So there’s like three or flashs I didn’t write from the prompts because the only thing I remember from anything Henry David Fucking Thoreau wrote is There is no killing time without injuring eternity. Pretty Christian work ethic-y for a famous hippie. I mean sort of, like Jesus H Christ. Peace, love, long hair and shit. Jesus H Christ has more to do with the flashes I’m not writing, though I think Jesus F Christ is more common usage these days. I don’t think titles get middle intials, it’s not like Mary and Joe Christ had Male Baby Christ on 12-25-0000, the year of our pre-natal lord.
The first one I thought of had to do with this guy getting a dementia diagnosis for his dad, something to do with racial slurs and the national anthem and the red sox. It had a bit of pathos, a bit of gravitas and a bit of humor, problem was the humor was supposed to fill out the other bits and the harder I think about it the less funny it gets and the less spontaneous a flash it would be.
One was just a flash reminding everybody we are still in two wars and they still aren’t sanctioned by the UN and it’s been more than a decade. That one would have been a monologue with vulgar gravitas and some other latin things and maybe some Haji/pink mist shit tossed in. That one’s problem is predictability, and if doesn’t seem predictable you are either way too jaded or not jaded enough.
Oh, and about three different poker game ones were tossed for predictable reasons too.
Sorry, prompts, I had prompts, G is back. The prompts; Jesus H Christ, The national Anthem and one eyed jacks. I had some cool phrase about suicide kings and suicide doors and all the jacks that come and go, but I was driving and listening to something and when the next song came up I forgot how that was phrased. Um, if anyone wants a tip for how to start a flash that isn’t a bad, some phrase that you like, just write it down real quick and write down the next thing that comes into your head and stop writing when things stop coming into your head. By the end you’ll either have a flash or an anti-social thinking disorder or some temporary cognitive dissonance or the first chapter of a novel that you’ll forget about and your grandkid will find it on your hard drive when you die. Most likely, though, it’ll be a flash.
Of the prompts I gave one came from a song, I mean a bit of it, the bit that’s a real concept, but the song is after a poem and the poem is about a real event, though I think the reference was more for meter than accuracy. The line I used for the prompt was Tom Paines Water Tree (it’s a real thing, you can look it up) the line from the song is I know of tom paines water tree, I know the price of liberty, but there’s one question that still burns in me, did they also burn the courthouse when they killed those three? Those three are on my mind. For the whole story I’d have to look it up, the poem too, my memory is for shit these days. I heard Pete Seeger do it live at some rally/concert thing or another I stumbled upon while I was tramping around a few thousand years ago. It’s a civil liberties song and I want to say the poem was like Chilian or some other S.A. country in revolt sometime in the last century.
People do shitty things, and governments do shitty things on a larger scale using people and overthrowing them takes a lot of people to agree to doing shitty things at the same time under the notion that when the revolution is over they’ll stop doing shitty things and everyone will be better off. That’d work better if history just ended, otherwise it’s like a record or tape or disc or playlist, it just loops the same shit over and over. I think, however, the reference they really wanted was another American revolutionary and another kind of tree, for the life of me I can’t remember dudes name or what he called the concept but it had something to do with liberty being like a tree and every now and again it needed to be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Yeah, you used to have be able to write a hell of a speech to get into politics in America, now you just have to deliver a good sound bite and have good teeth and hair. I think the song wanted to get tree and liberty into the same rhyme, and it did. And if you like that sort of thing then that song is exactly that sort of thing. Buy the fiddler a dram.
So, yes, if I can come up with an idea that doesn’t bug me I may actually write a prompt driven flash on Friday. With any luck I have something to do tomorrow. Fuck you, I believe in luck. All the best and worst things that have ever happened to me can be explained without using the concept of luck, but are much less plausible and occams razor would shred them all without using luck as a descriptor.
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