Life imitating art

I wanted to post this the other day but blogspot had a load of error messages whatever I clicked.

And I put it on twitter but it seems to have baffled Joanne, so I'll explain more thoroughly here.

At university, during my second (and best) year, we had a seminar on the influence of life on art or art on life (apt, don't you think, after my reading Dorian Gray recently? His life ruined an art piece, but the art got its own back in his death). It was interesting, because an artist/musician/actor/writer will draw on life experiences to write what they know (or not, Stefenie Meyer) and will use whatever they can to create a sense of reality in their work. There is gun crime in London for example, but when Billie Jackson pulled one out people worried that gun crime being fictionalised for the soap opera would influence others involvement with firearms. There's a constant, constant debate on the effects of rap music or death metal on gang culture and school shottings (But as John Cusack says in High Fidelity, and I paraphrase from imdb 'What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?' touche.) but those songs are written based on a singers experience, first or secondhand as it may be.

I am going somewhere with this. My own writing. I spent months and months and pages and pages and notebook after notebook and onenote on my laptop going through characterisations and relationships etc before considering the plotline and the effects those plots would have on characters.

At one point, I named a character a certain name. This was about four years ago, maybe five ... my son has the same name. I think I've accidentally blogged it on another entry. Anyway, the fictional version has a best friend with an equally unusual name (I took if from that film, Along Came Polly, Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston). My son, a few days ago, had a playdate with a kid with this same name. I met him yesterday too, and they played together again then (our vicar's son ... coincidentally, this boy and my son have biblical names ... don't you just love a coincidence?) ... wouldn't it be so weird if they became like, best friends? I mean, neither of them look anything like the characters in my head (if my son was African American, maybe ...) but still. Weirdness. Now, if I ever got published, it would be art imitating life, rather than the other way around. Does that spark further debate? I'm starting to get tired?