What I sent to the New Yorker

Shouts and Murmurs Submission Number One
Fred Soffa


Jamie Foxx does not have a grandmother. Can you understand the magnitude of that performance now? Because it’s not just, Jamie’s Foxx’s grandmother is still alive, no ---
And the two of them are sitting at home later, laughing, just laughing –

Boy they thought you were crying up there!
He he he
We’ve got a lot to talk about tonight! That was acting, my boy, acting!
He he
Your old grandmother is dead
He he
She’s gonna live on forever now!

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You have not heard my voice yet here in Shouts and Murmurs. Unless I’m completely unoriginal. Imagine.
Here I am famous, and I’m asked for this quote and this quote: thank God it’s always the same questions from reporters these days – can you imagine the questions HST might have said? Anyway, So what makes you a good writer?
I just write whatever comes into my head, it’s all about me, me me and only me, this is the me show, and that’s not you I don’t care how hard you try and sometimes I don’t care at all because for me it’s inescapable I only have to turn the spigot on and as you may or may not have just observed although your answer to that question, alone, is the fulcrum of our immediate future relationship . . .etc
None of your work is original, you take this from so and so, and this from someone else.
Everything I say has been said before.
But isn’t that an internal contradiction?
Babes, don’t tell me about the contradictions. I’m living the contradictions, and I think the difference in this world is that some people recognize the contradictions in life and speak out about them.

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Tomorrow I meet Chris Rock: an actual reporting

Hey, Chris Rock, wow, that Oscar thing was great.
Yeah?
Absolutely. I remember the first time I saw your show like it was yesterday.
Come on.
Yeah, but I didn’t think it was that great, I walked out on it – oh, I remember now ….

The below was written beforehand, by actual experience
I was down in Florida on a shoot and somehow I ended up on a date, a real date, and I was sitting in the car with the cough much younger woman – wait that’s later, she worked at the movie theater so there I was to see movie (I might have mentioned my movie, otherwise we wouldn’t have been in the car with her after the show), actually I had just met her there, oh my God I sound like Charles Grodin and so we were talking what movie should I see and she said that one – I don’t remember! - so I chose like a killer thing, but in the first – oh, and it had some scatological bent, like videotaping this or that or anyways a series of most pointless murders - like, yawn, right – so that sucked and then I popped into a Chris Rock movie, but I didn’t think it was funny, it was vulgar but lots of people can be vulgar – anyway, I wasn’t the audience although the place was packed – but the academy show, that was brilliant.
Come on.
Yeah. You can be funny anytime you want on anything. Othertimes you talk, and just say exactly what you want to say, that’s a nice definition of genius, I’d say – it’s like music, rhythmic variation is the key to success.

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Note to all Teenage Prayers: So you can do rhythmic variation within a set. So why settle for songs that don’t have any rhythmic variations.

Each song needs to have a developed narrative rhythmic variation. Or it could have a story, a dance between the vocals and the band, rhythmically and spatially, Examples, Stones (always an into, a verse, a chorus, a solo voicing, a return to the band.) Paul Simon – each song is a story –REM a group dance, vocals and band particularly Talking Heads – I don’t know what they do exactly – I know they only have 4 songs.

So four anthems. Parcel them out, one at a time.

My apologies to everyone for the last paragraph set, you may be entering that discussion at the end of the discussion. Unless you think you know what teenagers are praying for.

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Bonus selection: Next time you get a chance to see a group of adults and a group of 10-12 year olds, notice how much more beautiful the 10-12ers are.