Paramount Pictures Entrance
“I Heard The Wind Call My Name” is the working title for my spiritual memoir that takes against the backdrop of Hollywood. It’s extremely dark with a redemption at the center of it. The status is that I have finished a draft and now sitting on it for a while. I am about to open it again for further revisions and additional layering.
As I read it again, i was struck by the highly unusual tone and style of it. It is not a “tell all”. It is not a”name dropper”; in fact no one is actually named in the piece. Instead, archetypal names are used. The two main characters, outside of myself, are actually Don Simpson, my errant and brilliant mentor for many years who is called The “Eskimo” and Shirley Maclaine who is named the “Queen” (for the founder of the new age). I became a student of Bruno Bettelheim and Uses Of Enchantment before I wrote this draft.
I put this chapter out there for any remarks or any discerning thoughts on the tone. I am particularly interested in my friend, Lisa’s thoughts, who dislikes the title and thinks it needs to be written in a straight forward, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls fashion. You can email me directly, just Click here or put comments in the public inbox below. Can this tone sustain itself? Are you lost already? The entire story takes place over a 6 minute suicide attempt but the memory spans approximately 8 years. I thank you in advance for your discernment and time. As a student of focus groups for many years, I find this process illuminating and don’t shy away from hard criticism.
Can this tone sustain itself? Are you lost already? The entire story takes place over a 6 minute suicide attempt but the memory spans approximately 8 years.
I
I heard the wind call my name.
It was but a soft breeze.
It was gentle on my face.
Something sweet within me stirred.
The window was open and it began to rain.
I lay on an island bed, on a quilt my great grandmother had made in a quilting circle hundreds of years ago.
It had been a hot day.
The seas once gentle, now lapped furiously against the shore.
Or so I thought.
I was on the bed on the highest floor, dreaming.
I heard the wind call my name.
Should I be concerned?
There had been some warnings of a hurricane.
In New England, we had not had one lately.
That’s where I was dreaming.
I had remembered the one from the past.
His name was Andrew.
Hurricanes were no longer named strictly after women.
The children were all there.
I think it was summer.
Otherwise, it could have been a holiday.
Else, why were all those padding feet, carrying laughter there?
I remember the lights going out.
Giddy children ran up the four floors of bedrooms in the holiday house.
There were flashlights.
And candles with fire for the older ones.
The children taped the windows with masking tape in big Xs.
This way, if the windows exploded, they would not shatter onto arms or faces or any kind of flesh.
There would be no bleeding.
It was gruesome but so exciting for the children!
Then Andrew came.
It was.
Just as they said.
Like a horrifying train coming through everything that you remembered or loved.
In the home of the 4th of Julys and the bike rides and the Easter Egg hunts.
We looked through the X’d-out windows in wonder.
We were in the basement.
The trees were uprooted from the ground.
The trunks spun in mid air.
For a moment, we thought we would be dead.
The roof flew off, but we were all down below.
Except for one of the babies.
She had been forgotten in the rush.
A misunderstanding by one of us.
We thought we had all the children.
She flew away.
It must have been summer.
We found her in a sand dune.
There had been no snow, that’s right.
None of the windowpanes shattered.
I heard the wind call my name.
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