Familiar Territory

Wikipedia has trouble defining noir.

Film noir, that is. There isn't an article for written noir. I can look up hardboiled, or detective fiction, mystery fiction, whodunit, legal drama or even spy-fi, but I guess noir isn't a term applicable to fiction.

I find that odd, because I definitely like to write noir. Maybe someone who knows what those other terms mean would tell me that I don't write noir, because it doesn't exist in terms of fiction, but I don't really care. I like to write noir.

I know some people are unfamiliar with this style and genre, and unfortunately for the first (and only) time in my memory Wikipedia will not help you. Instead, question yourself this: have you ever heard of Raymond Chandler? The Big Sleep? The Maltese Falcon? L.A. Confidential, even? If you are familiar with any of these, then I feel assured that you can figure out what noir is without the help of a magical Internet encyclopedia.

So I like to write noir. I didn't know I was writing in that style at first. A few friends started a Facebook round-robin story in that style on my profile a few years ago, and I just jumped in and mimicked the tone that I perceived.

I must make a brief comment here: Tone is my thing. Lots of writers have a thing. Some are really good at characters, others plot, but I'm really good at tone. I can still write characters and plot and all that other necessary stuff well enough, but they are of lesser importance to me than tone.

I believe that I took to noir so easily because of its distinctive tone. I can't describe the tone but in mundane terms - "dark" and "heavy" and "Rorschach-from-Watchmen." My previous post, The Streetlight, is the best I've ever done at describing how I feel about the tone of noir. It was a fictional piece, I know, but I am a fiction writer and thus express myself through fiction. Sometimes I imagine myself alone, standing beneath a streetlight on the edge of an empty highway, silent but for a soft wind as I gaze into the dim glowing circle and imagine what to do next.

I also like imagining that I'm part of an adventure involving murder, sabotage, cigarettes and '67 Camaros. I've begun to dream in this noir tone, playing the role of the cynical protagonist in full trenchcoat and fedora, wandering the deserted night streets and seedy bars in search of femme fatales to backstab and helpless bystanders to rescue before disappearing down dark alleys. I blame this recent trend on a professor of mine who has encouraged my fascination by burning me disc after disc of 1940s classic film noir.

I am expressing this all on a public blog for one purpose, as given to me by another professor. I do not know what to write. I do not think anyone much cares to read my blog. But if I write according to a theme, I might begin to understand what I truly want to blog about.

For now, it seems inevitable that this theme stem from my gravitation toward writing noir.

The Streetlight

The wind blew softly through my hair. I could hear it, whispering, coaxing me along with its gentle words. The streetlight I stood under illuminated a small radius of cracked sidewalk and deserted black road. I was a wanderer, and the wind was my guide. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and no one to remember my name.

Oh, but what a name it was, in those days of sorrow and excitement. In the days of adventure and intrigue. In the days before the streetlights.

I gazed at the edge of the circle of light encompassing my abandoned shadow. I was hesitant to move past it, to break the safety of the light, to move out into the darkness again. I spent all my nights wandering from streetlight to streetlight, as they were my havens. My oases from the desolate lives that everyone around me led.

I could not decide if I should yet move on or remain in this last haven. I stood on the edge of a vast stretch of land, not quite desert, not quite alive. That was wrong. There were many living things in the desert. But none of them provided comfort to a weary traveler. None held any answers for the lost, for the meek, for the lonely. It’s good, then, that I was none of those. 

But the space in front of me would soon surround me nonetheless, if I chose to cross the soft border of light I still gazed at so intently. I was not looking for answers from the light. I was not looking to the land to tell me what to do. I was not even looking at the streetlight for assurance or guidance, for I knew it would provide none. The answers had to come from the wind. For this was the same wind that had touched so many others, that had grazed so many cheeks, and tousled the locks of so many wanderers like myself. Perhaps it was the same wind that had taught me so much before, that had shown me the path when I was just as unsure of my road as I was tonight.

I liked to think that it was the same wind that reached the others I used to know. Part of me hoped they still took time to stop and ponder the wind as I had taught them to, so long ago. They had at first looked at me strangely, perhaps questioned my connection with sanity, as I could not tear myself away from the night sky, the light gray clouds, the enigmatic wind. But the longer I stood there in silence, the more relaxed they became, and soon we were all still, listening to the sound of the wind, searching for the answers in the sky. 

And it spoke to them. It told them things that it never told me. For the wind never whispered the same thing twice, and it sounded different to everyone who listened.

I stood, and waited for the wind. It had quieted for a moment, and I knew then that I was the only one who listened anymore. I knew that I was all alone, that there was no one left from that time. No one who thought of the wind and the sky and the clouds and the streetlights anymore. It was only me. It was only me again, for it was only me to begin with.

I hushed my thoughts and focused on the wind. Dawn would break in mere hours, and I must be away from here by then. But where was here? And where was there? I decided to move out, into the open desert plain, far away from human interaction. That is what I decided. But it wasn’t what the wind wanted. 

It became apparent that the wind was telling me to turn around. To go back. To follow the trail of streetlights once again, but this time to follow a different path. I would not retrace my steps. I did not know where I would go, but it wouldn’t be back to the same place.

What I didn’t know was the wind was leading me somewhere. It was showing me the path to what I truly desired, or thought I did. Perhaps I really only wished for peace of mind. But I didn’t know that at the time the wind showed me the way.

I also didn’t know that I was completely and utterly wrong. There was still someone out there, someone I used to know, who remembered the wind. Who remembered how to listen to it, how to discover what it was saying, and how to follow its instructions.

Someone who still remembered me.

And he was standing there, in the middle of the dark night, eyes closed, listening intently. And the wind would lead me back to him.

 - Taken from a discarded addition to a larger story (UT, for those familiar).