David
Milch's Lecture, 10/16/01
Without getting too highfalutin, that sequence
of scenes is about mortality. The ways that, by our
conduct in our past -- having failed to respect the
moral imperatives of our mortality -- our lives sort
of vector off into immorality or amorality or inconsequence,
and then the kind of free-floating dread that we
carry around with us -- which, if it were ever articulated,
would be "I haven't lived the right life, and
somehow, someday I'm going to be held accountable
for that," and what a detective does is try
to feed into that free-floating dread, try and put
a name on it, and paint the guy into a corner so
that he can manipulate him based on that. The detective
then himself becomes culpable for a failure of respect
of humanity, and in the turn in the scene, actually
has induced the condition that he was simply trying
to achieve for technical purpose; that is, he views
the man simply as adjunctive to his purpose in the
case.
When we write those scenes, we don't think about
'em that way. As we were talking about the last couple
of weeks, our brains, as a species, are built in
a particular fashion. That doubleness, which I've
described as the sort of characteristic state of
art of -- being both inside and outside a moment
-- which we suggested is not only the characteristic
of art but may be what defines our species as distinguished
say from other species of hominids, which is the
ability to signify, that is to detach the literal
experience from -- (lights dim momentarily) that's
good. I like that. I like that. It doesn't distract
me. It's part of it. I'm allowed to wonder if I'm
epileptic while I'm simultaneously … (audience
laughter.)
Isn't that really the doubleness we're trying to
describe? What I was saying that, to the extent that,
as distinguished from Neanderthal or the others,
is the species which can abstract and form signals
for an experience rather than simply responding to
a series of experiences. And to the extent that the
artistic brain, the storytelling brain, the ability
to be both inside and outside, facilitates that kind
of signifying process. What I would suggest is … and
to carry it one step further … in that the
state of being that we enter into when we're telling
that story gives us a a kind of feeling of exultation
that is certainly atypical --- it is different from
the usual way that we feel ourselves as human as
we move through life.
And that to the extent that that state, that exulted
state of being, makes us a little uneasy, makes it
difficult for us to reconcile that feeling with our
usual feeling about the way we life -- that doubleness
is resolved in its healthiest resolution by a sense
of the presence of the divine. That is, we renounced
responsibility or really ownership of that feeling
as being our own, and say, "Geez, I don't know
what got into me. I don't know how that happened.
It just comes to me." Now that's the secular
version of it. And the other version of it is quite
literally, "I took the sacrament." There's
a third version, of course, which is the addictive
version, which is, "Good dope today." Those
are three different ways of reacting to that state
of felt doubleness which I think is characteristic
of how our brains work, our capacity to abstract
from lived experience and to develop signals, signs,
myths, symbols, or in an extreme form, say algebraic
expressions of states of being.
The reason that I'm digressing to remind you of those
previous discussions is that for me, as a writer, when
I'm writing, I'm simply trying to get the voices right
and to stay with the felt dramatic tension in the scene.
But afterward, I get very anxious. I have tried to
come to some sort of articulate understanding of how
the process works as a way of accommodating my anxiety.
To the extent then that there's a sort of second dimension
of creativity in trying to pass that knowledge on,
that's what I'm trying to do here. While I've tried
to point out in earlier discussions it is absolutely
unnecessary to understand intellectually how a scene
works; in fact, it's counterproductive when you're
actually creating. |
