Keep Me Where The Light Is

Image taken from operaphantom.net

I dreamed I was at a movie theater.

I was walking down the hall and I found my Godfather, Ray, sitting in a directors chair in the middle of the hall just outside one of the auditoriums.

I asked him how the movie was. He had this mixed reaction of laughter and fear. Like it was the most amusing yet terrifying thing he'd ever seen.

He then seemed in awe of whatever movie it was he'd seen (not sure what it was).

He put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me directly, and said.

"You  have to start having nightmares like that."

My immediate thought was "No."

I cringed a little when he said that.

I woke up.

I realize he was implying that if I wanted to create something as great as what he had seen, that I needed to feel and experience the same kind of terror. And I get it. Write what you know. And if you're trying to create a nightmare, then you have to start experiencing nightmares.

I'm fond of horror. From a very young age, it was a symptom of being tortured by my older brothers. As we were one of the first families on the block to have cable tv, they almost always messed with me by putting on whatever scary movie was playing that month (Friday The 13th part 2, Salem's Lot, etc.) Stuff that they new scared the crap out of me.

I mean it is what you do to your little brother, and I was the littlest.

As I got older, horror movies became something I would dare myself to tolerate, because they scared me so much. I could even stand in the horror section of the local Video Library.

I forced myself to face it, embrace it, and visibly so in front of my brothers. Cuz if it looked like I was enjoying them, even loving them, then it was pointless to try to scare me.

Eventually I would truly start to appreciate them. I wanted to make movies after all, so it only made sense that I would find interest in how even horror movies were made. I got really curious about how to make monsters, murder, and mayhem, in that grandiose and cinematic fashion.

But the truth of it was, I loved movie in general. More so than horror.

Especially now, it has become more evident that it's really just the old horror flicks from the 70's and 80's that I revel in. And I realize that it's mostly for nostalgia's sake.

In reality, I'm a little sensitive when it comes to some of that stuff. Alot of the more recent bloodier, gorey, brutal fare, don't really appeal to me.

In truth, I look to horror movies that lean more on fun than shock.

As much as it may appear that I revel in the dark, it's the light that I love so much more.

The movies I love are the movies I want to make. Fun, thrilling, entertaining, inspired, enlightened, refreshed, child like, and dazzlingly brilliant.

And that's why I cringed when I was told that I needed to start having nightmares in order to create. Because inevitably I feel like my inspiration comes from the light. And the creative brilliance that comes from your highest and grandest dreams.

I stand by the phrase, "In order to make a beautiful picture, you'll need to use dark colors." But in truth, I love all the colors on my pallet., and the countless numbers of portraits I can paint.

I know, the light can't exist without the dark.

I just want to be kept where the light is.