Naked City
Monday, January 31, 2022
Today is January 31, and the way I see this date, it’s 31 days of failure. Since January 1, I have worked on a novel based on the life of actor James Franciscus who starred in the 1950’s TV show “Naked City.” I know nothing of his private life, but his face over the years stayed with me as if it was glued into my brain. It is his face that I first think of when awake in the mornings. Mind you, it is no longer a nightmare, but something about his features gives me comfort.
I’ve been formatting the narrative every day since the first and at first based on a narration from one of the many “Naked City” episodes. Which, by the way, is a fantastic show. Mostly filmed on location, one sees New York City as if Weegee shot it. In one episode, he shoots a criminal but feels terrible about it. It was the first time as a cop where he had to shoot someone. Even though it was a life and death situation, he would have gotten shot if he didn’t hit the guy. But still, he couldn’t erase the feeling of dread due to the thug's actions and his response to the creep. I thought of this narrative regularly, and I was trying to write my version of the story, but it always came out bland and pointless. I wondered if I had the talents to become a writer and actually if I had the talent to write a novel.
The insecurity that swelled up inside me was almost too much. Once I get that nagging feeling, I immediately try to make something else. Usually, I put on the vinyl copy of “Diamond Head” by Phil Manzanera, the guitarist for Roxy Music. From 1972 to maybe 1976, this band couldn’t do wrong -either as a group or as solo artists. I always looked up to Bryan Ferry and company as a platform of excellence. But for my taste, Manzanera never let me down. He and Johnny Rotten are probably the two music figures that I admire the most. When I tried to be a visual artist, I did an oil portrait of Manzanera and Rotten sitting on a park bench in Echo Park by the artificial lake. The painting struck me as pretentious, so I never finished it, which of course, caused anxiety and depression. I then thought of making a statue, in sort of Robert Graham style, of both standing tall and shaking hands. It would have become a commentary on the nature of the relationship between prog/glam and punk rock. But this has, well, failed, due that I don’t have any talent in making sculptures.
The novel I’m writing is slowly killing me. It looks as though I am so focused on Franciscus for no real reason. Now I fear that readers will think I'm putting this character in for no reason, and perhaps they’re right. Writers make terrible decisions, and readers are always right. They can smell a phony writer or artist a mile away.
What makes this current ‘failure’ the worst is that I left my job of 25 years to write this novel. I reckoned that if I did something so drastic as to cut my line to economic security, it would somehow make me a better writer, or in a sense, to put out or shut up. Now I feel that the public will expect me to shut up.
I pretty much stay in the house just to focus on the writing, but I sometimes feel I need to go out and see the world in a fresh light. I took the 92 bus to Spring Street and hung out at The Last Bookstore. I wanted to buy some records there, but I felt I shouldn’t spend any money right now regardless of the prices being low. I left the store and headed towards Broadway, where I came upon a bar/restaurant called Les Noces du Figaro. It was happy hour, and I thought. Wow, I need a glass of wine. I went in, and there were not that many people there, which is the way I like a bar. I ordered a glass of wine, which came to $4. For whatever reason, I thought that this was the best $4 investment I made since the first of this month.
