12/25/20: Sweet Pain — Sound of Metal, Small Axe – Mangrove, Best Worst Thing that Ever Could Have Happened #poetry #essay
Art asks something of you
You
Challenge
Paul Raci is a friend of mine
I can’t say I know him that well
or know that much about him
His parents were (are?) deaf
he does theater and music
has for years
I knew him years ago
I remember him signing a show that we did for a deaf audience at Second City
one hundred years ago
He is nice and deep
He encourages my writing
appreciates it
admires it even
mutual admiration society
artists love artists
when Paul Raci first appeared on the screen as I watched “Sound of Metal”
I nearly cried
Art is perfect
Paul was perfect holding that dog
talking about Luis Aparicio and the 1959 White Sox
walking on the grass
up the wooden stairs
This was no PERFROMANCE
this was a communication of struggle, processed suffering, empathy and love
social, familial, friendly
love
What is teaching?
See Paul in this movie
What is acting?
Real acting — not performance
see Paul in this movie
What is it like to be impaired?
What is your impairment — we all have them —
that you may deny
if so, art makes demands
which you can ignore at your own peril
what is your impairment like?
See this movie
What is your job in life? While you chase money and fame and bullshit
while you hop on planes infected with COVID-19 because you just have to get home for the holidays
what is your job that you ignore as you careen through the world as a self-destructive homicidal maniac
making a big deal out of football games and whether you got asked to the Prom?
See Paul in this movie
He’s run his course
he runs it
he runs it well
I can only imagine what it is like to have deaf parents
what it is like to love them dearly
and be loved by them
how hard that is
hw beautiful that is
deaf parents on the south side of Chicago
deafness clashing with theater and music
discordant harmony
what it is like to have pain turn into purpose
and still be painful
Paul is being discussed for major awards
every once in awhile real value is recognized
and if you think that I am writing in any way to bask in the reflected glory of a friendly acquaintance
you have to work harder
and maybe think for a second what it is like to be me
how tortured I feel
to be misunderstood
by everyone
including me
and how I struggle
that word again
to be understood
to connect
to not be doubted
to be respected
to be accepted
it’s not deafness
it sounds petty and whiny
and it may not even be real
it may just be the twisted wood of my psyche
an unfortunate result of the collision of my sensitivity and my fate
infanticide
fragile new beings crushed by cruelty
not a big deal once you get it
but you have to work your ass off to get it
Paul understands
Paul knows that the real work is about getting your head right
getting your soul right
deep
deep deep Paul Raci
the depth learned by wrestling with deafness
and the surprising discovery of more important matters
than what you can hear
Paul writes nice little comments on some of my pieces
because he can recognize pain
and when it is transcended
transcendence is Paul’s thing
Sound of Metal is a document
It will help impaired people forever
So my friend Paul has touched eternity
and I get that beautiful joy/sad feeling
Sad for all he has gone through
Joyful with all he has done with adversity
and joyful that he recognizes and understands mine
What are you going to do with that?
I find the opening sequences of Sound of Metal almost unbearable to watch
or more precisely hear
Art should be that way sometimes
Almost unbearable
I’ve got new headphones for my TV
My honey makes a lot of noise with her cooking and grandchildren and social work and saving the world
(I don’t know why I have attracted good people around me at this point on my life — I really don’t do shit for anybody — what is most admirable about me is what I don’t do — I have integrity out the ass — and I demand excellence, demand it goddam it! —- and my understanding of what excellence is has changed a great deal over the years — sometimes I live in a choice like an election — Biden or Trump and its that easy — Paul Raci and my honey or ignorant venal hacks — an alternating current of love/admiration or disgust … oh and there is the third grouping like the guy Paul helps in Sound of Metal — the open ones who are trying)
Oh yeah — the headphones — I watch a video about my model
and this kid is talking about sound mixing in movies
how these headphones pick it up better than my TV
I just bought them to get some focus in the eye of Hurricane Paula
I never appreciated sound mixing as an art before
but whoever did sound mixing on Sound of Metal should pick up awards when Paul gets his
What’s it like to be deaf, mother fucker?
I don’t know — but I never asked myself before
Sound of Metal is a story
I’ve seen and heard just about every story by this late date I reckon
It’s the people who tell them that are new.
Small Axe — Mangrove is harrowing
British director Steve McQueen sound and sight mixes racism
and it upsets me
injustice another impairment
McQueen did “Twelve Years a Slave”
I never want to see that movie again
It changed me
I never knew what black people went through
I still don’t
I never knew what slavery and Jim Crow
I still don’t
until Mangrove I never knew what West Indian people have gone through in the UK
I still don’t
McQueen made me watch
and feel
not intellectually
not in terms of ethics and policy
but as a wound
I watch Steve McQueen movies in a pool of blood
I don’t know what black people have gone through
but McQueen has imagined a way to make me imagine it
and he called up personal memories I’d rather avoid
I see every bully that I’ve ever dealt with
and suffer the lazy meanness of the ignorant
the animal people who never matriculated to humanity
the ones who live in their stomachs and genitals
and never make the ascent to their hearts and minds
the will to power destroying sand castles
the ones who don’t understand that how we treat each other is more important than what we get or what we do
We’ve all been treated unfairly
We are all haunted
by the ghosts
the ghosts
we aren’t born human
we have to nurture our humanity
our humanity
in ourselves and others
Art asks so much of you
We are all impaired
The disabilities of our souls
the limitations of our bodies
the obstructions of our own ignorance
the courage in our struggles
our perseverance
Lonny Price’s Best Worst Thing That Ever Happened
is a documentary about people who made a play
about people struggling
that word again
struggling to make art and make careers and make lives
some succeed some fail all get hurt some learn some learn more than others
the play was Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along”
the play was a flop when it opened
it ended Prince and Sondheim’s creative marriage
and sent Sondheim into exile from the Broadway theater community that
“rewarded making money or being a starving artist, but couldn’t accept both”
Everyone failed, some triumphed
everyone learned
or died an early death
the walking dead
Art asks something of you
you have to leave your fucking fairy tales
about how indestructible your hearing is
about how everyone will be fair to you
and nice
about how you can chase your dreams
buffeted by a gentle breeze of warm applause
oohs and ahs
Life hurts
do something with it
Success is a side dish
achievement is something else again
and it always involves
the transformation of pain
into art
which is nothing less
than the redemption of oneself and the others who hear you.
A play isn’t deafness or racial violence
but it is something
and it asks something of you
there is gold far beneath the surface
more gold the farther down you go
the journey is an ordeal
major surgery
ending in healing, consciousness, enlightenment and love
only to start all over again.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Merry Christmas.
Copyright 2020 Richard Thomas
