Sunday, May 26, 2013

A cool late spring evening is a perfect setting for dreams to come true. My two dogs are snoring gently in front of the fireplace; I've practiced Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D for about an hour on the piano and am finally satisfied that I may be able to play it fairly well by August. Mr. Pachebel's fingers were much longer than mine are, but my heart is as romantic as his was. I will never be able to play it as well as Funtwo does on YouTube, but one of my dreams is to try. If you have not viewed this maestro of the guitar playing the Canon in D I urge you to do so. He is amazing. My other dream is to adapt my novel The Conspiracies of Dreams into a film script. I read the first part of scene I to my writing group and to a friend and they liked it. I now know, however, why a book is better than a movie. So many metaphors and literary techniques must be left out. In the film a young man will simply parachute from a plane; in my novel I write "In a heartbeat I become a pendant dangled by the gods of gravity, wind, and war." Whie the sight of many men dropping through the air suspended by mushroom shaped parachutes into battle can be exciting, the poetic effect of the words is lost. Also, viewers will be passive prisoners of the director, sound effects, and actors' interpretation of the dialog, while readers employ their imagination and can compose their own images. Have you ever liked a film better than the book from which it was adapted? I have only found one: The Wizard of Oz, although the chariot race in Ben Hur was more exciting visually than in print. To be truthful, I am adapting the novel into a film as a cerebral challenge. Since I have written a novel and sold a modest amount of copies, I want to see if I can write a screenplay before my college classes start in the fall. My dogs are my muses. We take 5 mile walks every day when the weather permits, and while they smell their smells and read their pee mail and send quite a few pee mails as well, I think about plot, setting and character. By the time we come home Pippen and Macduff are so tired, they lie at my feet while I pluck away at my computer. Then, every day I check Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and the Apple store to see if I have sold any copies. Sometimes my dream comes true. Tonight I may finish Scene 3. My goal is to complete the script before August 15. I hope to be able to do justice to Pachebel's Canon before that. Last year I practiced a sonata by Mozart the entire summer. By August I decided that I played it as well as I possibly could and tried a Beethoven sonata. Macduff started to bark amd bark. "Do you want to eat? " I asked. He turned up his nose at the food. "Do you want to go out?" I inquired as I went to the back door. He stood silently by the piano. I played Beethoven; he barked again. Finally, I understood his canine dialect. He wanted me to play the Mozart sonata again. I played the first familiar notes of Amadeus' Somata Facile in C and he lay happily at my feet for the next half hour. Thank goodness he likes Pachebel's.