Artistic Statement
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Paul K Smith
Artistic Statement
What do we do the moment we think we are gonna die?
What is it of ourselves that we want to leave on the earth?
It was two am, two women were going into a restroom to snort coke, this was a Waffle House off a freeway ramp in Georgia, all the bars had just let out. “A well-lit place” – a perfect place to write.
I’d come in to eat a chicken sandwich and edit a script when the nosy face next to me noticed an export document book-marking my manuscript. It revealed some Cyrillic letters: “You a Commie?” he asked. He pointed an accusing stick of flesh at my work.
I had with me the blue-sapphire-blade, corneal scalpels that accompanied the import document. In an instant, one was in my hand to discuss its merits for an eye surgeon.
Unfortunately, it was an unguarded blade, which slipped in my fingers and found its home deep in my flesh. So sharp it didn’t cut the flesh – it slipped into the flesh. My body offered no resistance, no resistance at all.
I stayed ultra-cool and masked that I was bleeding, I calculated I had 30 minutes before so much blood flowed out that I would DIE.
What was the last thing I wanted to do? What was the thing I needed to do?
Finish my script, of course!
I pulled out my Mont Blanc, blindered everyone else out of my awareness, cut, hacked (it felt like I was trying to close my hand round a beating heart), edited & wrote for the next thirty minutes as if they were my last; I thought they were.
Obviously I survived. As did the script.
In performance, it was the play the Atlanta Journal’s entertainment editor headlined:
“Smith’s Play Filled with Powerful Ideas and Images.”
She wrote:
“It is for the mind; it is for the heart: it is full of great emotional power, scope, and impact. And, incredibly, the play gets better the longer one lives with it. For this is a play of ideas.”
What is it of ourselves that we want to leave on the earth?
It was two am, two women were going into a restroom to snort coke, this was a Waffle House off a freeway ramp in Georgia, all the bars had just let out. “A well-lit place” – a perfect place to write.
I’d come in to eat a chicken sandwich and edit a script when the nosy face next to me noticed an export document book-marking my manuscript. It revealed some Cyrillic letters: “You a Commie?” he asked. He pointed an accusing stick of flesh at my work.
I had with me the blue-sapphire-blade, corneal scalpels that accompanied the import document. In an instant, one was in my hand to discuss its merits for an eye surgeon.
Unfortunately, it was an unguarded blade, which slipped in my fingers and found its home deep in my flesh. So sharp it didn’t cut the flesh – it slipped into the flesh. My body offered no resistance, no resistance at all.
I stayed ultra-cool and masked that I was bleeding, I calculated I had 30 minutes before so much blood flowed out that I would DIE.
What was the last thing I wanted to do? What was the thing I needed to do?
Finish my script, of course!
I pulled out my Mont Blanc, blindered everyone else out of my awareness, cut, hacked (it felt like I was trying to close my hand round a beating heart), edited & wrote for the next thirty minutes as if they were my last; I thought they were.
Obviously I survived. As did the script.
In performance, it was the play the Atlanta Journal’s entertainment editor headlined:
“Smith’s Play Filled with Powerful Ideas and Images.”
She wrote:
“It is for the mind; it is for the heart: it is full of great emotional power, scope, and impact. And, incredibly, the play gets better the longer one lives with it. For this is a play of ideas.”