I Did It!

You are never too old to learn and try something new. A good bye to an old friend. And a good book I recently finished.

Last Friday and Saturday evenings I participated in a story telling evening. As I wrote last week it was a new experience for me and I was nervous. As a writer I am used to doing readings in front of people, but I always have the story with me on paper. With this I needed to learn my story but not to memorize it. If I memorized it then I could repeat it but it would be tougher to perform it. What they were after was performance.

I spent the week before reading my piece over and over. I practiced it a few times and every time I forgot something. Which actually turned out fine. I would remind myself what I left out and keep moving forward.

On the first night of the performance I was nervous. And I was up first. I didn’t mind going first because then I wouldn’t have to sit in the audience waiting, and getting more nervous.

It took me a bit to find the rhythm of the piece and of course I forgot a few things but, as my daughter told me, “No one else knew you forgot something. We all thought we heard it the way you were going to tell it.”

Ultimately, I had a great time and after the second night the producer told me that she would use me again if I was interested. Oh hell yes! I would love to do it again.

I want to tell everyone to do something new, and out of their comfort zone. Quite often it can be very rewarding.

Which leads me to this.

I got some bad news on Saturday. A good friend, Danny Boyd passed away unexpectedly. I first met Danny on tour years ago.

He was a filmmaker and professor at West Virginia State University. I spoke to the West Virginia Filmmakers Guild, of which he was a member. We became friends and he invited me back to talk to his students many times over the years. He insisted I stay at his house. We always had a blast.

The reason I’m bringing up Danny is that, in addition to being a filmmaker and a tenured professor, he was also a guy who would try so many different things during his life. If he found out about something that interested him, he would do more research and then give it a shot.

He became not just a professional wrestler, but a “heel” with his buddy and wrestling partner, William Bitner also known as The Death Falcon”. Now Danny was around 5’10” and probably 160 pounds. He wasn’t going to over power anyone with brute force so he became, “Professor Danger” who beat his opponents with his mind. It was a great gimmick.

Now here is a guy with a couple of university degrees, and received three Fulbright Scholarships, so what the hell was he doing as a “professional wrestler”? He described it to me in terms of live theater. Each match was a performance and it would only happen once. He always said, “professional wrestling is not fake, but it is fixed”. You know who is going to win before the match starts, but you have to sell it to the audience. In that way it was like live theater.

It was not fake in that, those guys did get hurt. They always try to avoid actually hurting each other but sometimes things happen. I know he had his bell rung a couple of times.

A few years later Danny became obsessed with bull riding. I do not know how, but he did. He trained and spent a season riding bulls on a small rodeo circuit. He was twice as old as most of the other riders. I was in town when he did his last bull ride. I didn’t tell him I was coming, friends got me out there and I didn’t talk to him until after his ride. I didn’t want to fuck up his concentration. I don’t know how many times he was able to stay on the bull for the required time that season, if at all. I believe he lasted 5 seconds the night I was there…

That night we drove back from the rodeo along the back roads in his old Chevy. His saddle and gear was in the trunk and we were drinking beers from a short case I had picked up when we stopped for gas. I joked with him that I felt like I was living in an old Steve McQueen movie, Junior Bonner, about an old rodeo rider. It was made by Sam Peckinpah, if you have the opportunity, see it!

He also had the opportunity to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and of course he did.

Danny was one of the most un-macho guys I ever knew. He was not reckless. He always had safety equipment on and learned as much about whatever it was he was attempting before he started. He underwent training so that he wouldn’t get hurt.

Danny did a lot of things that were initially out of his comfort zone and I’m sure he felt fear when he was doing some of these things. But he trained and made sure that he was as safe as he could be and still able to participate. One of the things he told me during the bull riding year was, he always introduced himself to the rodeo clowns who were working because if something went wrong while he was on the bull, it was the clowns that would be the first ones able to help him, and get the bull away from him if he was on the ground.

After his retirement he became and author of graphic novels, children’s books, he wrote one or two plays that he produced, and did a lot of reading.

Every spring he invited the neighborhood kids over to his yard where they planted sunflowers. He turned it into a gardening/reading club. When the kids came over he always had a ton of books and comic books to give them and he always encouraged them to read.

Now these are just a few of the things that Danny did. He and I are the same age and of course that’s a devastating part of the loss for me. We had so many conversations over beers and food, he loved fried baloney sandwiches – I tried but they just didn’t do anything for me. I have some really funny adventures/stories with Danny that I will always cherish.

If he had the opportunity to experience something new, he often said, “Why not?”

I don’t know many people who like to get out of their comfort zones, and certainly not the way Danny did. I will miss him and his spirit. God only knows what he might try to do in the afterlife, because it sounds fun.

Rest in peace Brother.

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I just finished a wonderful book on writing, Imagine A Door, by Laura Stanfill. Laura is a writer and a publisher and in this book she walks the reader through all of the different scenarios that a writer may face early in their career. She signs a light on many of the mysteries that writers are faced with these days.

If your manuscript has been turned down by the Big Five Publishing companies and you don’t have an agent, or you’re trying to get an agent, here are other things you can do to get your book published. The options she lays out and the pros and cons are incredible. Laura uses her own experiences, and she interviews others on their experiences. It is very comprehensive and written in an easily comprehensible tone. The great thing about this book is you realize while you’re reading it that Laura wants you to succeed. She is encouraging, but also realistic about what you as a writer are up against.

I’ve been writing and independently publishing my books for year, and although a lot of the things that Laura wrote don’t necessarily apply to me, I still read every page and learned so much about the business. Whether you’re new to writing or like me, been around the block a few times, this is a book that is so full of useful knowledge. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Check it out at - https://www.forestavenuepress.com

And yes, Laura is a friend of mine, but she has no clue I’m writing this…

Thank you all for reading, subscribing, and supporting me and my writing and filmmaking.

Here is a clip of me reading Incident At Arrah Wanna, about the time I got busted for drugs when I was fourteen, at church camp. Yeah, I have never been a role model...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLEjFvSeh_A

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