At brunch a woman, over 60 herself but still a little bit of a groupie of "writers", said to me and the other woman writer, "What do you consider your muse?"Muse? At a good many months past 70, I think if I haven't lived enough to have the kind of knowledge a muse was traditionally supposed to impart, I haven't lived enough.
My patience with all kinds of pretension is extremely limited. Am I becoming more and more a crochety old lady? Quite possibly. This on top of the young woman I mentioned a couple of posts back who wanted to know what "words of wisdom" I would pass on ... I can forgive the young woman easily because she was young [well, mid-30s which seems pretty darned young to me], but today's woman should know better.
I listened to the other woman speak of her screenwriting group and simply kept my mouth shut. Perhaps I am terribly jaded but I know the odds are between nil and .00001% that any screen play being chatted about in a group with no connections to anyone in the film industry has a chance of being bought and produced. It's not "nice" to take away people's hope, is it? Or is it a kindness to tell them to put their talent into a genre where they can at least find a small audience via the more and more acceptable publish-on-demand or self-publishing arena? I've been trained to do the "ladylike" thing, "don't say anything if you can't say something nice." What a burden was laid on the mid-century generation of girls.
2 comments:
I like it that you have no patience with pretense. As we get older, it is harder to endure the misguided notions of people of any age. You're not crotchety - you've got style.
i also have no patience with pretense, even less (we're into negative numbers here!) with self-delusion. my challenge is to tell the truth, with kindness and compassion. which, by the way, does NOT mean sugarcoating!
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