It’s not “Keenoo” it’s “Kee-ah-noo”

I’m not exactly sure when I stopped caring, but about the time I realised that he’d made a lucrative career out of staring blankly and having one, ONE, expression, I started calling him Keenoo.  Point Break is a fucking awesome movie, but I can truthfully say I have no respect for Keenoo.

That said, he made a cool cameo in my dream last night.  Or rather, he inspired one of the characters, as I don’t really think it was him.  Frequently I get characters in my dreams that either look like popular actors or actually are them.  I had a doozy the other night where Brad Pitt, Scott Bakula and myself were all police detectives in the 70’s, like that show “Life on Mars”.  I remember thinking, “Wow, think of all the great experience I’ll get from two pros like these guys.  Plus, I’ll have been a cop and can tell stories when I get back to the future in 2011.”

But Keenoo was only the inspiration for this stringy-haired, flannel-wearing greaseball loser guy in my dream last night.  He’s not much to look at, our hero, but he’s integral to the story.

It opens with a courier, or an assistant of some sort and not notable, carrying a large ziploc baggie with two fresh (dead) fish in it (no idea what, they were movie fish, where they have no distinguishing characteristics other than you know that they are fish) along with several raw eggs.  The yolks were in tact, and there was some sort of wheatgerm or bran grains in there as well, though it was all unmixed.

We follow the journey of the baggie as it gets carried to this giant lab tank, like an aquarium, but with a human in it.  A woman, whose lithe form was suspended in the water and had tubes and apparatus attached to her head and chest.  She had some sort of light robe floating around and her hair was loose.  She seemed semi-conscious but deeply occupied with whatever was going on in the tank.

Gauges and metres ticked and clicked and digital readouts read out while the assistant person carried the bag toward this tank.  She started talking about the massive amount of protein and nutrients that were going to be needed for this when we turn to see the Keenoo wannabe brooding behind her.  They interact only briefly before she leaves, obviously nonplussed by him and a even a little bit scared.

He approaches the tank with reverence and a small TV in the corner shows a black-and-white talking head, like the newsreaders of the early 60’s, and he is telling the populace about how monumentally historic this moment is.  Scenes of rocket ships, still in grainy black and white, show on the screen and it starts to be understood that this woman is going to need protein and nutrients and this special tank and all this stuff because she is going to be on a rocket that’s launched into space soon.

Keenoo is worried and doesn’t want her to go, but takes extra care in prepping some of the machines and such before the officials get there to do the same thing, only very officially.  He’s still brooding though, and we get the feeling that he not only doesn’t want her to go, but possibly should have gone himself yet didn’t.  He makes his exit before the officials get there to avoid having to answer any questions.

The rocket launches…

And the garbage truck pulls up outside my house.  Between his squeaky brakes and incredibly loud robot arm, I am left wondering how ANYBODY is meant to sleep past 6:40 AM on my street.  Fuck that guy and his truck, seriously.

Novel Ideas

I think the biggest part of the fun of the creative process is actually being creative, because when you’re open to them, the ideas just flow. It’s wonderful.

Unfortunately, until you’re creating full-time (with that full-time creaty income taking care of things), it’s hard to give time to every new idea.  That said, I still try to capture them in their essence as soon as I can.

Typically this involves waking up from a particularly and repeatedly disturbed night’s sleep and trying to write down the dream I had about raw eggs, raw fish and rocket travel to space with a teenage Keanu Reeves before I get tucked into emails and remember what actually pays the bills around here (barely).

My dreams power a lot of my novel ideas, though in reality they’re probably not ALL novels.  Short stories, I suppose, screenplays even, I have no idea.  I know they’re stories, interesting ones, that I’d like to tell.  The medium in which I do it isn’t as important right now.  And like almost all of my other amazing and wonderful stories that I’d like to tell, I have no idea how it ends because I woke up.

I s’pose that’s another big part of the fun too, going along the journey of writing these stories and watching what unfolds and how they end up.

Right now though, right now I am faced with yet another day where I’ve got responsibilities and shit that needs done, and I probably won’t get a chance to sit and write and explore and create and make stories happen and discover how they end.

This way of life will change though.  Soon probabaly.  I’m not sure how just yet, but I do know that it won’t always be this way, and I’m really looking forward to that.

Wish me luck.