I’m listening to Oliver Stone on Rumble 106, and he’s given me a short version of the still unwritten Shawn II.

Like Wallace Shawn, Oliver Stone grew up a privileged Manhattanite. But unlike Shawn, his privilege was skin deep. There was no cultural elite element to it, and in spite of the initial wealth his father ended up in debt to the tune of 100 Thousand 1962 US dollars. Stone went to the real Vietnam.

Getting back home he went to film school and studied under Scorsese, who praised his first film because it was the work of a filmmaker addressing his own truth in a way that made it obvious that he cared about the story. Moving forward his breakthrough screenplay and eventually movie became Platoon–I’ve always admired that film and now I know why.

The point is this.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a literal uniformed combatant.

But I do have a real story and I do care for it deeply.

I’ve cared so much that I’ve sheltered it from the cold eye of the faceless public and cosseted it half to death.

When I speak about strained limbs unfolding, when I talk about the mortal necessity of giving up total control over that story so that it may breathe and I may live, I mean this, too.

I could be drawn into telling you how much harder it is for me, as an unprivileged unManhattanite, and use that truth to prove to you how its perfectly understandable that I therefore haven’t done it yet, the time growing ever shorter, but I’m not quite that stupid.

Nevertheless, you should expect a long procession of much smarter dodges and vague allusions before I get down to any work that means anything.

So if that sort of shit maddens you and makes you throw the book aside (I know it does me), hit fast forward.

Spilling is a public act, but it still needs to be a safe space first. Or I need to take this offline for a while. Or, probably what will happen, is both; a bifurcated Spill, a first post that is private for now at least, and a truncated version growing out of it and planted in the public garden, dry mullein stalks only suggesting the subterranean root network spreading out like tentacles of lace unseen.