I’m bringing Denis Villaneuve into my creative universe for my sci-fi epic. The colors, the characters, the long quiet shots allowing your mind to wander and wonder what the fuck is going on? It changes everything about what I’m writing. The screenplay just writes itself.

Does he speak English? I mean, do I need to learn French? I’ve wanted to start. I love Spanish. I imagine reading L’Étranger in the beautiful and sexy language it was written in. The best I’ve done is translate a few of my poems into Spanish. Maybe redone a few SPA/ENG translations of Octavio Paz that I didn’t think were up to snuff.

In spanning languages for others to read and comprehend the mind of the author, it’s important not to reset the structure of the sentences into American English, for example. Sure, readers and all, but it destroys the magic, the pacing, the odd juxtaposition of the verbs. Leave them alone. Let us find a tiny bit of the quixotic magic of Marquez or Puig. Feed our brains the altered language. See what happens next.

How does a writer decide what to work on next? What’s the ambition? Do I want to be a sci-fi writer? Was Vonnegut a sci-fi writer? We know Kilgore Trout was. But was the sci-fi part of KV’s misdirection? The way he teases short story ideas within the short story. He doesn’t even have to write them. Just give us the setup and let our minds do the rest.

That’s how it is with my mind. Set up the scene and let it rip. Adding Denis to the mix alters my camera angles and ambition a bit. Let’s go deep and dark.

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