Brilliant.

As I thought about writing this entry, it occurred to me that the story I wanted to tell about the video below actually had some usable relevance to writing. First, just watch the video.




For about a decade in the late 80s and early 90s I was heavily involved in public access cable TV. In the days before God gave us the internet, public access was the medium of choice for show-offs and misfits--the same folks who haunt YouTube now. During my stint in cable I met my friend Ed O'Rourke. That's him playing Vespio. Ed was and is one of the sharpest comic minds I've ever met. No moment is unusuable, no idea is unexplorable, and all that became evident every time you turned a camera on him. I was lucky enough to be able to spend several years playing opposite him. It was one of the most creatively productive and genuinely fulfilling times of my life.

Around 1991, I believe, Ed ran the cable studio in Saugus, MA. This meant that whenever we wanted we had access to thousands of dollars worth of high-end video equipment and pretty much all the time we chose to burn playing with it. Around this time there were a lot of commercials for cheesy albums by artists like "Zamfir, the Master of the Pan Flute." I wanted to do a parody. My first idea was to create a character called Salivar (accent over the "i"),a flute player with a seriously problematic spittle condition. But I couldn't figure a good way to A) get a tube up to the actor's mouth easily and B)ensure a steady flow of liquid. Not to mention the matter of cleanup.

Sitting around the studio, we came up with the name Vespio Aragoya. Ed disappeared into the men's room while I hashed out comedy details with our co-conspirator, the unfairly talented Mr. Ron van Dam, whose show we worked on. Ed came back with the open shirt and the slicked-back hair. We were hysterical. We had our man. We decided he came from Serbo-Croatia. Ed fired up the accent. It kept getting funnier--to us, anyway. But then came the question: what does Vespio play?

Stay with me now. This is where we key in to the analogy, and I'm not going to be explicit about it.

O'Rourke headed into the studio's store room. He was in there for several minutes. Lots of clanging and banging. And he came out holding an 18-inch-or-so-high section of a fake Christmas tree. It had the base on it, and a couple of stray branches.

I said, "What are you going to do with that?"

And O'Rourke raised it to his lips and, risking a burst brain vessel, blew into the thing like a freaking shofar and out came this wonderful, hellacious, absolutely non-musical bellow of sound. Vespio's instrument.

Watch the video again. I want you to see how he invests in and commits to the idea of the instrument. Before he plays, he always whips one branch over to the side. Like it matters. The move becomes integral to his development of the Christmas tree stand as a viable musical instrument. He's consistent about it. He has sold himself on the idea, and he sells you, the viewer. This is not a Christmas tree stand, he says to you a la Magritte. This is the Bogorian Tree Flute. And you buy it.

So here's my writerly koan to you, my pen-poised friends:

Can you find the Christmas tree stand in your closet? Have you looked?