This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,37

Facebook page for people over forty. I can barely concentrate, and my peripheral vision seems to register every single time Will moves his hands up to scratch behind his ear, heck, every time he freaking swallows.

I finally give my brain a good shake. Will and I work together. I cannot ignore him, even if talking to him (worse, looking him in the eyes) makes me feel faintly sick to my stomach. So I close my laptop, grab my legal pad, and look at him head-on.

“Want to brainstorm outreach to the colleges? Not just MVCC, but University of Utica. I’m thinking it might be good to have a ‘Study Group Special’—something like a fifteen-dollar meal for four. It can be high-yield dishes like pork fried rice, egg rolls, and chicken vegetable delight.”

“One of my dad’s friends is a professor at Utica,” Will says. “He can give me some advice on the best way to reach students. I think they have an activities fair every year. Maybe we could leave some coupons there.”

I open up a new file and design a flyer for our new Study Group Special. As I draft some copy, Will pauses from the e-mail he’s composing to send to the college.

“By the way, it’s called ‘the anxiety of influence,’” Will says.

“Huh?”

“What we were talking about before, the fear that whatever you create is going to be crap, or just derivative of everything that’s come before it. When I was writing my first feature for the Spartan, I kept on worrying that my angle wasn’t unique. So our adviser told me about this Yale professor, Harold Bloom, who essentially said outright that there’s no such thing as an original poem. That you can’t escape the influence from all the art that’s come before you.”

“That’s… depressing.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think Mr. Evans meant that you have to give up. He was just saying that it’s okay to be anxious, it’s okay to be worried, but that there are a million ways you can be influenced by a past work, yet still make it your own. What do they say, there are only five basic stories in the world? Just because what you write is influenced by something that came before doesn’t mean it’s not still notable.”

I make a face. “Are you saying that I’m a special snowflake?”

Will’s laugh makes a little thrill of happiness run down my neck. “You are totally a special snowflake.”

Somehow, this is not reassuring. “Just because something’s unique doesn’t mean that it’s good.” Art is not like toddler soccer, where everyone gets a trophy just for showing up.

“Of course not. I think what Mr. Evans was trying to say was that something’s uniqueness has nothing to do with its quality. So we don’t need to stress. We just need to worry about it being good.”

“But what makes something good?”

Will thinks for a second. “Well, I’m not sure about other things, but for journalism, it’s not just facts that make an article stand out. It’s the truth of a story.”

Slowly, I nod, thinking of the movies that have made my own personal top one hundred: Amadeus. The Big Sick. Black Panther. When Harry Met Sally.… Toy Story. Comedy or drama, fantasy or thriller, Will’s hypothesis hits the nail on the head.

I think out loud, “So many truths to tell.”

“We’ve got time,” Will says hopefully. And something about the way he says it, like a question, in a voice that somehow gets across all his doubt and anxiety and need to tell these stories, makes the air thicken between us. I want to hug Will again, and somehow communicate with touch what I can’t with words—that I believe in him. That right now, he is one of the truest things in my life. But then our kitchen door swings open and Jin-Jin comes in bearing the first load of takeout for the afternoon.

I put the finishing touches on my handout and go to print out a copy upstairs. As I’m getting up, though, Will asks in a small voice (is there a little bit of a shake in it?):

“You know, if you want to watch Broadcast News, are you free Wednesday night?”

This Is My Brain on “Friendship”

WILL

Waiting for Jocelyn to answer is the most excruciating thing I’ve endured in years, and that includes the hour of mental gyrations it took me to get up the nerve to ask her in the first place. It’s been obvious how important movies are to Jocelyn ever since my interview, when she