The Calling

You know you’re homesick when* …

As I said in yesterday’s rant, I’m at the point where I feel I need to defend my voice or at least I now think I know what my voice isn’t (which is not as good as knowing what it is, but I’ll clutch at these few straws for now). I received a critique on how darkly I’ve been looking at the world with each draft and every time I been given the suggestion of something lighter or happier for the characters, something redeeming, I’m unable to feel the truth of that situation.

I wonder if I’m starting to fit into the idea of a cinema of unease … the style of story telling that I’m becoming more comfortable with comes from home. My story world is at home and now as I struggle with the characters and the story, I feel a need to reconnect, to stop running away from the landscape.

The mountains are calling. Dark, oppressive, foreboding, they’re calling me home. I can feel the call in my heart – every night I dream of them and the long shadows that they cast. My memories of them are not sunny or warm but cold and brooding.

This is a strange headspace to be in.

(* yes, I’m in a desperate state – I’ve got the Two Towers on for god’s sake! Yesterday it was Braindead, last week it was Eagle Vs Shark and now I wish I had a copy of Sleeping Dogs, Goodbye Pork Pie, Came A Hot Friday, Out of the Blue, The Price of Milk, In My Father’s Den …)