Believe it or not, you can find something more exciting in Texas than Longhorns and evil millionaire politicians. I lived in Austin just long enough to meet the two writers who I now admire most. Bretton B. Holmes is one of them. Bretton started his good-old-boy career in the Marine Corps before becoming a Correction Officer in the Sheriff’s Department. Even Lone Star Beer could not sooth him anymore, so he sobered up and shifted from the gun and bottle to the typewriter. He moved from Texas to Los Angeles, lived there for four years and got his Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. Now, he’s back to Austin where he lives with his wife and his dogs, secluded in a house an hour away from town where he is working for what he calls "the most evil industry in the world." A Jack of all trades, Bretton is no less than a playwright, poet, screenplay and short story writer. "Water, Water, Everywhere" got an Award and has been produced from August to September 2000 at the Theatre of Hope and the Bitter Truth in North Hollywood and at the Abington Theatre Company, New York. "Conscience Hesitatus" will be produced in April 2002 at the Theatre of Hope and the Bitter Truth. Bretton has been published in The Synergist, Original Artist Magazine, Affair of the Mind, a Literary Quaterly and in City Primeval. This interview took place at Border’s Café in Austin and was continued via email. When you talk to this guy and look at him in the eyes, you know that he’s a name to look out for.Welcome to Texas. Yiihaa...
 

Let’s get started. Tell me about you. Where are you from? Where did you live?

I’m From Texas originally... lived here... moved around. We moved thirteen times for my first eleven years, because my dad was an advertising executive and had a tendency to not get along with his bosses. We would stay in a place for a year and then move. Every time I would say that, people would ask me: "Is your dad the military?" No, he just had an authority problem... We moved all over Texas: Waco, Forworth, Dallas... They got divorced when I was eleven and mom got remarried - she got remarried five times or something like that... Quite a few... I went to highschool in Austin and was going to go in the military right out of highschool, but then I decided, well, I’ll give them a year of college, because my family wanted me to go really bad... I went to college for two and a half years, got burnt out and joined the army, got in the Marine Corps reserves. We got activated for Desert Storm, went to Camp Compton for four month or something, thankfully I didn’t have to go over there. Then I came back here, finished my degree, got a job -Correction’s Officer in the Sheriff’s department, here in Austin. I did that for about a year and a half and hated it. It’s like for the army, there’s a fear factor... You do that to prove that you’re not afraid of it. I quit to be a writer. That’s it in a nut shell. After I did that, I sobered up... Forget this noise! It’s not for me, I don’t have to be a tough guy anymore...
 

Do you find your inspiration from your work experience?

Yes, there is definitely some material to draw on. The key to it is being open to new stuff too, because you go through periods where you feel like you’ve written about everything you could, and there’s nothing else... But there’s always something. You just have to be opened to what it is and be able to rectify it in your mind and then get it down on paper. If you think about what everybody else is going to think, you’re dead in the water. For exemple, the violence that Bukowski describes in his books is shocking to most people, but it was meant to fuel the fire, to keep it going, and mix it up so that it doesn’t get dull and boring.
 

What’s your relationship with Texas? Is the Lone Star State an influence on your writing?

Yes, on this play, "Conscience Hesitatus", definitely. It’s based on my experience, here, bits and pieces I took. But I never felt that Texas was the whole thing. I mean, I went to South America when I was young, and that had an impact on where I felt at home. I was only twelve, I guess. It was right after my parents split up. I met this family that lived across the street and they invited me, I spent the whole summer over there, it was incredible. So, I mean, Texas is there, but I wouldn’t be upset if I left, if I went to live to New England or something... There would be parts of it I’d miss, and when I was in L.A., I missed them. But it’s not that I would feel like I would have to stay as a result. My family is here, that’s great, but you know...
 

How long did you live in Los Angeles? Is it an influence on your writing?

I was there about four years, I guess, going to school. So, yes, it’s there in my writing. I wrote this entire book of short stories based on it. The title is kind of fucked. I didn’t have a car, right, just a bike, so I entitled it Meditations from the Hood of my Bicycle! Nobody would ever get the hood joke, so I’m probably going to have to change it. It’s just too obscure... I used to ride the train from here to California, because I didn’t want to fly. I was afraid to fly for some unknown reason... That was a pain for my wife. She would have to wait for me. So I wrote a bunch of stuff about riding the train and about all the people I met, crazy people... I was thinking about Charles Bukowski. When I read about some nuts that he writes about, I think "I’ve met that person, you know! I know that fucking guy!" But, yes, L.A. definitely had an influence on my stuff. That town is so weird, it’s like a big snake, with different sections, all crammed together. Well, it’s been set on fire once or twice, I guess, but you wonder how it just doesn’t happen every day. I’ve heard the craziest shit at bus stops, you listen to some people and you wonder, where is this guy from, where are his parents, how is he able to eat?! You wonder how they’re just able to exist.
 

You had an amazing panel of very different jobs. What did you do in L.A.?

I moved furniture. I worked for Lilly Thomlin for a while. That was horrible. I mean, she’s great, but she has people that work for her who are scary. My original job for her was supposed to be taking everything she’d ever done on tape and transfer it onto high eight. I’m sitting there with this huge machine and somehow I fucked the machine up. I don’t know what it was, but I did something wrong... She was screaming at me, god, she was such a nazi! We got it working again, but she didn’t think it was actually working, so I ended up just coming there twice a week, eight or nine bucks an hour to move stuff, put things together... Busy work. She was on Murphy Brown at the time, and I remember one of the critics had said something, called her something and she was freaking out...
 

What are you doing now? You told me about something related to plastic surgery?

I’m in the most evil industry in the world -Public relations. I have to sell doctors to the media, basically. Every doctor who is an expert that you see on the news went through somebody like me. So even if it’s an evil job, you know, it pays the bills. Sometimes I feel like I can’t believe I do this fucking job...
 

Does it have an impact on the way you see the world, on what you write?

I’ve been thinking about this story for a while, about this guy who happens to represent the devil. He gets all over the place, on national talk-shows and everything. He gets really famous, everybody loves him. And he eventually destroys everything. Because I’m always afraid I’m going to run in to him, you know... That I’m going to call some doctor up and it’s gonna be the real deal... I’m gonna be representing Satan... I’ve come close a few times to representing people that were kind of scary... They all have major egos, and as long as you feed their egos, they’re typically going to pay the money. It’s really a cheap way to make a living, but I guess it’s better than stealing! I don’t know.
 

You’re still very young, but you also seem to have had a pretty rough life. Do you believe in the relation between a tough life and a tough writing?

I believe that you’ve got to have something to write about, right. I didn’t really start writing before I quit drinking. They say that you substitute addictions. I don’t know... For me, it was a necessity.
 

Do you manage to make a living out of what you write?

Not yet. But if you worry about that, it can be a constant hindrance to doing it, because you can feel that, hey, I’ve got to send it to this place, because they pay, and this one doesn’t...  My philosophy now is that the real gift is being able to do it, not worrying about whether or not you’re going to make a living out of it. I don’t know how I would react if that would happen someday. Seems to me that there would be more pressure. While that  can be a good thing, it can also screw you up. Eventually, it would be really nice to just do that, and then I would have to worry about getting up and doing the nine to five thing and dealing with idiot bosses.
 

Can you talk about your plays? Where have you been produced?

"Water, Water, Everywhere" was first produced in 2000 by The Bitter Truth Playhouse and Theatre of Hope up in North Hollywood. The play was nominated for Valley Theatre League awards in three different categories, Best Script-Original Drama, Best Supporting Actor in an Original Drama, and Best Overall Production of an Original Drama. "Conscience Hesitatus" is scheduled for production at the same place in April of 2002. The reaction of the audience was terrific opening night, but I suspect that's because half the audience was made up of my family members. I didn't go to any of the shows in between, except one when my mother-in-law was in town and the cast really sucked that particular night. There were some themes that held great familiarity for her from what I understand, and from what I could gather she was into the play more than she cared to be. But I find that when it comes to reactions of audiences, you never really know. As long as they respond in SOME way, I feel I've accomplished something. Glenn Gould once said that he believed the Artist-to-Audience relationship should be a 1-0 relationship. I understand that because I really write for myself more than anyone else, unless of course it is a film script, which I'll get to later.
 

What are you writing about and where do you get your inspiration from?

The themes in the plays and short stories, even the poems, come from things I've observed, people I've known, things I've wondered about, or experienced firsthand. All of these come together in this big mass or hunk and I then go about shaping it, adding here and there, or hacking off huge chunks until I get to a point where I think and feel it is finished and it can stand on its own so that when I go back to it, I don't recognize it anymore as that big mass I started with, almost even to the point that it was always the way it ends up, you know? I try to work in metaphors grounded in real things and space, not some intelligentsia bullshit that we find in the typical university theatre arts program. In those instances, the less sense something makes, the more it is hailed as genius because they're all too scared to tell the truth about what a pile of crap something might be.
 

Do you have a particular way of writing? And what are you writing right now?

Lately I've just been burning through, you know, I'll just sit down and let the characters take me where they want. This is a cop-out in many ways because it doesn't answer the question and I hate it when pw's say this but for me, I find a thread in a line or a word, a constant eye on where I wasn’t to or need to end up and I go. I take little detours along the way and I find, somehow always amazingly, that my subconscious seems to do much of the writing. It's like if you paint this huge mural and it looks like a mess up close but then when you step back from it.... whoa. Sometimes I amaze even myself. Usually I write in the morning and at night. While I'm doing the remaining ten percent of my life (working for a paycheck in public relations... I've always found that moniker funny - there's nothing I do that remotely relates to the public. Like if you call up Cosmopolitan magazine? They'll tell you until they are blue in the face that they know exactly what kind of woman reads their magazine and what that woman wants to see in there. Apparently they seem to think that 98% of women have no idea how to give a blow-job because that's all they ever fucking write about. I'll let the guys be the judge on that little statistic, but the fact remains, the magazine certainly hasn't gotten it right yet! Ha! Anyway, I'm babbling again. Okay, I usually write notes throughout the day and if a poem hits me, then I just go with it. I have a sign on the monitor of my WORK computer that says "REMEMBER: NONE OF THIS MATTERS..." It's true, a job can kill you slowly, so I try to write every single minute I can because that is what will keep me alive.