Dreamworks wants my script
SOMETIME last year I found myself in a rental vehicle, approaching the Gosforth toll plaza on the N17 in Germiston. At this point it occurred to me that I had forgotten my wallet in the cubby hole of my regular vehicle, but seeing as I always keep plenty of loose change in the ash tray, I smiled to myself before . . . wait, that’s the ash tray in my regular car.
Rats! I’m in trouble. I’ve heard of a group of motorists the media dubbed “the Toll Busters” about 15 years ago; folks who simply drive through toll gates on the basis that they refuse to pay to drive in the vaderland van die volk. And Germiston is behind the Boerewors Curtain, so my conscientious objector story might stick. The only snag is that I’m not driving my own car in which I keep a miniature Transvaal Vierkleur somewhere. The only option, it seems: become one of those guys at the toll gate who smile like a Jehovah’s Witness and repeat the same story at a rate of 300 cars an hour — “Sorry to bother you sir, but please listen to my story . . .”
With heavy heart, I step out of the rental and start walking towards the toll booths. At that precise moment, a friend of mine, actor and director Neo Matsunyane, approaches the toll gate in a cabriolet, with the top down. But he is three booths down from where I am standing so I panic. Will I get his attention before he goes through? Just then, he looks toward the booth at which I’m about to start begging, and he sees me. He has a R5 coin in his hand, which I gratefully snatch away. Humiliation is averted.
At this point I need to state that I believe most events in one’s life are nothing more than sheer coincidence, the story above included. A believer in synchronicity might read it and go, “Now, what are the chances of that happening? A friend of yours pitching up at the exact time that you need him? That happened for a reason.”
That’s just not how my brain is wired. As far as I am concerned, there is always a reasonable statistical probability that whenever I am on the road, there is someone I know driving on the same stretch of road at that very moment, whether I know it or not. The only reason this particular event in Germiston stuck in my mind is that I desperately needed R4 to avoid displaying a cardboard sign reading, “Will sing, tap dance or perform fellatio for R4” at the Gosforth toll plaza.
I accepted a long time ago that the only weapons I have at my disposal as I stumble through life are whatever lessons I have learnt from books and experience, a whiskydamaged brain, my limitless ignorance, and bucketloads of luck. It is for this reason that I always have to leave room for being spectacularly wrong about things. I am always open to the idea that everything I think I know or believe is absolute hocus pocus. Failure to allow the ingress of new information into my mind would make me an impregnable fortress of stupidity. And, as ignorant as I am, I hope I’m no fool.
This is my way of leading up to the fact that I recently experienced a series of coincidences that gave me pause. A few weeks ago I woke up drenched in perspiration after a harrowing dream that seemed to last for hours. Even more perplexing, I remembered every single frame of the dream sequence in photographic detail. And I never remember my dreams. So I did what writers do, opened a blank document and started writing it down.
Two-and-a-half hours later I was still at it.
By this time it was very clear in my mind that this was a screenplay I was writing. Later that afternoon I was having lunch with the family, still mulling over the story in my mind when, with alarming clarity, it occurred to me which actress would probably pull off the leading part. Even though I told Mrs N about the dream and the movie idea, I did not tell her about the actress. No sane man tells his wife he’s thinking about actresses.
Exactly five days later I realised that I had a private message on Twitter. My actress. She was sorry if her message sounded crazy, but she’d had a dream in which I’d written a screenplay and had asked her to play the lead role. The hair at the nape of my neck stood up. I had not told anyone. I had not written down my “casting” of her anywhere. It was just freaky.
I’d like to believe that I’m open-minded enough to change my mind about coincidence versus synchronicity. To paraphrase the US philosopher William Dembski: belief in coincidence can be a stop-gap for ignorance. Does this mean I’m turning into one of those annoying people who see coincidence where there is none? Oh my word, the Sunday Times has “nd” in its name and my name starts with “Nd”!
Hardly. I guess I’ll only become a full convert the day my ticket numbers coincide with the winning Powerball numbers.