Friendship

Source: NY Times 7/26 Arts p.B6 "All About Friends, Those Acquaintances Whose Calls You Want to Take (Usually)" by William Gromes Review of "Friendship: An Expose" by Joseph Epstein

FM-FM Comment: Friendship

Is friendship a skill or a condition? People have come my way and may have been friends or they may have just come may way with no way around me and out of politeness stayed long enough to think of me as a friend. I could not say what is true in either case. I am not a friend. Never was. Can't be. Why? I expect too much.
Loyalty,Sacrifice,Generosity,Kindness,Patience.....you see what I am getting at.
Who has that to offer these days or any day? It's better to not expect such things from people who have come your way. It's better to allow them freedom to come and go just as they are without expectations. If you see signs of expectations developing, it is warning that a friendship has possibly taken root. Ask yourself, can I water and feed and culitivate this friendship? Is this something they want or I want? How will you know whose idea it is to become friends? Best to be human and not a god. Treat them fairly. Love them for what they are. Enjoy the moment. Learn how to wave nicely as they leave.

The Music Doesn't stop

The music doesn't stop
And the dancers go on dancing.
The blind man hears the rustle of cloth, sliding feet and voices.
The cripple watches forms moving easily.
The fool thinks he is one of them and gyrates along the wall.
The elder sees his vanished youth.
The priest sees sin.
The spinster sinks into the earth.
The divorcee sets her traps.
The politician sees votes.
The salesman sees customers.
The teen sees flesh.
And I am not there.

Beckett, Joyce, Synge

Source: NY Times 7/12 The Arts p.B1 "Why Not Take All of Synge?" by Charles Isherwood

FM-FM Comment:
We all wake up each morning - or not. The body knows something and immediatly starts blabbering about itself while the mind asks how much more can we bear of this nonsense. Pulling reluctantly on the oars to get the carcass moving and then resting a bit, the glassy surface water throws back our reflection. We row on. Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, and John Millington Synge know the elements of comedy and tragedy out of the Irish experience. The Irish experience is Shakespearian without the fine threads and colors of Shakespeare's language. Ireland seems to breed writers who sit on the edge of their beds and look out into the day and see the human comedy, or absorbed by their own demons, make Ireland and Irishness a metaphor for their war with their culture. Thank goodness they did. The everyday is a blockhead and needs a kick in the pants. Joyce, Beckett, and Synge filled their lungs with Irish air and exhaled at home and abroad in language that resonates with the desperation that lurks in human consciousness. Turning characters towards myth, existentialism, and nature, we can puzzle ourselves into thier stories and plays the way no other nation's writers can. Synge's naturalism, like Hardy's, is celebrated for two weeks in New York City's Gerald W. Lynch Theatre, with perfomances of Synge's "Riders to the Sea," "The Tinker's Wedding," "The Well of Saints," "The Shadow of the Glen," The Playboy of the Western World," "Diedre of the Sorrow's. An eight hour event without applause until the end is an immersion in Synge's work that is as likely to be as profound as Shakespeare or the great plays of Greece. Indeed, it might even have a Beckettian effect. I directed "Riders To the Sea" some years ago. It's poetry and stark pathos lingers with me still. The Irish experience is really universal, at least in the English language. The tragedy and comedy of men and women is placed before us like a deck of cards to be dealt out and digested slowly with recognition of our own frailty. Charles Isherwood's review of this event is grand...the only word for it.

4th of July & Apple Pie

Americans are a simple people, but Americans are complex simple people. Forced to be inventive when starting a new country with little in the way of materials and in many cases skills, we have a practical bent over a philosophical bent. We always need, so to speak, something to hang our hats on. Subsequent immigrants often came penniless and full of hope just like the the colonists of the 17th century. So our our ethos is one of making do and doing well. Our holidays are then a celebration of events or sentiments. We gather and make noise on New Year's Eve. We display fireworks on the 4th of July. We have our Easter Parade. Our Mother's Day. Our Father's Day. Labor Day. Memorial Day. Presidents Birthdays. It's always specific.
Something to hang your hat on. We don't have a Thomas Edison Day or an Alexander Bell Day or even a Bill Gates Day. We could though, because they have given us something to hang our hats on. Americans, for the most part, are hard workers.
They hitch their wagon to a star and stick with it. Exploited, betrayed, duped,
and cheated by their leaders in work and politics, they remain optimistic and look to the new day. They gather on holidays fully intending to have picnic, a celebration, not of success, but survival. A holiday is a psychic aspirin. Putting the headache of life aside for day or a weekend to enjoy our apple pie.