Life's Work by David Milch

Author:David Milch [Milch, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

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The class was called The Writer’s Spirit. In many ways it was about ideas I had used in my teaching for a long time, turning problems of spirit into problems of technique, but I knew I was going to integrate Paul in the course in a big way. Paul’s a writer, arguably the most commercially successful writer that ever lived, and I wanted to talk about him as a writer and think about what we as writers could learn from him. I rented the auditorium at the Writers Guild Theater for five Tuesdays in a row. The first class was scheduled for September eleventh. This was 2001.

It was early in L.A. when it all started, but I was up. I felt a kind of weight of despondency descend on me, which was an appropriate response to what was happening that day, but that would alternate with a kind of manic activity and resolve. Some of those same feelings that World War II was the lead-up to my birth. I tell Rita we’re keeping the kids home from school, because in my head, given they go to a fancy school with the children of some important people, that’s a legitimate possible target. I have to cancel that night’s lecture too, of course. I call my friend Jeff Berg, who ran ICM and happened to be Colin Powell’s book agent. I ask him to come over to the house, that it’s very important. I’m asking him to help me reach out to various government officials. I have some good ideas and I want to see them implemented. I am prepared to back it up with some money, the assumption being they are all bribable. Jeff is kind enough to hear all of my ideas and also kind enough to not call anyone. He and Rita only catch each other’s eyes a few times. My kids, all kept home from school, wander in and out of the kitchen to get some food and see if I’m still going. So that’s what I take medication for.

Now it’s a week later, the eighteenth, and it’s the night of the rescheduled first lecture and I’m trying to figure out what to say. I know we’re going to have to talk about how we felt watching what happened. We had all received a series of images over the course of that week. As humans, we understand what those images signified. When a plane goes into a building, we understand at some level that people are dying horribly, even though we’re not seeing that exactly. But the parts of our cerebellum that understand that fact are connected with other parts of our cerebrum that are typically moved to action by that perception. The analogy is you’re sitting on a bus and you see a stranger get up and slap a woman. You have a natural impulse to respond. Then a whole series of absolutely legitimate considerations may intervene that keep you from responding. Maybe the guy’s got a knife, maybe you’re hurt, maybe you’re of a particular age.

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