Mining Your Childhood (12 minute read)
Happy Friday!
I want to say thank you to everyone who read last week's newsletter and reached out afterward. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to write everybody back yet but I read every message and I'm so glad it resonated with so many people.
Some issues back I talked about the personal development slate that I passed on to my reps. We started with a knuckleball of a project, something that was a bit out of my usual zone. I did a small round of producer pitches and we didn't get a single bite so I cut my losses and moved on to a second project which is as much of a fastball down the middle as I'm able to throw.
I still love the first project but it's getting late in the year. Rather than run out the clock on something that maybe wasn't going anywhere I switched it up hoping to find some traction. I'll let you know what happens.
In other news I'm 18k words into my crime novel.
It's about an ex-con who goes to war with an Eastern European mob family in order to stop them from taking over his beloved neighborhood pinball bar. There's just one tiny problem: in times of high stress he's prone to bizarre visual hallucinations he calls "benders."
It's like AMELIE but with more murders.
Have a great weekend!
Mining Your Childhood
My parents came to visit a couple of weeks ago, their first trip to California since 2019. While they were here my dad and I went to see a documentary called THE JESUS MUSIC, about the evolution of Contemporary Christian Music from the late 60’s until now.
My parents were Jesus hippies and even though they were living in Southern Ohio at the time they were right in the middle of that movement. A big part of my childhood was spent going to see concerts or camping out at Christian music festivals with them. I was an early adopter of Christian pop culture, not just the music but also Christian comic books that told famous Bible stories like David and Goliath, so the movie brought back a ton of memories.
Shortly after they left I came across a video on YouTube that was all about how the most important subject for you to study is your own childhood because it colors every facet of your adult life. I don't know that I agree with that wholeheartedly but I was already kind of doing it so what the hell.
I spent some time writing down as many memories as I could in one session and spent some time listening to a lot of those old songs. I realized that even though I have a ton of memories from my childhood I don't spend all that much time analyzing them or really thinking about how those early years fashioned the person and the writer I am today.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told people the story about how going to see STAR WARS is my earliest memory as a human being, or how I was an Amblin kid who grew up in the perfect sweet spot for all those classic movies. I talk about the holy trinity of Lucas, Spielberg, and Henson but I’ve never given any credit to my early experience in church and that's a major oversight.
One of my favorite songs when I was a kid is called “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” by arguably the first Christian rock star, a guy named Larry Norman. It starts off with the lines, “Life was filled with guns and war and everyone got trampled on the floor… I wish we’d all been ready.”
It’s set to a folky picked guitar and Larry Norman has an earnest, warbly voice. It sounds really pretty but the imagery is horrific. It’s all about the rapture and how some couple is going to be asleep in their bed and the wife is going to hear a noise and turn her head and the husband will be gone. Or “Two men walking up a hill, one disappears and one’s left standing still. I wish we’d all been ready.”
I must have listened to it hundreds of times before I was twelve years old. It created this low hum of fear that I lived with as a kid that at any moment the sky could open up and this massive supernatural event would occur where Jesus would come back and if my heart wasn’t right with God in that exact moment I would be left behind and everybody I ever loved would just disappear and go on to Heaven without me. If I’d done something “wrong” that day or “sinned,” I’d lay in bed at night praying for God’s forgiveness for stealing some kid’s eraser or whatever and hoping that when I woke up my family would still be there.
I was a comedy nerd back then too and my parents bought me a bunch of cassettes by a Christian comedian named Mike Warnke. I would lay in bed at night listening to his tapes on my walkman, playing them over and over again through my headphones while I fell asleep.
Mike Warnke’s claim to fame was that he’d been a high priest in the church of Satan before having this miraculous conversion to Christianity. In between jokes he would tell super dark stories about having taken part in ritual sacrifices and being offered sex slaves. Again, I was like ten years old. (By the time I was in high school there was a huge article in a Christian magazine about how he lied about all of it. He was a con man. A showman who found his audience.)
Around that time there was also the whole Satanic Panic and backward masking craze, the record burnings, and all that. Even though I was barely a teenager I knew all of it was bullshit, plus there was no way I was going to burn Purple Rain or Kiss Alive II, are you out of your mind?
I finally let go of Christianity in my early twenties when I realized it just wasn’t a compatible operating system with how I wanted to live my life and how I viewed the world, especially after four years in a musical theater program and multiple seasons of summer stock. For me, personally, there was one major concept worth holding on to, which is the verse that says, “A greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.”
I felt like when I boiled it all down that was kind of all I needed to know. Jesus loved us so much that he died for us. So, if I take that as an example, if I love the people around me to the point that I would be willing to give my life for them, then everything short of that… being of service, forgiving, encouraging, building people up… being there when they needed me… all of that should be a piece of cake.
I mean… it’s not.
But I try to live like that as much as possible and it’s been a wholly compatible operating system.
Christianity still works for a lot of my friends and family and more power to them. It may still work for you, in which case I’m glad you’ve found something that gives you comfort and peace.
Looking back now, I have to give credit where credit is due. That foundation certainly contributed to making me a decent human being but it also undoubtedly fueled my imagination and my interest in science-fiction and the supernatural.
What if I’d never heard of the rapture?
Or the holy spirit?
Or demonic possession?
Or the burning bush?
A guy who gets superhuman strength from his hair?
A kid who kills a giant with technology (a rock in a sling)?
A man who gets swallowed by a whale and survives?
What’s more supernatural than a guy who gets murdered in front of the whole town and then comes back to life three days later and goes walking around and freaking out his friends? Who knows, maybe that’s why The Crow is one of my all-time favorite movies.
If nothing else that time in my life opened me up to the possibility that there are things out there beyond that which I can see, or hear, or touch. So much of my writing is rooted in the conflict between hoping there is something after this but having a gut feeling that this is it and I need to make this time count while I’m here.
One of the other major themes I’m drawn to over and over again is the importance of human connection, how the highest form of that connection is love, and how sacrificing yourself for others in service is the highest demonstration of that love. Obviously that time made a dent.
I have other ex-vangelical writer friends who are drawn to genre stories that wrestle with these same themes at their core and it makes sense why their work resonates with me so strongly. (Shout out to Paul Bae!)
Now that I’ve spent the past couple of weeks examining this a bit more consciously it’s bringing up memories I’d long forgotten and put me back in touch with the kid I was then, which has been kind of cool.
If you haven’t done it yet I highly recommend taking some notebook time to write about your childhood or to reengage with the things you loved back then, that is if it’s not painful and/or triggering to do so. (I know for some people that's the last place they want to go back to.) It may unlock a new idea or shine an unexpected light on why you’re drawn to certain characters or themes over and over again.
On a human level it may just bring you to an even deeper understanding of yourself and that's a worthwhile way to spend any afternoon.
Dead Eyes
Dead Eyes is a podcast about an actor and comedian trying to come to terms with the fact that twenty years ago Tom Hanks fired him from an episode of BAND OF BROTHERS because he thought the guy had "dead eyes." It's hilarious and heartbreaking, filled with great insight about failure, rejection, and redemption, and lots of great guest stars along the way.
Highly recommend.
Headgum // Dead Eyes Actor/comedian Connor Ratliff (The Chris Gethard Show, UCB, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) embarks upon a quest to solve a very stupid mystery that has haunted him for two decades: why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO mini-series, Band Of Brothers.
Yoda of the Week
Lorde - Fallen Fruit — www.youtube.com New album Solar Power out now: https://lorde.lnk.to/SPAlbum The Solar Power Tour is on sale now - get dates and tickets: https://www.lorde.co.nz/tour Sign u...