Attachment is blinding; it lends an imaginary halo of attractiveness to the object of desire-----Swami Sri Yukteswar, in "Autobiography of a Yogi"
Attachment can be motivating, crippling and debilitating. Have you ever been attached to something or someone? It differs from Obsession which can be a compulsion, infatuation or delusion. There have been several people places and things in my life that have had this affect upon me. Nothing has been greater than my attachment to and obsession for the sale of Arapahoe Basin Ski Area to Ralston Purina Corporation in Dillon, Colorado in 1978.
I read somewhere that is was not so much about the actual event in history as it was the reaction to that event by the artist. My belief is the need of the artist to explain what they have witnessed. The most prominent examples that I can think of are All Quiet on the Western Front or Cry the Beloved Country. The authors of both witnessed something that so affected them that they had the need to explain it. My mentor once told me that most people begin writing out of anger. It was enlightening to me on many levels. I turned twenty five years old the year that A-Basin was sold. To all of us that wintered there that year it was the death of a dream. Not Just Joe Jankovsky's dream, it was the American Dream. I had watched corporations come in every where that I had lived as a young man and buy up businesses, housing, farms and start wars in foreign countries over oil. To say that we loved a mountain is to put it mildly. The motto of The Basin at the time was Nothing In Moderation and it was billed as the Highest lift serviced mountain in North America at 13,050 ft. All mountains had their claims to fame but A Basin had the real thing. (Ski Above All)
My attachment for the Mountain and my obsession to in some way write about it has possessed my soul every day since my first writing workshop at SUNY Albany in the spring of 1979. I have written poems, short stories, and now am working on my novel (co-authored with my musician friend in the 1980's, Gordon Grey) The book along with the music score for the film ( yes film! thanks to my film and screen writing mentor Ira Wood and his Aspen Film and Screen Writing Intensive, that I now am pulling out my first Act complet to the plot point.) Finally ever so slowly over the years has come together. Never in my wildest imagination or dreams would I have considered to find myself at the age of Seventy Years Old pulling out pieces of manually typed pages and stacks of manilla folders with reams of notes and drafts. But I am and the feeling is like nothing I have ever known. Sometimes I feel as if I am being guided and coaxed not only by all of the wonderful teachers, writers, poets, musicians and mentors I have been blessed to have been associated with, but by a Divine Will or Source that has kept me motivated all the minutes, hours and years to pursue my dream through all the trials and tribulations that life is.
The very final song on the Music Score now that the Ballad of Tom Dillon is written is to be a rousing remake of the Song, I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night, The Electric Prunes.
