I've seen where actors sometimes have problems shedding the skin of characters they've played on screen. They get too involved with a character, then have trouble shedding that skin when it's time to go back to real life. As a writer, I understand that. Sometimes you get more than involved because the character skin you wear fits tight and is hard to shed. Perhaps you use a pseudoymn, a pen name, and you assume that character while you write. It's more than just a change of names; it's a change of personality to a certain degree. And then there's the character in the book, or perhaps several characters, you have a hard time with. Maybe you don't like the character, the bad guy, but he's important to the plot, and you've got to stick with him. And you need to understand him. I've known about this empathy problem for a long time because I've gone through months of depression after finishing a book, or I've been angry for a while. The reverse of that can be true: you could come out of it feeling good, even enlightened and euphoric for a while.
As of late I've been working on a book about my father. He died over 30 years ago, but he left behind a lot of unpublished poems, stories, little bons mots that I thought were worth a life of their own in print. I gathered together some information and started digging through it. At the outset I planned on doing a book of collected poems and short prose without much in the way of annotation, but that wasn't possible. For the book to be interesting, engaging, and worth the effort, it would require some history of the man . . . and some of my observations about him. That mean doing some research because I didn't know a lot about his background.
He was born and raised in the eastern Oregon town of Burns. I'd been there once as a seven year old, and didn't remember much. I didn't know either of my paternal grandparents because they were either dead or near death when I was born. I knew a few of my uncles and aunts because they had visited with us, and I knew only one of my first cousins. Worst of all, I didn't really know my own father. I grew up in a house with him, knew a lot about his personal life, but I didn't really know him until I read his stories and poems. In doing that, I got to know the man quite a bit better, and there's a problem with that. I buried him in 1983 but mostly in a haze of confusion and grief . . . and then I went on with life and worked hard at not thinking about it. And now, I'm faced with having to bury him again, and this time wide-eyed and knowing what was lost.
The upside of all this is an awakening of who I am and where I came from. I'm on the one hand sad and depressed, but my head is full of images of my father as a youngter, young adult, and until I got to know him as a father. I'm piecing together his story, and through his own words, I got inside his head a little. I never read his poetry before, and I should have. We all say in print things we sometimes can't say in person. I should've read it before, but better late than never. I'll get back to being me before long, but at the present I'm still dealing with images - those pictures of the mind that can damn sure hold your attention for a while. And even though it's a bit troubling, I don't mind at all.
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