Author: Richard Alan Scott
Rhode Island, USA
08/01/20
Having had the Medium I was visiting contact and discuss the Dead in my life, I didn't know what we could do upon the third visit I had secured with her, to possibly one-up that. These trips afforded me a ninety minute drive to a quaint town in Southern Rhode Island, where I did seek dinner and other goodies after our sessions, so I always made an afternoon of it. With candles lit, lights low and incense burning to soft electronica; we got into my other pleas to the universe that really came true, as well as the "Dream" world I explored in this journal not a month ago.
When I had first moved to the country my wife quickly decided to become a Girl Scout Leader, mostly to afford our daughter that opportunity. In her group were some diverse girls from a local group home, and when I remarked on their adorableness, she told me that a Child Agency was in our little village. I had worked for such places in my past, and though I was happily employed in the Theater, I had a vision at that time. It would not be bad, I thought, to be an administrator there, get big bucks, and if I ever had the Emergency Pager, I'd be right down the street.
Cut to 5 years hence. A new Director of my Theater Company resulted in my loss of that employment, and after a prolonged job hunt in my field, I was back in the kid business. A colleague from a far away agency I had worked at, near Fall River, somehow got the job of Director of the agency for my town across the state, and asked me to apply. Starting as Child Care and working my way up, I became Assistant Educational Advocate for the kids in one house, in Woonsocket. Soon thereafter, like really soon, like a month later, surprising everyone, my boss high-tailed it and left, (damn you, Kat, lol) leaving me now as sole Ed. Advocate for the whole agency. For a few years I was indeed an Administrator, did indeed have the Pager at times, and did indeed rush in to the houses right near me, though this was not an option when I first dreamed it up. That crazy ol' Universe was on it, and again it happened far down-river.
The third wish is as you see me now, writing full time and needing no other employment. Ah, clever Universe. Just as I was enjoying my new career bookselling, you hit me with a triple bypass to the widow-maker and a further heart attack at the failure of said bypass. I am now disabled and collecting, affording me all the time in the world, and even a shiny handicapped parking sign.
Ah, thanks universe. Now I can write at leisure and scoff at those hardy souls still working, and experiencing the stress monkey on their back, first-hand. But what of my prolific and exciting dream life which inhabits my mind and makes me interesting? Cassandra's take was a complete bombshell.
"Yeah, I need you to STOP that!"
"I'm sorry?"
"I need you to end that and save all of your fantasies for your waking life, when you need them most for your writing."
"How the hell do I do that?"
"You say that you call up your previous night's dreams to send your mind back to sleep. Stop doing that. Read and do your best to meditate and clear your mind before sleep. You mastered Lucid, you can do this."
I love you Cassandra, you are awesome and beautiful and were a great conversation and guide in my life, but I can't give my dreamscapes up. They are completely me, and they are one of my existences on this insane journey.
07/26/20
My second session with the Medium, the lovely Cassandra, was the closest I ever came to bolting from the darkened room. I'm not a fan of touchy-feely vague metaphors; I like my symbols succinct and cleverly representative of something. She started the session by saying that when she thought of me, a Dragon came into her head. "It's like you are a bold Knight battling an overwhelming obstacle that could be the end of your dreams, but yet you try to defeat it." Yes, all very true about writing, which she already had learned I was currently concentrating on. But, what am I, the Hobbit now? Hey lady, I'm not a Renaissance Fair Cosplayer, let's move on.
I'm certain that she felt a chill from me that snuffed her candles, yet she persisted.
"In a past life I see you were a Monk up late at night in a castle, writing and transcribing feverishly." No Ma'am, that was Tuesday night.
I endured, and must admit I experienced the most haunting revelations of my time with her.
She got into congress with my dead, amidst the incense and soft music, and first said my brother (whose death I discussed two entries ago), was not noticeable to her because "he was far into the afterlife, socializing." Not entirely meaningful, but yes I can imagine it, since he and I had done our Ancestry and had many questions for those who had already crossed over, lol.
The showstoppers: "Here on the edge of the afterlife, your maternal Grandmother, who never saw you, remains very close by you. You are sickened with the same thing that took her life." Now none of this had been discussed, nor could I imagine any online information I'd ever divulged at that time, about how I never met any of my Grandparents because they had all passed before my birth. Also Walt and I had learned in our Genealogical research that my mother's mother, nee Elizabeth O'Brien, had been in the Mental Health facility in Cranston (then a Hospital) and had a leg amputated before dying of uncontrolled Diabetes (one of my struggles since 1996). We had no previous idea whatsoever about the details of her death, way back in the Forties.
She mentioned my Paternal Grandfather and said he is unhappy in the beyond because he was taken too soon. Again, can't tell how she would know that. She'd have had to do some deep digging for facts it took Walt and I years to find. At that moment, I was thinking "Here it comes, the make or break for her." Out of nowhere, she says-
"I see a train that he missed." Now of all the ways to die, it shook me; rattled me to my core; that she was even so close. My Dad's Father, nee Edmond Henri Scott, died on the February night of a great blizzard, in 1926, at the age of 41. Imagine, my first Granddad was already gone in 1926, thirty years before I was born. That's like Prohibition, roaring twenties, ancient history shit! He had walked from a great elevation in the city of Woonsocket to Main Street, to catch a Trolley for Third Shift in a different city (having worked all Second Shift in another Mill). This is at least a good mile walk, in a raging snowstorm. There was no Trolley because of the snow, he walked back to his home in a tenement apartment up those hills, ate a huge supper, took a nap, and died of heart failure in his sleep, in bed with my five-year-old Dad. Doctors, who then did house calls, could not get to him.
That was a pretty close reference by Cassandra, to my mind, and still, a tough fact to come across even if you're looking in the right place.
So now I looked forward to hitting her with my two other times life manifested my desires. Next journal.
07/19/20
One year on my Birthday my daughter, ever in-the-know, got me one hundred dollars worth of session time with a Medium. She was aware that I had been exploring all sides of occult knowledge as closely as I could. This particular woman was highly praised and sought after, and her practice was attached to an extremely upscale Yoga and Spiritual Health facility in South County, Rhode Island. What we Yankees like to call "down near the beaches."
Let's call her Cassandra, because I love that name, lol. The hundred got me roughly a session and a half, so I splurged for the other half to meet with her three times. Knowing I'm at least a good conversationalist, I knew I could get through the three sessions with more than enough information to discuss. You see, the problem was, that by this point I had completely ceased to be a believer.
I did resolve to go in open-mindedly and not be some asshole just nay-saying every bit of information she gave me. I hadn't gone there for an argument, Mr. Cleese.:-D Of course, Cassandra was very beautiful with flowing blond locks and in great shape for what I guessed was forty. So okay, no getting a crush on the Medium. Concentrate.
The biggest issue I wanted to undertake was that three times in my life, I had daydreamed, or some may say "put out into the universe" what I intended and wished my life to be like. What occupation, what schedule, what living situation, what dynamic, all of it. In all three circumstances, astoundingly, the scenario had entirely become true and unraveled with veracity. However, it was always way more far flung than I ever imagined. In other words, they ALL happened, but they took their sweet time.
It isn't hard to guess her response to this info. 'Of course The Universe listened, but it doesn't always adhere to the precise schedule you may have wanted to manifest.' My first wish had been to work in the professional theater as an actor, live in a city, and have an insanely hectic lifestyle with all the intelligent camaraderie and socializing that would accompany such a life. Sex and the City as it were. Well I did achieve it, but at the age of thirty-one, already married, and with one baby at home. I worked at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, not as an actor but as a thirty year old Production Assistant, making coffee and sweeping the floors.
In time I became a Stage Manager and was able to join the Actors' union and "get my Equity card." I actually was able to worm my way into acting in six productions there, unheard of for crew, and not as just "man carrying table." One time they needed a quick speaking part in an Irish play by Sean O'Casey. The actor Richard Jenkins (Shape of Water, Cabin in the Woods) was auditioning people and I put the word out I wanted it. He asked me if I had an Irish dialect. "We're here about the furniture you ordered missus. Where do ya want it?" something like that. "Fuck, you're cast," was Dick's reply after he heard me, lol. This happened on several other occasions, one where I actually took an ill actor's role halfway through the play's run. When you're in the union, those kind of bucks add exponentially, I can tell you. More to come on this projection phenomenon.
07/11/20
Seven years ago, I lost part of my heart and self.
My eldest brother Walter and I were so close that it is hard to put into words. At the risk of ruining part of my latest novel, a fictional memoir, I was born when my parents were forty, basically. Walter, their first child, had eighteen years on me. That's right. He had graduated from high school when I was born. Strictly a Catholic family back then, he was not only my brother but also my Godfather. I've known his wife Helena as long as I've known him. I saw him get married when I was three and my nephew and niece that came soon after grew up with me. My brother considered me one of his kids and his kids were my little brother and sister as far as I was concerned.
He died at age 74 in 2013 from complications of sepsis in his stomach that traveled to his brain. My sister-in-law says he was speaking in tongues at the end. I got to go to Ireland with him and other brothers in 2004, and he and I went out weekly as drinking buddies from 1974 to his death, often along with my brother Alfred and Walt's son Glenn. He was a staunch conservative and he and I could talk politics all night without getting mad. I would call my politics to the left of Bernie Sanders, or as I like to say, Trekkian (global unity, lol.)
I bring this up because in my journal about dreaming, this last of three entries takes a happy/ sad and sometime troubling turn. Of course Walter has appeared frequently in my dreams since his demise. Clear as day and being himself completely (funny, smart, affectionate, and loving). He respected me and my brain and he often looked to me for conversation the older he got. I was always the driver and often the tour guide, as I'm good at agendas and travel, and he was a willing passenger.
The first time he was hanging out in my dream after hitting what he called "the long dirt nap," Al and I had quite the conundrum. Just who was going to tell him he was dead? I was surprisingly against this, me the reality king.
"Just let him enjoy himself," I argued.
"He really should be told," was Al's stance. Being my dream, I believe I won.
The next time wasn't so pleasant. We were all walking in that mall I told you about two entries ago. Walt was weak, sick feeling, he fainted and I caught him in my arms.
"I love you, kid, you know that?" he said, as often in life, looking up at me.
He faded.
I cried, "Walt no. No Walt. Don't go; don't go, please Walt, please, no!"
He died in my arms. I woke sweating and crying.
When I've come upon him multiple times since in dreams, it takes me awhile to realize that things aren't just normal. Jeez, Walt is dead. He shouldn't be here, but I'm glad he is. I'm not going to spoil it.
"Why haven't you been calling me, in so long, Dick?"
How do you answer that one?
"Walt, what was it like?"
"What was what like?"
"Dying. Where are you now?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
I think I will get better at communicating with him in the future.
When we were all in Ireland, we went to pubs like three times a day, and one lunch break we were behind time, and when we walked around the corner, our tour bus was leaving.
"Nyah," we screamed like the Three Stooges, chasing it, waving and yelling.
They stopped. Our good-humored Guide, Pat Frawley, greeted us with:
"We were goin' to look for you lads."
I see that story as a metaphor.
If my relatives and spiritual friends are correct, of course, and there is an afterlife.
"Walt. My brother. I'll be lookin' for ya, lad. I'll be lookin' for ya."
07/06/20
I left this hanging after describing the benchmarks that clue me in that I am dreaming. It is not instant and can take a while. As a participant in the dream, I am saying to myself, "There's something familiar about all this. Something. Something that I want to remember about this circumstance." Then, I'd say, two out of five times, if I remain asleep long enough, it comes to me, and I can go lucid.
"This asthma attack. Huge gulps of air. Oh yes this happens when I am struggling in my sleep. This is a dream."
That's when things get interesting. I begin to experiment with unwarranted behavior in the dream. I may grab any woman nearby, old or young, and begin to kiss her passionately. They are surprised at first, because it has no rhyme nor reason with what is happening, but they start to respond and go with it, hahaha. Or perhaps I'll jump on a table and belt out "Luck Be a Lady Tonight." Or introduce everyone to my pet polar bear.
The situation that occurs the most is that I have just finished a shift at a job, (often a few of the places I've worked melded together), and I am able to go home. Or just as often, a class at the college I seem to be attending but at my current age. Even I question why girls of college age are interested in flirting with me, lol. But now I get to go home, wherever that is.
A few minutes later, it becomes quite clear that I cannot recall coming in to work or school, only that I was "there." So I have not the foggiest idea where my car is parked. I wander around, sometime with a friend or lady, struggling to remember where it might be, and laughing nonchalantly to ease the other person's mind, that we'll be on our way in no time. This is a lie. Sometimes I wander huge parking lots, small side lots, and on occasion city streets. Eventually it comes to me, "I'll never find this car. This happens when I am dreaming. I am dreaming."
Now I am liberated. I may say to the person I'm with, "No Problem. Ah, here it is right here." I have made cars manifest out of thin air, and never a car I've had in real life. On occasion, I say, "Watch this." I go over to a spot in space, hovering next to the curb, sit on a cushion of pure invisibility, 'start' the imaginary motor, get them to join me, and away we go. We are now flying a few feet above the road, accelerating to our destination.
One of my recurring solutions, if I am alone, is to walk home, but this always moves to my hometown and walking back to the house I grew up in. I get upset because I don't want to go to my Dad's house, I want to go to my house. I am a grown man with a wife, but dammit, I'll have to call for a ride from my Dad's. Whom I never recall has been dead for 22 years.
There are deeper implications and further sparks which resonate with my writing, but I shall end this dream series next time.
06/26/20
I have been a prolific dreamer throughout my life. I can still remember dreams from my childhood, and I've never kept a dream journal. I do so much dreaming to this day, that documenting them properly would take half my waking hours. This is something about me which has never changed, only the regularity of my experimentation with them has increased.
In the essay "A Novel Approach" on my website, I outlined how a dream led to writing my first book. Several other of my dreams have led to short stories, particularly "The Quality of Mercy" about Lovecraft fighting a family of vampires here in Rhode Island (Unsold). Dreams for me are a never ending source in mining for ideas, and I frequently hit "the mother lode."
Several years back, during a long health recovery, I, out of boredom, began to dabble in lucid dreaming. I read a few books on it, tried some methods and never quite had success. This is the practice where you discover that you are in a dream, and then begin to fuck with it. I never tried the idea outlined in CBS' hit show, EVIL. They had you tying an elastic around your wrist in waking hours, and training yourself to look at it often, thus by the same token training yourself to notice its absence while operating in dreamland.
My eventual success in lucidity came about in an entirely opposite way. I began to notice recurring patterns and circumstances which only happened while I was dreaming. It may sound insane but they clearly manifested over and over in my dreams until I was able to finally wrap my mind around the similarities to other experiences WHILE the dream is going on. Quickly, here are my talismans, if you will, of the fact that I am in a dream: 1- The same landscape keeps showing up. It may be a campus of a college or other school, it may be a place I have worked, but the grounds always have the same characteristics (a series of parking lots on the far east side; as you enter the campus, a large marketplace, often selling museum quality artifacts and especially middle eastern and Islamic items; some buildings, and in the campus center, hills, sometimes into small mountains where sit enormous statues of the Ray Harryhausen variety, Greek Roman and Norse; a huge museum of art and natural history, housing dinosaurs and all manner of human endeavors, sloping back down into a modern mall with pricey stores, another stretch of buildings including cottages or dormitories, and more parking). This is not unlike the layout of Rhode Island College where I really matriculated.
2- Because I am having actual sleep apnea episodes in real life, I have asthma in the dream, which I have under good control while awake and hardly ever occurs. 3- Is an easy one, when I am done my class or shift, I have absolutely no idea where I have parked my car, since I never "arrived" to the campus in the first place. I was just "there." After a while of searching, sometimes a long while, it comes to me that I am not in Kansas anymore.
To prevent this from becoming War and Peace, I have to continue the subject in my next installment. Sleep well.
06/20/20
I've been reading a book about David Bowie creating the album "Low" which was in a triptych of highly advanced albums of the late seventies and early eighties (Station to Station, Low, Heroes). Bowie was plumbing the depths of artistic impulse, utilizing lyrics of ancient occult predisposition, as well as electronic experiments in the most extreme and rudimentary musical phrases (also courtesy of Brian Eno and Tony Visconti). It's like they were putting a mixture of human impulses and sounds into a hat and pulling out the random order to create music that was not artistically predetermined. Bowie's brother had had Schizophrenia and died in a mental institution.
Bowie and Eno visited an Austrian mental facility/ art studio where people were encouraged to paint. "None of them knew they were artists", he later said. "It's compelling and sometimes quite frightening to see this honesty. There's no awareness of embarrassment." At the same time, Bowie was enthusiastic over the book by Julian Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," which among some very radical theories of when man finally developed self-consciousness, spoke of prehistoric man's schizophrenic nature and as a direct result of it, the religious yearning.
On a further note, this was an album where one complete side was Bowie experimenting with instrumentals, spurred on by the Krautrock scene and groups like Kraftwerk. David was nearly fifty years ahead of avant-garde electronic artists we have "exploring" soundscapes today. Indeed my collaborator Raffaele Pezzella (Sonolygist, Unexplained Sounds) is a strong designer of albums which reach into our subconscious and elicit a reaction that is almost primal in nature. Also, it can be soothing or electrifying. For your own information, Bowie's flights into fancy with sound are collected on the album "All Saints."
Why this has resonated with me so deeply is that I do quite a lot of thinking about why I had to become a writer late in life, and why I feel I would be essentially lost, had I not taken up that mantle. Most of us have periods or even days where we sense that we are a hair-trigger away from "going off," and perhaps, if life-affecting enough, may never return to "baseline." I know that we all have our moments of depression and heartache and feeling overwhelmed, as well we should. It's all part of life. But it haunts me how close to madness writing can be. We need, many of us, to get our thoughts out of our head and create art, and that becomes our saving grace. We perhaps become more stable just in being able to transfer these pieces of ourselves to paper, canvas or tape. I can't find the quote at present, but I have come to realize that anyone who doesn't suffer some depression does not understand life.
We labor alone in tiny rooms, doing things that may make no sense to others, may never find those we hope to reach, and we risk exposure of our deepest flaws as much as our highest qualities. That's why I try never to denigrate a fellow artist and their work publicly, from the cushy Hollywood screenwriter to the Community theater actor. Everyone who stares at a blank page or even a movie camera has their demons to confront. Walter Mosley, the master writer, in his book "This Year You Write Your Novel" puts it so well, "The writer, however, must loosen the bonds.....to cross over the line of your self-restraint and revel in the words and ideas that you would never express in your everyday life."
It's unfortunately true, loosening those bonds makes one's art truthful and immediate.
06/14/20
In the film, A Dangerous Method (2011), I believe David Cronenberg, the clever and talented director, is using his two protagonists as a metaphor to a struggle that goes through our own minds. Indeed, I feel most heartfelt explorers of life and its meaning will come to this crossroad eventually.
Is life and our universe just what we experience on the surface, a biological, physical and scientific phenomena easily explained by the best minds of our time, with some questions perhaps remaining? Or is life much more than we know, a supernatural and inexplicable experience, underlain by phenomena outside of our everyday knowledge and overruled by some governing being or principle, or forces which we know very little about. By the same token, when we die, does our energy or "soul" if you will, persist, and enter other realms or parallel worlds of existence?
In the film, in 1904, the argument is pursued by the two giants of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Beside Freud being the pioneering older mentor of Jung, they do share a mutual respect and a love of philosophizing about their separate but often conjoining work. Freud is the ever staunch defender of reality and the medical significance of the brain's function while Jung has an intuition that things occur outside of mundane explanations. He is the proponent, after all, of Synchronicity, and the thought that many coincidences we experience are not just that. That life is surely overseen and somehow even guided by the supernatural, if you are aware of the clues to look for.
We all have the story where we call our brother and he was just about to call, where someone mentions E.T. and you come home to find your wife watching it, where a thought relayed to you by a friend comes up in another conversation hours after, and more incidents that same week.
I have always deeply admired the film as Cronenberg's argument with himself about the matter, the same one every human being goes through. Are this life and its incidents all that there is for me, what am I anyway, and is there something more out there that only the ethereal side of my nature can or will comprehend? In this sense I find it one of the most important of Cronenberg's films. What does the film imply: what else can it imply but that the mystery goes on and we are each responsible for deciding where we fall in the spectrum of philosophy before this existence is over.
A funny thing happened on my way to exploring deeper understanding of God, the supernatural, and the world beyond in my writing. I still mainly have interest in writing about this same challenge in my stories of the human experience, but as of now, in my 63rd year, I have fallen on the side of Freud. Yes, I've found nothing to recommend the other take but coincidence and wild speculation. It isn't what I expected, believe me.
I am an atheist and I believe that when my brain function ceases I will no longer exist and become food for worms. My atoms will eventually join the rest of their kin in the makeup of this planet and the universe. I will have no knowledge of their journey.
06/05/20
The objective I have pursued in my writing career has been a personal journey, if I may be so corny. I had spent my entire life, ever since I saw The Wolfman as a child and was terrified, trying to come to terms with the hidden realms, the unknown, the unexplained, the dark corners of this fragile existence. If it had monsters, ghosts, demons, angels, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, etc. etc. I was there. As a young person I did enjoy the miracles, mysteries and unspoken bits of my Catholic upbringing; to a point. I was such a believer that when the Exorcist book and then film hit when I was sixteen, I was primed and ready to keep my eyes closed whenever they went to Regan's room. After the vomit explosion? Oh hell no, I was out. And yes, my teenage eyes were shut tight.
It is exactly this guile and innocence that has had me enraptured my whole life by the extraordinary; the synchronous events, the frights, the exploration in book and film of what's going on below the surface. When my daughter was in Middle School, I arranged quite the field trip for her and her best friend. I also dragged my wife along as we visited first the grave of Rhode Island's vampire legend, Mercy Brown in Exeter, then HP Lovecraft's grave in Providence, and finally, as the dusk settled in and the fog rolled, the grave of Lizzie Borden in Fall River, Mass.
My child's English teacher got wind of this romp, but rather than scold, told Amelia that her dad must be very cool, lol. When I began to put stories together and had only my education to guide me in what I was doing, I asked this woman if she would mind editing for me. She was delighted, and then another detail about her came to light; that she was a practicing witch and high priestess of a coven. I had planned a story about a real witch living in a town adjacent to Salem at the time of the trials in 1692. In the months that followed, I received a first hand education on not only witchcraft and Wicca, but also, stones, gems, oils, cauldrons, spells, circles, new moon intentions, candles and deities. I learned that she was well versed in all religions and knew her Gods and Goddesses backward and forward. I came to appreciate a deeper understanding of what signs to watch for in life, and got a hell of a story out of it (Under the Blood Moon, yet to find a home).
I was on my way into the esoteric path that I so fervently desired.
05/29/20
I remember my mindset very clearly when, in 2005, I began writing as a serious business and a vocation for the rest of my life. Physically, as far as where I was going to be spending my time, I was thinking that when it came to life, I was sick and tired of being a person working at things that held no sway for me. I wanted to go back to the feeling I had working in the Theater, that I knew what I wanted, that I was taking part in life, that I was collaborating and creating. The feeling that I was not just being a cog in the daily machine of industry, only to come home and be a consumer. In this case a consumer of entertainment; a watcher.
I made the decision that I was no longer interested in being a watcher, but wanted to become a doer. I wanted to take part in life to the fullest, and transfer those feelings into my written work in order to pass it on to people. I don't mean zip-lining hundreds of feet above the Amazon forest, I mean by observing what is going on with people past and present and trying to report on it through fiction. Not only for the readers at hand, but for future generations as well.
No one can know how that goal of longevity might turn out, but I did know that I at least had to try. "There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding, and that which is lost by not trying." Even though that's the quote I chose for my High School yearbook, it's the quote that resonates with me. I just wrote it by heart, it's still with me.
So that is of utmost importance to me, that my work reach as many people as possible, and that my voice may be heard in the time after I cease to exist. I am serious. When I began to write, I was not sure I even had a voice that was palpable and distinctive, but yes, I have now realized fully that I do and I have found it. The fates be praised I have found it, and I am continuing the process of trying to get it into your ears, into your eyes, and to those who come after you.
Can you imagine being able to have future human beings, whatever form they may take, look back on your work as we look back on Walt Whitman, and having Walt Whitman speak back to you-
05/23/20
I'm thinking about how I've come to this point in my writing life. In 2005 I was sick and tired of working at things that only held a peripheral interest to me. I had done human services on and off for twenty years, but most importantly was coming off a thirty year career in the theater. Hours upon days of rehearsals in a professional company, tearing apart scripts and trying to get at what truth about life these plays contained.
All I could ever think about was how much I wanted to make my own scripts, tell my own stories and how much I wanted only to pursue the form of my two biggest influences, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. These happened to be the two shows of my youth that most resonated with me, using the unknown and the dark realms to quantify what goes on in real life. Making the people in the stories as relatable as possible, hell, they could be your family, friends or neighbors. Putting them into situations that may never really occur and seeing how they dealt with them.
I took a great risk, of losing all financial support and whatever I thought my place may be in the outside world of work and human congress. But I knew that I was suffering, wilting on the vine, not letting my creativity out and loosed upon the world. Something had to give, and I decided to write. I have already extensively outlined the encouragement I received to that end throughout my life in a blog, Book of Shadows, which I have re-posted on Facebook:
From the beginning, I haven't been able to fight down intense and deep-seated feelings, which many would consider old-fashioned, of wanting to handle my writing in a way that is anathema to many of my current colleagues, compatriots and acquaintances in the writing, and especially genre writing, fields. I want to maintain a sense of mystery to my accomplishments for one thing, never posting word counts or thoughts or degrees of fulfillment toward my writing goals, whether I had a good or bad writing day and what not. I feel most people are interested in your finished product and what you were able to do with that product. I am an entertainment junkie, but a thorough examination of the Film Directing style of say, Robert Eggars, is a discussion that would lose most of my real life friends and family. More on that as we go.
So this journal goes against everything I've struggled to keep hidden from the casual reader, but for my fellow artists, I hope it may help you get a closer grip on what you are after, and what you hope to accomplish. In future I will be laying it all out for you. If you follow me, you may be as mad as I am.
Richard Alan Scott has labored for a half-century in The Arts. He is the school recipient of the Congressman's Medal of Merit and the American College Theater Award of Excellence for acting, presented him at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He worked for a decade as an actor under Robert J. Colonna at The Rhode Island Shakespeare Theater and as actor and Stage Manager under Adrian Hall and Richard Jenkins at the Tony-winning Providence Company; Trinity Rep. He is a thirty-year member of the Actors Equity Association, as well as a fifteen year member of the New England Horror Writers. He has been a writing member of the acclaimed RI Writers Circle and the Newport Round Table. As a writer he has studied under Christopher Golden and James A. Moore at River City Writers and at Boston's Grub Street. His work has appeared in Premiere Magazine, Shroud: The National Journal of Dark Fiction and Art, and Albedo One: Ireland's top genre magazine, as well as the anthology Walls and Bridges edited by Mark Ellis and Melissa Martin-Ellis. He has finished two novels that are being promoted to agents and he lives in rural Rhode Island.
You can learn more about Richard at his website: https://richardalanscott.com/
