How Colan Got Here from Shuttered Vision Coming June 2017

Colan had been no different. For most of his 36 years of life, films had sustained and carried him. He would never forget his first drive thru experience. His mother and father had taken them to see something he thought he really wanted to see until he turned around to look at another screen in the tri screen theatre. There he watched, without sound, Legend. Shortly thereafter his father had left and he fell completely into the world of moving pictures as his mother had to leave him to fend for himself as she had to work more. So he watched movies, every kind he could watch.

He had been raised in a back-water Oklahoma town called Chandler right outside of Oklahoma City. When he had become high school age he had talked his mother into letting him go to the best high school in the state located in Norman Oklahoma near Oklahoma State University. There he had started the process to get into the University of California Berkeley. From there he had gone to Tisch School of the Arts at New York University with a 4.0.

Colan had graduated full of zest, zeal and an appropriate amount of artistic angst. He had hit the independent film scene on fire. His first three movies had been shot down instantly. The people he pitched to insisted that Americans didn’t want to think. They wanted blood guts and senseless violence. He had been unconvinced. The public took what they could get. He was going to make films again.

All of his professors had seen the idealist in him and knew what that meant. One by one over the years they had warned him away from Hollywood. Make films overseas first, he had been advised. No no no, he had been a patriot. He had only wanted to give his creations to American audiences first. With the choices being Disney and Hollywood, he had chosen the later.

So, there he had gone. Hollywood was everything he thought it would be and a slew of other things he hadn’t expected. He had expected to be disgusted. To be insulted as the art he loved was being canonized and mass produced without thought or originality. What he hadn’t expected was to be lured in by the potential of ultimate power. To be held enrapt by the bright lights the lifestyle, the parties, the drugs, the sex. Some of those women he had met along the way had been willing to do anything. Anything at all for a shot. The realization of all that has been lost happens much later.

Ironically, the most seductive lure of it had been the competition. Being better, doing better hopefully in a way that shows everyone how bad someone else is at this job. Colan had started as a rigging grip. After 5 years of wheeling and dealing, flaunting his degree, his good looks, and southern charm, Colan Abrams from bumfuck Oklahoma and a broken home was the most sought after movie producer in Hollywood. He had gotten to be an assistant of a producer within a year and half of being in the company. Produced his first film within the next six months as the man he was working for cracked under the pressure. Pressure, Colan had eagerly and liberally applied. That year he had turned a summer blockbuster that would’ve fallen on its ass with the previous producer into a multi-million dollar worldwide hit.

The rules are simple for success in Hollywood. Money is the name of the game and the only resume item that’s respected. Rule one summer, it was luck. Rule two summers, the kid might have what it takes. Three summers followed by a killer Halloween and an amazing Christmas showing. Baby the kid’s a star.

Colan was a country boy at the core of his being. He hadn’t been used to women that looked like Hollywood wanna be starlets did.  He had never even let himself imagine men willing to prostitute like Hollywood wanna be leading men did. Like any naïve young man, he had lost his way. He had been exposed to it during school. Needless to say, it wasn’t the same.

In the past the purity of the art of crafting film had kept him focused and removed from much of the party life. Soon he learned that he wasn’t really making films anymore.  He was in the business of making money. With the purity of the art gone, all that was left was this sickening people pulsing floor show. When the lifestyle had started not to be enough he had become a little worried. When the drugs had started to not be enough, his worry escalated. When the sex became practically another form of currency he had started having full blown panic attacks.

Two years ago, Colan Abrams, multi-billion-dollar movie producer, film company executive, and all around Hollywood behind the scenes badass, suffered a nervous breakdown. His perception of the world had never been the same since.

Coming June 2017

Understanding Fiona from Shuttered Vision Coming June 2017

Fiona Canters grew up differently than the rest of the free world within the United States of America. When 5-year-old Fiona first told her mother about one of her extraordinary dreams her mother had smiled pleased. She asked her daughter to tell her what they meant. Confused Fiona had not answered. The very next day she had been privy to the conversations the women in her family had away from husbands, boyfriends, sons and fathers.

“Fiona dreamed last night,” her mother had told her mother-in-law excitedly.

“Does she know what it means?” her aunt had asked anxiously.

Her mother proudly shook her head then and recounted the dream for the listening gaggle. With gasps of delight and praises to the Almighty they had all regarded Fiona differently.

The Canters were a French Creole line. Originally, they intermixed with a line that had roots in Native America, Africa and Ireland. Now they were a rainbow people. The shades of relatives spanned the realm of possibility.

Fiona’s mother was Salvadorian. Her skin the color of burnished copper. Her hair fell blue black tightly curled and silky across her shoulders. Her light brown eyes always alight with seemingly forbidden knowledge.

A Canters man, her father was tan skinned by nature. His dark eyes and mixed features made it hard to place into a particular ethnic set. From that, Fiona had emerged a shade lighter than mahogany. Her eyes an almost eerie shade of dark grey. They looked lit from within as the iris closest to the pupil was a paler grey than the midnight that it changed into as it floated to the rims.

“Witch eyes,” her grandmother had said that night as the women talked. She took the child’s measure for the first time.

Fiona had starred up innocently into the clear hazel eyes of the paler woman. She felt that nagging suspicion of being in the presence of something that was more than it seemed. Of course as a child, she had no true idea of what it was. Just this sudden unmistakable unshakable awareness as she peered up at the woman. Always waiting for her to change form right before her eyes.

She had always been fearful of her father’s pale, hazel eyed mother. The woman had eyes that saw too much. They saw everything and communicated with the souls of others without their knowledge. These were things she had heard whispered growing up among the others.

The others were the ones of her family that had been born without that extra thing that most of the women had. It was a generation skipping instance. Every once in a while, a woman in their line was born without that extra sense of the world, without the vision to see into others through dreams, premonitions and senses that were a family birthright.

They were raised in a different way than those with sight. Still loved and shown the same affections and care. They were kept away from the ones who bared stunning signs and levels of awareness. It was a courtesy to both sides. The children would grow to understand and appreciate each other before they interacted. This way they could understand their differences and not treating each other badly over them.

Before the conception of every child, the women of the family dreamed. During the pregnancy, the women dreamed. They dreamed of the child they would bare. They would know before modern technology whether a boy or a girl would be born. When the mother conceived her entire existence was enrapt in the being she carried. Through their personal dreamscape, they would understand the nature of that child. How it should be raised and what it should be led to do.

Even those born without the special gifts procured to the blood line were dreamt of. Regardless of whether it had been given sight or not. One day they may raise a child that most likely would be given sight. Regardless, they needed to be raised in a fashion to be able to deal with their child’s gifts. That was why all dreams and premonitions centered on the child.

Fiona was the exception. Fiona’s mother Alejandra calls that time in her life ‘el negro’: 

The dark. For the first time in her life, she knew what it was to live as most people do. She had only common sense, instincts and logic to guide her way through. All of her dreams during Fiona’s conception and birth had been shielded from her. All premonition and sensory insight dulled to just instances of déjà vu. Her mother-in-law said it was because the child she carried was blank. Meaning there was nothing to see.

Coming June 2017

Tripping the Light Fantastic an excerpt from Shuttered Vision

Fiona was running, the earth was moving fast beneath her feet. She was laughing and playing.  The sun was bright and florid. The air rich with the scent of poppies.  She stopped running and started twirling in circles, just like she had when she was little.  The man that stared down at her was her favorite man in the world. She stopped spinning and threw herself into his waiting arms.

“Fee-Fee.” He said like he always had softly, quickly and yet insistently giving it all the French inclinations it desired. “What are you doing here?” he asked in his odd Spanish, Texan, French accent.

“I wanted to see you.”

He gave her that chiding look that only an overindulging father gives his child. “Petite, you have other things to do besides obsess over me.  How is your mother?”

“She misses you.”

He shielded his dark eyes. “And I her.  We will meet again she and I.”

“Soon?”

He gave her a firm look. “What have I told you about asking about the future?”

“Don’t do it.”

“You have something to do.” He stated as he gave her a final hug and then put her down.  He looked into the horizon of the grassy area that they were on.  It was like a still set almost.  Wind blew and there was grass and the smell of poppies but it was static, none moving giving cry to the illusion of the place.  With firm steps he walked to the edge of her vision and poked the sky.  It rippled from the spot.

“He’s eavesdropping.” He stated.

Fiona felt shock and surprise. “No one comes here but me, not even Momma. How--”

“He’s searching for you cherie. And he has found you.”

He moved now to stand behind Fiona, slowly he took her hand and moved it across the sky.  It felt like satin under her fingertips and like water the fabric of the sky parted and fell away to reveal her field and there was a tall blonde man standing in the middle of it.  Fiona turned to go back but it was too late, she was now in her field.

Instantly Fiona was enraged with the man. “What are you doing here and who in the hell are you?”

He stood there staring at her. “You can see me.” He said softly.

“Of course I can see you.”

He shrugged. “You were running and twirling, it looked like you were talking to someone but I didn’t see anyone else.”

Fiona felt herself take a deep breath. “What are you doing here?”

“Hiding.” He smiled back at her.

“Should I bother asking who you are?”

“I’m nobody darling.”

Fiona felt herself start to move towards him, but she didn’t walk.  It was almost as if he willed her to him and she merely floated over. She looked down and saw her field moving beneath her feet.  She tried a few times to stop the motion and was unsuccessful.

“What are you?” she asked in a ragged fashion.

“Just a man.” He said evenly.

“No way, no one does –“

“I know, no one controls this but you.”

She was right in front of him now. She was elevated so that she could look him in the eye.  His sea green eyes searched her face. “My those are amazing eyes you’re got.  With the right light, they’d film like a dream.  People would think they’re CGI’d.”

“I doubt I’m the filming type.”

“You’re right. You’re gorgeous but you’re built too much like a real woman for Hollywood.  It’s all about the illusion you see, trick the world into believing only filmable things should exist.  Very few men would even see your face with the rest of that displayed.”

Fiona felt herself blush.

“Beautiful lips.” And then he leaned into her.