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www.kevacho.com
©2002-2008
Kevin Michael Vance
Writer - Portland, Oregon
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When creating this spot for my web page I was trying to think of how I might best not come off as the biggest buffoon on the forehead of this great, big, planet. Then I realized something... I am human. For me this bespeaks volumes. It means that I am fallible, that I am not perfect. I have made mistakes, am making mistakes even as I write this, and will, inevitably, make mistakes in the future. When I wax romantically about myself and my role in this cosmic-shit tub we all dubiously call life I like to think of myself as the warrior- strong, loyal, full of discipline and honor. In reality, there are parts of me that follow those codes, but more to the point, I am a worker, and very proud of that. I finish what I start. I relish the journey. And I live... as well as any 38-year-old white male could hope to live in this world of skewed ideals and twisted attitudes (holy crap! I wrote this drivel five years ago. How time light speeds).
Suffice it to say, here within these "random thoughts" I will contradict myself, I will be wrong in some points and right in others, and I will make mistakes. However, as always, I hope in a small way that you, the reader, might garner a modicum of enjoyment.
Hell! I know I do. |
June 30, 2008
Thoughts -- random, indeed.
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Pride.
Many people like to talk a lot about pride. I'm proud of my high school graduate. I'm proud of my country, my president, my congress, my husband and my children.
For me pride has always been a personal affair. (If you believe the Catholic Church, pride is one of the deadly seven sins; but I do not cater to any sort of puritanical, thousand year old guilt trip.) I have always taken immense pride in my accomplishments, my achievements. I'm almost forty and I have, as a writer and musician, a number of completed manuscripts and plays, as well as a wealth of experience. I take pride in the fact that my body has not atrophied, as I hope my mind has not, and I am stronger than I was in my teens. I attempt to live with a combination of strength, discipline, and honor; taking more pride than most in the simple effort of such a task.
I was struck the other day by another instance of how I think this American society is skewed for lack of a better word; skewed within its' ideals and opinions and priorities. I overheard an employee with whom I work telling someone how proud he was of his new tattoo. This affected me as being a somewhat odd even bizarre thing to say. How can one take pride in a tattoo? The only thing a person is doing when they get a tattoo is paying to have another person draw on them. That's it. Nothing else. There is no accomplishment. There is no effort, beyond the meager effort of possibly designing ones own tattoo. More so, in Portland, Oregon, where I live, tattoos are as banal and pedestrian as ear rings. I, being a body uncovered and unmarred by the tattoo artists' needle, am actually more unique than any of the inked up youth, which seem to clog Portland's already rain swollen streets.
Yet again, I am struck by the fact that part of me feels out of place. That this world and this city were never, nor will ever, be mine. I find pride within things such as: sacrifice, effort, discipline, and hard work. Seeing a project through, for example: finding the birth of an idea like the bulging root of some new plant in the muddy quagmire of my brain, looking at it, analyzing it, wiping away soil and mud until it is revealed to me; then extracting it from the ground, bringing it home, and seeing if it has a life of its own, a life it wishes to lead. Starting, then finishing - that simple.
Pride does not come from payment. Not in my world.
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June 29, 2008
Having fun...
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I have taken a slight - respite from this, this esoteric bleeding. I have been through much in the past few years, and my writing, my work has been an anchor for me. But now I'm feeling selfish, and quite simply, I want to have fun.
I will be back at it, sooner than later most likely. But until then, bear with me dear reader, and know that when I begin again, I hope to do so with more vim, more gusto, more passion than I ever had before.
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May 14, 2008
Choice
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Recently I had a discussion with my good friend, Sara, about choice; the method, the theory, choices people make, whether or not we have a choice, those with choices and those without -- etc. She believed that we all have choices. And to bemoan the ramifications of those choices is, in essence, to bemoan our own bad decisions and judgment. To a degree I do agree with her, especially when it concerns Americans, or those living, most especially, in first world countries. Most of us in this country are born into privileged lives. Most of us want for nothing. Most of us have roofs over our heads, food in our bellies, and our health. However, on the same token there are some choices none of us make.
On this subject my friend Shannon believes that we choose who we fall in love with, that it is our choice to lead ourselves into pleasure or pain, rapture or heartache. I could not disagree more. I have never, nor can I ever foresee, "choosing" the person to whom I willingly and trustingly extend my heart. For me, love, lust, and all that revolves around it is a swirling mess of chemicals, bound up in blood, motivated by a beating heart. The choice to fall in love, or not, has never been mine. To say that I choose to love is to say that it is logical, rational, and non-instinctive. I think we all know that this is not the case. It's the only way I've ever been able to rationalize smart, wise people making the dumbest, imprudent decisions with their lives - all in the name of love. Love, above all, is instinct, a drive more primal than civilized, more unfocused than controlled.
Furthermore, this writing that I do. This thing by which, and through which, I justify and define my existence on this earth, I did not, in any conceivable way, choose. In a strange, inexplicable manner, my writing chose me, and I have, always and forever, been its willing, sometimes unwilling, slave. There was no conscious thought when I first sat down and set pencil to paper; there was no thought at all. (In all honesty, if there had been, I might not have traveled down this path at all.) All there was was an impetus, a need to push stories out of me, to force them out of my brain. Little did I know at the time that each story I carved out, imaginary lives etched indelibly in granite blocks of blank white pages, would make room for yet another, and another, and another. Leading me to believe that I'll never be done, and all these worlds and lives and deaths will fade forever when I finally retire into the mystery of death.
Choice, just like deserve, is a word that psychiatrists and psychologists like to bandy about so people can feel better about themselves when they act inappropriately or do something painfully stupid or when their life is plummeting out of control. For the most part, there is choice in life. It is always better to choose an intelligent path than an ignorant one. But some things are chosen for us, some things are, most assuredly, beyond our control. Does anyone truly believe that those devastated in Katrina, or those being swept away by the powerful hand of nature in Yangon, Myanmar actually CHOSE to die; or that children being eaten away by Cancer CHOSE their dreaded fates. I doubt it. Why the very idea is absurd.
Remember, it's the effort not the outcome that matters, and it's how we react to our choices, good or bad, that defines as human.
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April 17, 2008
Never too late!
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Again, haven't visited lately. That will change. Working on a few reviews, and just uploaded an excerpt of my new screenplay, please feel free to check it out on my portfolio page.
Let me apologize for my website. Suffice it to say, it's weird. Sometimes it doesn't like the three dots, you know... instead, it inserts strange symbols. Now some reason it's not liking a single quote. Go figure!
I've traveled down a couple different paths recently, both of which, I hope, have taught me a few, valuable lessons. I am searching for some modicum of happiness in my life. Not exactly sure if I'll find it, but as I've often said, "it's the effort that matters, not the outcome".
I think I may have lost the love for writing there, for a while. I intend to get it back.
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