event of major consequence.
[Gaze goes back to the right]
Simon: We are products of our environment, whether it’s the cultural or climatic environment we’re referring to in this scenario. But can we rise up against that? Are we able to break out of the molds into which we’re born? Out of the rigid, conformist normality into which our schools, churches, political institutions, and Madison Avenue have socialized us? [voice rises a bit] But do we have to be this way? Is this how rebellions and social change are begun? Are the grassroots of rebellion found at the intentional distaste found in the mouths of the oppressed collective? [voice rises even more]
[Gaze flashes to the left]
Simon: Why are we forced to be followers? Are we compelled into continual rebellion, a cultural war of attrition against being “normal” [fingers do air quotes] or do we have to break out and create a new culture where we can feel at home, more comfortable, more able to freely create and live? [voice rises even more, as people begin to stare uncomfortably at Simon] Why do we…
[Jackie walks up and lightly slaps Simon on the back of the head. She walks right past him and sits in the chair across from him. Camera shift to being perpindicular from them, at Simon’s left.]
Jackie: Can’t you ever talk to yourself without getting so worked up? I already know how much you hate Wal-Mart.
[Simon looks silly, humbled, and sheepish at her arrival]
Jackie: You know that I feel much like you do, but I don’t yell to myself outloud in public, looking all silly. [She continually smiles a playful smile at him while talking]
Simon: Well, it looks like you caught me again. Why is it that you catch me and no one else? [Simon begins to smile]
Jackie: It’s probably because, if anyone else caught you yelling to yourself, they’d seriously question your sanity. I mean, it’s one thing to mumble to yourself, and quite another thing to talk and yell to yourself like you think that someone’s watching you or something. And the scary thing is that you don’t really notice yourself doing it. Or is that the funny thing? [Smiles even bigger as she teases Simon]
[Camera angle shifts to being perpindicular to them, at Simon’s right]
Simon: OK, alright, enough. You’ve made your point, yet again. But you know how I get so wrapped up in this. Once I get going, it’s hard for me to stop. I sometimes think I was supposed to be an activist, but I got stuck in neutral somewhere in terms of actually doing something with my life.
Jackie: OK, alright, enough. Stop putting yourself down, yet again. You can’t get so down on yourself right as we’re about to go out for the evening. You’re no fun when you’re morose about your job. We know you don’t like it and we’ve told you plenty of times that you’ve gotta get out of there before you go crazy, crazier than you are usually. Let’s get going. The others should be pulling up outside.
[Jackie gets up to leave and briskly walks through the door. Simon packs his pen and pad of paper into his bag and chugs down his coffee. He walks up to the counter to return the cup]
Simon: Have a great night you two.
Matt: Have fun tonight Simon.
Regina: See ya Si.
[As he turns to walk out, Simon begins talking again]
Simon: Paraphrasing Adlai Stevenson, “A healthy society is one where it is safe and OK to be in disagreement.” I’m not looking for a panacea or a Utopia. No activist that I know is looking for that either.
[Walks through the doors into the sunshine outside. Pauses to look for his friends in their car]
Simon: I’m looking for and working toward a vibrant society where dissent and acceptance are both expected and realized as necessary and appropriate. Why is that deemed naive? What makes this so hard to achieve? But my real question is — Why is forced, fake homogenity more acceptable than balanced heterogenity? Of course, Don Miller says is best when he said, “Oh, I think that socialism is great — sharing equally and working for the common good of all humans everywhere. There’s only one problem with that — all humans everywhere.”
[Turns from the camera, opens the car door, gets in the car, and the car speeds away.]
