"Sunrise, Sunset"

Early and often in his autobiography, This Terrible Business Has Been Good To Me, which I have just finished, movie director Norman Jewison speaks about his identification with Jews and black Americans. This has driven his desire to help tell their stories.

Although he is white and Canadian, some of Jewison's best-known and most-awarded films are about the black American experience (In The Heat of The Night, The Hurricane, others.). Although he is Goyim, another is about Jews (Fiddler on the Roof). Many of these films are considered classics.

It got me thinking once again about why I feel a similar identification with my two lesbian characters, Keitha & Annabel. I mean, there's part of me that thinks I'm crazy (or rather, fears that I will be thought crazy): By what right do I presume that I can identify with, and relate to "the lesbian experience?"

One answer is I don't know about "the lesbian experience," I only know about my girls. Another answer is I don't know by what right...but I do so identify. So I guess I just want to say that Jewison's book, while a quick read--took me less than a full day--was kind of inspirational to me.

As is a quote with which he ends the book:

...after the premiere of Waiting For Godot, Samuel Beckett was asked why he had written such a depressing play. He replied, "Great art can never be an act of pessimism. Art comes from hope. The very act of writing something anticipating an audience is an act of hope."

That's the kind of thinking that keeps me getting out of bed in the morning...