I dropped networking class in the year 2000 so that I could sit in the high school library for two straight hours every day reading, talking, writing godawful poetry and aphorisms.

None of it was really worth dropping networking class for--I could have been certified by now; I could've owned my own house while I drilled through suburban plaster and slung T1 trunk lines; I could've been a contender. The aphorisms were all stale; the one poem I showed to a girl got this comment: "I can tell that you'd be an excellent prose writer." It was all just slackin', really, except for the talk.

The talk was the best. We made plans to start an anarchist cell in the basement of an abandoned hospital off of US-75, we discussed our rival novels and linked story cycles (I don't even remember what I wrote except that it involved a radio tower and a bright-eyed post-Ayn Rand daredevil bent on Getting Out Of This Chump Town), we asked ourselves the Big Questions.

One of the Big Questions was an analogy.

Music is to improv jazz performance as narrative is to what?

The answer, of course is Dungeons and Dragons.

Find me a better answer. You won't.

Rest in peace, Gary Gygax.

And rest assured that one day the narrative potential of D&D will be realized. There will be people who get together to hear how the dirty New Orleans improv narrativists blow, people who snap fingers and hold polite debates about whether the Manhattan "smooth style" improv narrativists are basically just wankers. Improv narrative is good for more than just comedy and Dungeons and Dragons shows us the way.

We will find the promised land again, the land we knew when we were seventeen and we had nothing better to do.

Posted by future on Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:58:56 -0500 -- permanent link