Ghosts

Incredible album

I am getting ready to watch the football game.  I think it should be a good one though I don't think it can top the excitement of the Broncos victory yesterday.  What a game that was.  I'm still amazed when I think about it.  I'm watching this game mainly out of curiosity since the Mizzou Tigers will be in the same division as these two are next year.  I am probably more familiar with Alabama, but I'm not specifically rooting for either team.  I just want to see a good game, and that will make me happy.

I often wish I were back in college again.  To be that young ... sigh ... nice.  I don't know if I would be different.  There's always the possibility that if you lived your life over, it would come out worse than it is now. I am generally content.  I could have done some things better.  I could have done a lot of things worse.

I think I mentioned in here before how much I love music.  I've spent some time making some disks for my car.  I'm messing with my itunes trying to figure out how to do cd's and make playlists and that kind of stuff.  I think I have most of it figured out.  I am slow to learn, but I am usually able to.

I did another page or so of my screenplay today.  Almost have the first act finished.  I have experienced many benefits of planning it in more detail, but one of the things it seems to have allowed me to do is experiment even more with my characters and my scenes.  I need to write more visually if I am going to write screenplays that anyone will actually want to buy.  This is hard for me because I think in words before I think in pictures.  I think most people thing in images, but I don't.  It requires a great deal of effort for me to visualize.  I've taken multiple intelligences quizzes and my highest scores are always in music, verbal/linguistic, and intrapersonal intelligences. Basically, that means I like to sit home alone and talk to myself.  Perhaps that's why the screenplay I'm writing is about a young man who is mentally ill.

It would be interesting to know who thinks in words and who thinks in pictures and how it affects the way we write.  I think one of the reasons I have had some success in playwriting is that I am a verbal linguist person.  I can generally write good dialogue.  When I had to direct plays, I always had trouble blocking though because I couldn't visualize how I wanted the play to look.  I have trouble putting stuff together, and I can't draw at all.  It is fascinating to me how some people are so strong in one area but not in another.  In a way though, that is really good.  If we were all smart in exactly the same way, nothing would ever get done.

The college where I teach part time really has me confused.  Classes start tomorrow and there are Wednesday day classes this week, but my Wednesday night class doesn't meet until next week.  I don't follow the logic of that. My Thursday class, on the other hand, does meet this week.  They must have some reason for doing it that way, but I'm not sure what it is.

One of the albums I have been listening to a lot lately is Glen Campbell's Ghost on a Canvas.  I'm not much of a Glen Campbell fan, but I was morbidly curious about this album since he has really been diagnosed with alzheimer's disease.  The album is haunting on so many levels.  It expresses the viewpoint of a man who is losing his grip on all that he has ever known, even his mind.  I have seen relatives slowly wither from this horrible disease.  My grandparents on my dad's side of the family both lived to be in their 90's but they spent at least ten years with for my grandfather, dementia, and my grandmother alzheimer's.  I'm not sure what the difference between the two is but as I understand it they are different.  One blessing for my mother's sudden death is that she did not suffer with that for years.

Well, I better go.