Saturday, December 20, 2008

Noir Saturday

I woke up to a jackhammer which turned out to be just blood rushing to my brain. Every heartbeat is a pounding on the top of my head. The sun is sending me waves of pain. Hypersensitivity? No. Not yet. Just my eyes.

I tried to remember what happened last night. Only bits and pieces. I was talking to some people. Ayu wanted to be mentioned here. Quoted for something she said. I can't remember what she said.

There were bottles. Glasses clinking. Music and smoke.

Cash. Cold, hard cash.

Some 30 minutes after I woke up, I started becoming somebody else.

To create good characters, and sometimes, to write any story at all, you have to imagine yourself as the character. Put in that situation, what would you do? What would you think? What would you say? How would you react?

You get to see it from their eyes. Maybe see a little of their childhood. Momemnts from their past that would resonate with their present, or future.

Next, you have to see the character from the other characters' perspective. Then, you have to see the big picture. On the screen. How audiences would see it.

In The Prestige, it is illustrated how performance is a little death. A small death. You cut away a bit of yourself and you put it on stage. End of the show, that piece dies.

Writers, we die before the show starts. Our stage is a bulb, a cathode ray tube. Or a slab of liquid crystals. Or dead trees with mineral oil on it.

Everyone is a hero. To themselves. The little stories they tell themselves. And to everyone else, they're villains. A subject to beat, to suppress, to humiliate and destroy. So their egos can live.

My head is pounding. I grab a couple of liver-wasting Panadol tablets. And I mix it with some painkillers. Two types. Wash it down with water. Always water. Don't mix with coffee, or even tea.

Aspirin would thin the blood. Not advisable for me, who has a family history of hypertension. A more diluted blood can travel faster. If it travels fast enough, I could rupture blood vessels. It would be okay if it's just capillaries in the nose, or even the eyes. But a burst vessel in the brain, and that's what we call a stroke.

There is a vein on the heart called a widowmaker. It supplies blood from the heart, to the heart itself. A fragile link. A lot of heart attacks occur because of this vein.

Oh yeah. Veins take the blood to the heart. Arteries take the blood from the heart. As such, arteries are stronger, to handle the pressure. Blood vessels are one way, because of the tricuspid valve in the right ventricle, and the stronger bicuspid valve in the left ventricle.

Separates the ventricles with the other two chambers - whatsname - articles? Antricles? (Atrium - Ed)

Apologies for any factual errors. I don't do any research on wikipedia for this website. Cause it's free. And since I do not have any responsibilities, I will bombard you with stuff that may or may not be true:

The aorta - the biggest and strongest artery - is so big that if cholesterol plaques were to start accumulating, it could be decades before you get a coronary. Veins such as the widowmaker are thinner and if the LDL accumulates enough, you die.

Bypass surgery is a common treatment. You only wear a pacemaker if you have erratic heart rhythm. Causes? Possibly heart infarction. Maybe nerve damage.

Why the hell am I thinking about heart diseases? Oh. The IJN issue.

Tea, in some cases, have more caffeine than coffee. My thing was chrysanthemum tea. A couple of bottles, and I won't have to sleep.

There's even water, just normal water, infused with caffeine. So you can get your caffeine fix without staining your teeth.

What the hell did I do last night? No blood. No murder. No naked woman. No sex. Don't feel guilty, so must not have done anything wrong.

There was a discussion on eating pussy. Somewhere. And TV. I got a number. Should I call?

In an hour, I'm going to see a play. Must be...cohesive? No. Coherent. Have to pull myself together. I do the bulk of my writing after ten at night. That's when I don't just have to be other people, but create worlds for them to play in.

Treatment? CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. I got the box set. Gotta go.