Phantom of the Paradise (writing prompts!)

And some insight into titles from Edward Albee.

Let's start with a reading. This is Edward Albee, from an interview with The Paris Review. 

“There was a saloon — it’s changed its name now — on Tenth Street, between Greenwich Avenue and Waverly Place, that was called something at one time, now called something else, and they had a big mirror on the downstairs bar in this saloon where people used to scrawl graffiti. At one point back in about 1953 …1954, I think it was — long before any of us started doing much of anything — I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf who’s … afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical university, intellectual joke.”

Isn't that wild? To think that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf got it's name because ALBEE HAPPENED TO SEE THAT PHRASE SCRAWLED IN THE MIRROR BEHIND SOME BAR HE WAS DRINKING AT???? I am obsessed. I am inspired. I want all of us to be on the lookout for graffiti this week. Keep your eyes open. LOOK FOR A MESSAGE OUT THERE, waiting for you. And when you find this graffiti, I want you to write it down and then use it in whatever you’re writing right now. It doesn’t have to be a title. (We can only hope for graffiti as brilliant as Albee found!) But whatever graffiti you find, use it in your writing this week. 

Now, let's write. Tonight's prompts were all inspired by the movie Phantom of the Paradise.