DISAPPOINTED!!! Copyright © 2020 by Ralph Robert Moore.

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Published in Black Static #74, Mar-Apr 2020

In the second episode of The Sopranos, 46 Long, there's a scene where Christopher Moltisanti, cousin to Tony Soprano, is in the noisy sidewalk crowd at a movie premiere in NYC. A black limousine pulls up to the curb, and out steps Martin Scorsese (or at least an actor playing Scorsese in the episode), with a tall brunette. As Scorsese gives a head-down wave to the crowd, Chris shouts out, "Marty! Kundun! I liked it!"

It's a brilliant moment in an often brilliant show. Chris, who's a mobster but has dreams of becoming a screenwriter, is trying to get Scorsese's attention. Maybe shake his hand, perhaps even get his phone number. So he doesn't mention Taxi Driver, or Raging Bull, but instead a movie that is generally considered to be one of Scorsese's lesser films. As if the fact Chris 'liked' (and note he didn't say he 'loved') Kundun might ingratiate him with the director. (Much like Norman Mailer later found out that the reason John F. Kennedy, who he met at a party, mentioned how much he enjoyed reading Mailer's Deer Park, was because Kennedy's advisors told him that novel's poor critical reception was a sore spot with Mailer, and Kennedy's praise of it was an easy way to get Mailer's support.)

I was driving through the dark back roads of southern Connecticut, moon high in the sky's blackness, yellow headlights from the front of my green VW illuminating, sliding across, tree trunks, when a song came on my car's radio.

Space Oddity, by David Bowie.

I had read about Bowie before, in Rolling Stone, but I had never heard any of his music. That's the way it was back then. I just knew him, as most people did, as a man who wore a dress while he sang onstage.

So it was a real treat to finally hear one of his songs, negotiating with my steering wheel different curves in the asphalt road twisting through the woods.

I loved the song. It was different. And different means a lot. Especially when you're young. I started buying his albums.

You grow up with singers as your guardian angels, we have for generations, and like a lot of you, I grew up with Bowie.

And he kept getting better. It was an extraordinary trajectory. Station to Station. The Berlin trilogy (Low, Heroes, Lodger). Scary Monsters. Then he left RCA and started recording for EMI. His first release was Let's Dance, which really propelled him onto the world stage as a superstar.

His follow-up album for EMI? After the stunning success of Let's Dance? Tonight. Which…was not that good. His next album for EMI was what turned out to be the ironically-named, Never Let Me Down.

In the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda, Kevin Kline's character, Otto, who refers to dogs as 'insects', crouches on the floor in front of a safe, stethoscope flowing from his ears to the safe's front door, twirls the numbers of the safe's circular combination lock left, right; after each click he hears in his ears in order to swing that door open getting more excited, and when he is finally able to push the safe's lever down, and look inside, he sees the steel interior of the safe is, in fact, empty.

Rears his head back. Forcefully exhales twice. "Okay. Okay. DISAPPOINTED!!!"

That's the thing about creativity. We write a great story, one we're really proud of, this is me at the top of my form, my knuckles are lifting and lowering over the keyboard, like smiling starlets dancing in silvery costumes, but then the next story we write? Not quite so good.

And that's what creativity is all about. It's not like every story you write is going to be better than your prior stories. Often, it isn't. Creativity isn't a rightwards line on a graph climbing higher and higher story by story. Our creative output is a city we build over the course of our lifetimes, and like every city, it has a skyline whose building heights rise and fall against the sky. Creativity is a moody, unpredictable beast, where sometimes everything comes together and you produce great work, and sometimes you produce…acceptable work.

But that's okay.

There are stories that are going to get you talked about, and then there are stories that you want to write, even though you know they aren't going to excite readers as much. Write them anyway. Accept that writing is not always about tapping out that perfect story. Often, it's about creating a story only you can tell.

When you start writing a new story, it's like a first date. You and your fingers sitting across from each other at a small, square table amidst the elbows and candle-lit faces of other diners, the waiter lowering two white porcelain plates of orange-banded shrimp to your white linen tablecloth.

And sometimes that first date goes really well.

You have a lot in common. You talk to each other in rushes of agreement, reaching forward for the slim stems of your wine glasses.

You finish each other's sentences. And that's so sweet, so useful, to have the end of a sentence given to you, effortlessly, over the steam of the al dente pasta course.

One of the nice things about writing is the fact that it's really not that physical of an activity. You can continue to write well into old age. It's not like ditch-digging, where after a while it might be hard for a senior to balance on his crutches while he's swinging that pick axe. And unless you're Thomas Wolfe, you probably write while sitting down.

But because it is so relatively easy to do physically, there can be an embarrassment, even shame, when a writer can no longer write.

Hemmingway wrote Across the River, Into the Trees to keep as a secret weapon when he ran out of ideas.

In the late Nineties I wrote a story, 'When the Big One Thaws', which has consistently received praise in the years since from critics. It's one of my most-liked stories from readers. After that, I wrote 'Elephants on the Moon', which no one wanted to publish, because it was so weird, but it did eventually find a home at Contemporary Literary Review: India. But I don't regret I wrote it. I love that little story.

Throughout the latter part of his career, Bowie went through a period where each succeeding album was compared to Scary Monsters, and found to be inferior. Which, in fairness, they were. But then at the end of his life, in his late Sixties, he went back to the studio and came out with Blackstar, which to my ears is one of the best albums he ever created.

Not everything you write is going to be a Let's Dance. A lot of it's going to be a Day In, Day Out.

And that's something every writer has to learn to accept at some point in their careers. Sometimes you're going to open that safe, look inside and see that the steel cubicle is empty, and feel, DISAPPOINTED!!!

I salute Scorsese for filming Kundun, Mailer for writing Deer Park, Bowie for releasing the albums he did between Scary Monsters and Blackstar, me for all the ragamuffin stories I've written over the decades, you for all the tales you've penned that you knew might never get published, or if they did, would only appear in story collections of yours alongside their more successful cousins.

Some of what we write is going to be bought drinks at a crowded bar and grill; some is going to be appreciated by a much smaller audience than we usually garner.

But that's okay. Who knows what you'll find next time your fingers twirl that combination lock, then excitedly start tapping on your keyboard?