Life's a Circle Caught Inside a Square

Funny how life can come full circle, isn't it?

Once upon a time, I was a screenwriter. Maybe not a great one, but a pretty good one, but one who struggled more than he succeeded. Ultimately, the balls bounced the wrong way, and I ended up taking myself out of bounds. I'm generally happy with that decision, to be honest, though I do miss it.

Going through the process of separation, you get nostalgic for a lot of things. Things from the recent past, things from times long forgotten. You're desperate to figure out who you are, so you reach at straws - if you can't figure out who you are anymore, maybe you can triangulate by figuring out who you were.

I got a pointless urge to re-read a script that I wrote over 10 years ago. In fact, it's the first one I ever wrote on my own (my first script was with a partner), which all but obligates it to being semi-autobiographical, navel-gazing, unselfconsciously pretentious, and mostly bad. And, sure enough, the script didn't disappoint. It's heart was completely in the right place, and nothing else was.

As a writer, I can say that it's very good to have gotten that out, created it and purged it... and only let one or two other people ever read it. Much better that way.

Needless to say, it was a typical coming of age story - young love, first romance, all that shit. Granted, the real life story behind it was... unique... in many ways and more. And I'm not just saying that - the framework for "first love" was atypical to a large degree. But the basic emotional thrust and arc, well... we've all seen this story a million times. But in revisiting it after 10 years, it was amazing to be momentarily thrust back to events that took place in slightly different form nearly 20 years ago. Jesus, I'm getting old.

In retrospect, however, what becomes interesting about the script (at this particular moment in time) is the structural device I chose. Can you possibly guess what it is? Of course you can: the flashback structure. Yes, using a flashback structure was horribly cliche, tiresome and silly, but again, what makes it notable now is how it cuts so unintentionally close to the bone.

In the script, the protagonist's wife leaves him, and this instigates a big flashback and memory of the one that got away. That first one that made Such. A. Deep. Impression.

Isn't every first romance that way?

No, the guy doesn't think at all about the wife who left him, but rather, the girl who first took his virginity. Rather horribly, I never even dramatized the wife at all - she was just a construct to make the guy think about how it was "so much better back when".

But how stupidly ironic is that? What was I doing here other than obsessing over a past that's long been cast to the winds of memory, all as a way of avoiding what's right in front of me. Finishing the script in record time (its quality didn't demand a careful reading of every line), the script ends with a group of friends toasting the protagonist on the day of his divorce, trying to buck up his motivation and self-esteem for what's coming around the corner.

I recently had a similar night, out with a divorced guy who was telling me about what I may find around the corner.

How strange to read those words from a 24 year old writer, who had absolutely no conception that he'd face a similar situation some 10 years down the line. A kid so immature and inexperienced that he couldn't possibly understand just how traumatic, devastating and complicated it all would become. A flashforward premonition without even realizing it. When it was all just a dramatic construct, a structural device, and not a very good one at that.

Somehow it all comes full circle, inside an inescapable square.