the impossible birds

I think I have this conversation with at least one person every week:

Person: "Where do you work?"

Me: "Oh, I work at [x] as an [whatever it is we're calling my job these days, I usually say paralegal to avoid confusion]"

Person: "Are you going to law school?"

Me: "No, I'm a writer...playwright. Some prose...maybe getting into TV...this is the day job."

Person: "Oh, cool. What do you write about?"

What do you write about?

It's the classic question that drives every writer insane. It's always asked in a genuinely curious, good-natured way. It's actually a perfectly reasonable question. I just never know how to answer it, except to say "oh, lots of things" - because it's the question that no one ever actually wants to hear the answer to. I started describing my latest play to a co-worker, and her eyes started to glaze over as soon as I started talking about origami as a metaphor for coping mechanisms and grief in modern day America. But that's sort of what the play is about. Kind of. That's the problem though. All of my plays are about lots of things. My blog is about lots of things. My imaginary TV show is also about lots of things.

I encounter this problem when I try to write all my artistic statements as well. I find it completely impossible to respond to "please BRIEFLY describe yourself and your work". Maybe I don't have my Pulitzer/Tony yet because the secret to actually getting famous is being awesome at briefly describing yourself and your work in artistic statements. I am not awesome at brief. I am not awesome at self-promotion, either. I either come up self effacing or, worse, apologetic. Like I'm sorry that they have to read my crappy play, holding my little script like Oliver all "please sir, would you read my play?".

However, I find that other artists describe my work for me better than I can. Take, for example, the beautiful lyrics of Joanna Newsom:

And the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers,
and we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words!
While across the sky sheet the impossible birds,
in a steady, illiterate movement homewards.

I want to write about those impossible birds. I want to write about the things that are beyond description. I want to write about the things that are instinctual, that are born living inside of us, that give us meaning and purpose. I'm not an intellectual writer, I am an emotional writer. I want to investigate the reasons why we need language, why people were compelled to create words and phrases. I want to unearth the things beyond description. I want to express the moments you cannot describe, but also cannot forget. I want to write about home; how we find home, how we know what home is. Most of all though - I want to write about why the birds always know how to find their way back, and why we seldom do.