Respecting the Source

by Dennis Green

I listen to Neil Young talk about how he writes his songs, “It just comes to me. It’s a gift. And I have to pick up the gift. What kind of respect would it be for me to ignore it? And if I don’t pick it up, right away, the minute it comes, it won’t be there. You have to respect the source.”

He also talks about having a serious illness, with a brain aneurism that almost killed him, and how an elderly black woman sat by his hospital bed, held his hand, and talked to him, saying, “He’s not going to take you. You’re going to be alright. The Master loves you.” And I envy him that moment. But for Neil Young, that whole experience did the same thing it did for me, left him with a spiritual certainty, non-specific, non-denominational, but very deep and very real.

Respecting the source, I know that in my own life I’ve been gifted too. Oh, not to the degree at all that Neil Young has been. But I’ve been able to be a writer, to make my living at it, to write also just for fun, to write novels, short stories, poems, commentary, even newspaper articles. I’ve written millions of words and enjoyed them all. I’ve been gifted with this.

One story I wrote in my early twenties, “Yellow Bird,” is my personal favorite. It’s about an elderly widow who talks to her canary. A sweet little vignette, it’s not more than two and a half pages long, but it resonates. And, like most of my stories, it’s not entirely made up, based on real life but with a twist. The story, a chapter from my first novel, Sketches of Boyhood & Youth, was published in the UCSB literary magazine, Spectrum, in 1964.

I also did a lot of writing for advertising clients. Some of the finest work I did over the years was for rehab programs, and two tag lines stand out in my memory: “Take Hold of Your Life Before It Slips Away,” and another, which is still used by Mountain Vista Farms in their TV commercials: ‘”Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life.” A different kind of poetry.

Dealing with people, getting their stories, their perspectives, getting to the heart of what they do and who they are — these are the chops I learned first as an editor at the University interviewing professors and writing their profiles. A journalistic exercise, but it also served me very well in the business of marketing and advertising. Capturing the essence of what a client does.

Most recently, I had several stories and poems published in Red Hills Review, a ‘zine created, edited and published by Julia Parks. And I had a great deal of fun writing my column “Geezerville: A Wry Take On Aging” in the Alameda Sun, another project of Julia’s, and also giving workshops at her “Literati Book Fair,” held at the former Officer’s Club at the Base.

So my full life has been greatly enriched by this one particular gift, a gift of gab, a writer’s voice, and ideas, phrases, voices that come to me from the Source. Because it’s given me so much joy and just plain entertainment, I respect that Source and am in perpetual awe and wonder.

©2010 Dennis Green