We just got in from seeing the flick Capote. Interesting and pretty intense. I was expecting more cocktail party witty barbs and less Jesus life is fucked up moments of reflection.

Given that it’s a couple of degrees removed from reality, like any biography about dead people, where one of the deceased was writing about dead people, it got me thinking about the nature of writing. Unfortunately, it got me thinking about some of the reasons I have been far too lazy and not the least bit hard core.

Sometimes I wonder what it takes to really succeed in such a lonely, self-involved task as writing. Capote threw himself into and was pretty consumed by the whole murder story of which he wrote in In Cold Blood. And, as M. pointed out afterwards he was simultaneously incredibly empathetic to the murderers and the law enforcement with whom he connected and completely manipulative.

I don’t know that I would ever or will ever have the singularity of purpose shown in that empathetic/manipulative seesaw.

Kind of reminded me of one of the saddest times in my life when I personally witnessed the cliche of a journalist asking someone after a tragedy “How do you feel?” That moment was high among defining reasons for my never becoming a reporter myself.