I plan to go over to see Paul today to see if he is up for a video on Sunday down to the park. Paul was one of the shooting victims of the Phoenix Serial killers, but I plan for the focus to be on moving on as the last time I talked to Paul he said, "I have so moved on."
His determination inspired me and I know just what he means. You have to build a good life beyond being the victim of a violent crime. I know because I was the victim of an abduction and sexual molestation at 5 years old and moving on had to be achieved to diminish the damage a criminal can do. I tried to do damage control even then by not telling so murder or some other awful thing would not follow. But I did have to tell eventually and deal with the fallout in order to heal more completely.
I am in a sense still telling in my memoirs but am trying to write them in a way that will be the least damaging to me and my family now.
I am happy with my life now as I feel I am where I ought to be. I am living in the Westward Ho at the center of down town activity. Many other residents here have been disabled as I was by the results of some trauma and are also trying to move on and live productive lives despite the damage. I am very interested in helping them do that.
I have written a number of plays but understand why I cannot get them done in theater as people in Phoenix are conceiving it, which is why I have branched off to do my own videos as I feel I can deal with more that is pertinent to life that way. It is very difficult for theater worlds anywhere to nurture the local playwrights. That hasn't happened much in Phoenix yet, not as far as I am concerned. I feel I am perceived as being too broken, too unstable for them to take the risk of doing my plays. So I am not waiting around for that to happen. Instead I am still recording the dramas of life any way that is available to me to take them to the public. You Tube has become a big venue for unknowns, so I have my channel, GerryKing40, and am now getting close to posting 300 videos in the 4 years I have been doing this. I can embed them in this blog as well which I maintain also for contact with the whole world out there! This morning I noted someone from Vietnam had looked in and a few days ago somebody from Luxembourg.
If theater worlds pass on portraying the living dramas that exist in their communities they are not reflecting the big picture.
Paul, for example, was part of one of the most terrible dramas Phoenix has ever witnessed, a reign of terror by two men seeking notoriety they thought would be accorded to them with murder. In a chilling conversation recorded by the police, the killers discuss their kills and one is angry because they have not been credited with enough of their murders in comparison to other serial killers! In fact, it is thought that at the time these two and another man who became known as the Baseline Serial rapist and killer were competing with each other!
These men appear to have been motivated by the notoriety the press accords them with which cannot be helped if there are people dying by their hands.
Now theater could take these local dramas and add the analysis and control that is needed to balance and counteract what destructive men seek to do with publicity. But local theater people have to get involved in their cities' dramas in order to do that. And that is what is tough to do when only old plays are generally all that are accepted, developed somewhere else about more distant dramas.
What I will do in a video is try to add the voice and vision of a local playwright to what has happened to Paul with him expressing his own take on the events as a major player in a horrific series of events. I will try to encourage him to express what he wants to do as the result of having been cast as an unwilling participant.
He is the most prominent victim I know of in this city. He can well be the voice of those who want to triumph over the men who victimize with strength of his own to rise above and go on, and with a damaged body that is not easy.
Paul's mother, Mary, another lady, Trudy, and a man, Mike who had been in a terrible car accident with trauma to the brain discussed rehabilitation out in the patio yesterday. Mike learned to walk again after months of struggle. He was talking to Mary about Paul's rehab struggles following his stroke, which happened during the trial of the killers.
There are so many locals whose story I want to help tell. My goal as a playwright is to live as close to the drama as I can and record it. I interact with these people and then I am trying to record a portion of what they feel.
To keep doing this I can't afford to get too ambitious for recognition or I will remove myself from the scene of the main dramas. I have to be able to stay close to the action. The drama, not the glory is what is all important to a playwright, I believe.
I think too many people go for the glory in theater too fast and hard. They therefore feel they have no time for damaged people, so they by pass learning and being involved with their dramas. Damaged people are too risky. They might not do as they are told. They might not be easy to control. Drama that is too controlled begins to lose its vitality.
I do not involve myself too deeply in the theater world, because when I start feeling the life going out of it, I know I have to withdraw. If a play does not call to me with vigor and strength I won't go. I keep saying respect where the drama is.
I challenge the theater people to become a part of all the local dramas they can. I always have had to be at the heart of the action, wherever it was. I find ambitious people tend to withdraw from the poor. If they lose touch with the poor they are no longer dramatists in a major sense, because we are poor in such great numbers, especially now days. To abandon the poor is to move out of the mainstream to live in a palace, remote and safe. That has never been my choice. Even when there is danger, I prefer to live in the heart of the most action.
I happened to run into one of the Maricopa Country Supervisors who have been in the news for months. She waited on me in a Mexican cafe across the street! She verified to me that she was Mary Rose Wilcox. I told her that I had a first cousin who was another Maricopa County Supervisor, Max Wilson, and then I told her I treasured my twenty years on the west side learning to understand and appreciate the Mexican people. (Mary Rose is Hispanic) When I told her my youngest two children graduated from Carl Hayden she knew I was not kidding. I told her I had listened to her speak on the west side several times when she was running for supervisor. I said you are a well known character in that district. She was reserved at first, but I was most impressed she waited on me. I believe she must have an interest in the cafe since they serve a Mary Rose Wilcox summer squash casserole I told her I had ordered a number of times!
This is what I mean by keeping in touch with the people even should you rise to be a representative. I liked Mary Rose Wilcox even better after she waited on me!
Mary Rose Wilcox, official public photo. I googled her name!
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