Lalo entering Saul Goodman’s apartment the end of episode seven did not disappoint. Such a great bad guy. I feel like I recognize all these variations of testosterone run amok. One can’t help wondering if the writer’s work feels so believable because of their imagination and research or because of their experiences? Songwriting is also like that. I’ve done both and encourage the people I teach to explore many methods of writing. It’s part of the tool kit to generate art, to imagine, to explore creating, to fantasize. At the same time, we are in an era where some feel righteous indignation if you use imagination and research instead of only your experience.

In the theatre class last year, we had to work on our projects in pairs. I started writing something about gun control and referenced the women murdered in Montreal over twenty years ago. The classmate I was paired with wouldn’t participate with me. From her point of view it was not our story to tell, especially me because I wasn’t connected to any of the women personally who died from that mad gunman. I thought I had a good case to make, simply for being a Canadian alive when it happened, concerned about guns, concerned about the hatred of women touted by that particular madman. I said it is a legitimate position for me trying to make something that culminates in greater education and interruption of senseless murders. She pitied me. So I suggested we continue and I remove any Polytechnique reference and she was then agreeable. I’m so grateful she wasn’t there fifty years ago, to tell Joni Mitchell she has no right to criticize the farmers spraying ddt on her apples. Oh my God, did she think while playing her guitar in California she was equal to a farmer?