Brandon McCormick

I picked up a copy of ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ last week.

It’s a physical book, dead tree slices. I don’t usually read many of those anymore. It’s not gooey nostalgia, but sometimes it’s nice to feel the texture of the paper, something that used to be alive and has died to be used again, reborn into something new.  It’s also nice not have to angle the ‘book’ that certain way so the glare doesn’t obscure what I’m reading. 

I realize just a few chapters in that my Muse is starved. I’ve been reading books on business, books on how to make other people feel good, books on how scene dynamics work, books about things other people think about. I don’t read enough books about the smell of October winds or nights you know don’t feel right. I don’t read things that feed that part of me that is really me.

Reading and writing were always my first love. Just stories. Before I ever picked up a camera I wrote stories on lined notebook paper with cramped handwriting that few people would read and fewer people would understand. But I wrote. Now, I calculate scene turns through positive to negative relationships within a twenty minute act structure. 

That’s not bad mind you. It’s vital. But I realize that if I don’t stop to ‘waste some time’ the Muse is left neglected, malnourished, bitter. 

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Come with me and I can show you,

The place where grass sings when covered in dew,

Where each morning light, the dirt is made new,

Where the all trees dance, and the orchids do too,

Where the brooks keep on babbling, but keep their words few,

Where the rocks keep your secrets, and are never untrue,

Where the mountains were there when the first new winds blew,

Where the old stumps sit and reveal all they knew,

Where time is your friend, and there’s plenty to do,

Come with me and I can show this to you. 

I need to go hiking soon…