Almost Great
Mike Johnson lives in Hampstead with his wife and two kids. More of his work can be found at Lunaphyte.
There’s greatness, and then there’s standing next to greatness. Like dining underneath Michael Jackson’s red zippery jacket at the Hard Rock Café or buffing the Hope Diamond: Having proximity to something awesome is meaningless. Contrary to the hopes of countless posse members, there is no great by association.
I worked on a documentary film about Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution and got to play “Hamilton’s Hand” in a B-roll insert shot. Since I had decent penmanship, I got to wear a period shirt with ruffled sleeves and a dapper jacket and clicked off a half dozen takes where I dipped the quill into the inkwell and set the wet nib to fancy paper while the camera panned across this snoozer of a scene. The shot maybe lasted three seconds in the final cut, and the vigorous preshoot washing and nail trimming probably went unnoticed.
Did playing a body part of the former Secretary of the Treasury impact my life? Did the money mojo rub off on me? Um, no.
Ten years after playing Hamilton’s Hand, I was an administrative assistant for a finance department in a large CRO. I remember sitting in the giant boardroom during departmental meetings and listening to my colleagues discuss weighty financial matters. I was supposed to take meeting minutes, and I had no idea what their words meant. By the end of my stint in that position and after trying to bridge our alien worlds in every way possible, I was putting the minutes into comic strip format with characters such as Hong Kong Phooey and Stewie Griffin delivering the notes and action items in dialogue bubbles. Hamilton’s Hand was a useless implement, an imposter in a finance department.
Last fall, a local theater company staged a production about Charles Bukowski, the infamous writer/boozehound/miscreant. They solicited items for the set to create the illusion of a desperate writer at work, including a manual typewriter and actual rejection letters.
The real Bukowski, almost accidentally, created a legion of fans and wannabes through his lovely wrecked philosophy, leading them into dive bars and dingy writing rooms like a Pied Piper with a jug of wine. I was one of them. I read a lot of Bukowski in my impressionable twenties and wanted to live and write his particular brand of truth. So, I was thrilled to donate my rejection letters and typewriter to the production.
My folder of rejection letters was much thicker than I remembered, and their sheer volume could only mean that I was an utter failure. But all those rejection letters represented a ton of work and a little prayer to success that went unanswered. Somehow, to have them adorn the workspace of even a dramatized Charles Bukowski put a stamp on my Struggling Writer Membership Card (which can be redeemed upon completion for one free pint of Thunderbird at participating locations.)
All of that effort was now worth it, and even if a magazine editor couldn’t recognize the value of my contributions, a theater set decorator could. A sidekick to greatness will take it!
To view more of illustrator Mark Weber’s work, go to www.markweberart.blogspot.com.
