
The Rick Blog Annotated Part Eight 2/4/21 to 2/22/21, “Not About the Movies”: #writing #poetry #essay

2/4/21: Heading Back From the Wild #poetry
That photo is of Hal Holbrook and Emile Hirsch in the 2007 movie “Into the Wild”
Hal Holbrook, the actor who surprised me when he died
I didn’t realize the impact he had upon me
Hal Holbrook is an archetype in my mind
He is the civilized soul of America
He is what America can be
He is what makes it worthwhile to participate in this society
The best of us and in us
Not only because of anything he did
But because of what he was
and is
Heaven may be the images that we place in other people’s minds
We give other people a screen on which to project meaning
Eventually we are forgotten by everyone
Even a prominent actor like Hal Holbrook will one day be forgotten
by everyone
But we leave traces on the other lives that we touch
And those traces influence those other lives
And those lives leave traces
and so on
And all of our choices
and the results of our own becoming
in our finite lives
and the finite collective memory of our lives
run into a river of consciousness
Mankind’s destiny is in our hands
We can escape society for a time
Withdraw and become outlaws
reflecting on our nature and nature itself … writing poems
reflecting on all that is false and imposed upon us
all that alienates from nature
our own and the world’s
nature
… writing essays
Spoiler alert …
the hero of “Into the Wild”
played by Emile Hirsch
dies at the end
At first I thought that he never made it back to civilization
The outlaw path is a dangerous one
I thought our hero did a courageous thing
Measuring himself and nature
and by a process of comparison
understanding society’s blessings and limitations
Preparing himself to return
Probably as a lawyer who writes
But he didn’t make it …
Judy Garland didn’t make it
Dead at 47
killed by the burden of dreams
destroyed by the rainbow
She left the trace of longing
John Belushi didn’t make it
Dead at 33
A cultural sensation
of a very short lived culture
A moment of freedom
when fathers were exposed as fools and felons
and excitement was the meaning of life
Emile Hirsch’s character died of a misunderstanding
of Henry David Thoreau
He was a Thoreau fundamentalist
Hirsch’s character went into the wild of Alaska
Thoreau went to Walden Pond in Massachusetts
Not far from his mother’s house
Hirsch’s character died of being young
of being unprepared
Where would we be if we only did what we were prepared for?
We’d never learn anything
Outlaws make mistakes
glorious and sometimes fatal
They leave the protection of any tribe
They make their own campfires
and then they return
dead or alive
and bestow that trace of their existence
on a society of varied persons that don’t know they need it
How can you know what you’ve never seen before
and society expands just a little bit
Judy Garland bestowed a yearning for something that doesn’t exist
John Belushi showed that a martyr should carefully choose what he sacrifices his life for
Belushi, the patron saint of the Me Decade
Bloated blue corpse at a party
Aborted destinies …
Our destinies are formed where the heart’s desires meet the world’s needs
It is not enough to worship nature
or plumb the depths of your own authentic self
or commit yourself to the service of mankind
or be observant of all of the demands and limitations and opportunities of society
You have to do all of the above
to see the job through to the end
And in order to do all of that you have to be lucky
I’ve been saved so many times
by my parents
and my friends
and my nature
and nature
and the goodness of mankind
the kindness of strangers
and even by society
a good piece of public policy here
a kind boss there
Sometimes what seems lucky is a curse
Belushi and Judy Garland were ill-served by their commercial success
They could have been even greater artists
If struggle would have kept them more tethered to the earth
They were always special
and ordinariness is needed to stay tethered to reality
Hirsch’s character was a genius
Genius is always limited
Idiot savants
Brilliant about a few things
clueless about everything else
Brilliant about a flame’s beauty
Unaware that it burns …
I’m waiting for Hal Holbrook’s scenes
I am hoping he pulls this whole thing together
He’s a guy who made it back from the wild
That’s what his trace in my head says anyway …
Sean Penn directed this movie
It has an actor’s love of moments
and a poet’s love of moments
Eternity was easy for me
Experience had to teach me about time
God, I can’t believe it that I made it to 65
I’m a time stamped success
Love, money, home …
Creating
Dreaming of doing things …
The game has slowed down for me
like a veteran quarterback
I take no credit for my success
I could easily have died in the wild …
I still visit the wild
Sometimes for years
But I am never far from Thoreau’s mother’s house …
and I always come back …
When does Hal Holbrook come on?
Here he is …
Holbrook
and his part in the movie
went into the wild
of grief and drink
and came back
alone
but connected
self-sufficent
self-determined
an artist
acting … and leather engaving
actor and part …
a world of metaphor
mystical eternity alights on the productions of time
Wisdom
Honestly facing his own sadness and weakness
Committed to empathy, and compassion
Open to love
Not lonely
Open to the meeting of two solitudes
“When you forgive, you love … and when you love God’s light shines upon you”
Hal Holbrook’s big line in the movie
My father was betrayed by some asshole
and he forgave him on his death bed …
I don’t forgive
I accept and transcend
and God’s light shines upon me …
Other people’s sins
and my own
are like the weather
You just have to deal with them
It’s hard
and the trials aren’t handed out equitably
I never had a drunk driver kill my wife and children
I’ve never had to transcend anything like that
But I know some people have
and I’ve gotten over things
Was some of my past writing bitter?
No — the words were the process of a transition from bitterness …
What a wonderful trace Hal Holbrook left for me
Judy Garland and John Belushi bequeathed me cautionary tales
Hal Holbrook left me the future
What good are any of our gifts
if they aren’t used in the service of meaning
and generously shared
with one another …
The movie’s over …
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/6/21: Inception (2010) — Hollywood, You, Me, Us and the Burden of Dreams #poetry
This is an experiment
I restlessly troll Netflix
Late on a Friday night/Saturday morning hopefully on the downslope of the latest pandemic
2:40 am
after dozing 5 hours in a lounging chair
Sleeping in a light fleece jacket and my leisure pants
I dreamed that I was living in a white room in a complex of white rooms avoiding the white nationalists who lived in the other white rooms
Dream logic
I had been watching the news
The white nationalists invaded my white space
the blank void
and I could handle it
They didn’t scare me
I wake up in my chair
Empty
and watch more news
which is just a recapitulation of the news that I heard before I dozed off
When the final news program ends
I resort to Netflix
The virtual Cineplex
and I have a golden ticket
I can wander from screening room to screening room
all disappoints
Seabiscuit is the myth of how America overcomes adversity
when it is only half America
it annoys me that the story avoids the murderous fear
Next!
Superbad reviewed turns a good memory to a bad one
Juvenile humor no longer amuses
an irritating reminder that I am no longer juvenile
not that I want to be young
It’s just bothersome that what used to be fun isn’t fun anymore
What was once a dream, is now a bore …
Past delight present boredom
Inception (2010)
This movie is mildly interesting
I’m trying to recreate a feeling that I had when I wrote a piece about the comic book flick The Avengers
and surprised myself
writing about time, memory and our universal dementia …
I wonder if re-creation is kosher
Why not?
I don’t like this movie, this Inception, much
It’s a noisy movie
Unrelenting noise
and its showy
a waste of a lot of money
It looks like a director had a big success
and was given an unlimited budget to come up with whatever he wanted
I don’t like Inception
but I admire it
The director was unrestrained
and instead of a scholarly consideration of dreams
the film is an attempt to recreate the experience of dreaming
and to direct the thoughtful audience’s attention to the nature of dreaming
and movie going
I don’t even bother to follow the dream logic of the script
which I am certain parallels some more conscious reality
of somebody
I don’t care about somebody’s reality
I care about my own
Dreams reality movies
the collective unconscious?
None of its real
(not even reality — you can’t capture it … how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? At least The Sound of Music dream had Nazis in it, which made it better than Seabiscuit … America’s nightmares come from denial of darkness when its awake)
So what is it?
Dreams movies myths
are things to deconstruct
We love looking at our perceptions of ourselves and the world
and transcending them
We fear looking at our perceptions of the world
and hold fast to them
For every Seabiscuit there is a Plot Against America
For every white nationalist dream of danger and fearlessness that I have
there is the slightly anxious empty feeling that I have when I wake up
Inception is about (partially) the manipulation of other people’s subconscious minds
through movies and maybe other means
and in so doing it attempts to free the viewer from susceptibility to such manipulation
if the viewer is awake
The goal is the unification of the conscious and unconscious mind
To make our soul and our temporal reality
congruent
all fear and distraction and ideation is traversed
action movies comedies horror films
all entrancing
all ultimately debunked
returning us to the empty space
the empty white room
the blank screen
at the Cineplex
on my laptop
Google:
People also ask:
Is white the absence of light?
White is all lights combined, but is the absence of color (in paint). Black is all colors (in paint) combined, but is the absence of light. The former is called additive color and the latter subtractive.
The serene peace of my writing is interrupted by an angry memory
I am at the movies
alone
The story has ended and the credits roll
I sit in silent reverie
transported beyond the movie
the movies are one of my churches
writing is the other
where I dream my way to quiet
and calm
and hope
and antiicpation
and freedom
where I reacquaint myself with my love of the unknown
Alone in the public
I was enjoying a peak experience
Minding my own lack of business
and the cleaning crew entered the theater
and one pimply kid
a seventeen year-old authoritarian trainee
willfully disrespected my solitude
Hit the back of my auditorium seat recliner
and communicated to me it was time
even as the theme music still played and the final credit had yet to roll
And the reality that I still have such waking dreams
annoyed and hurt buy the jealous assault of a future insurrectionist
tells me why I dream
We bear the burden of our dreams
they can’t be analyzed or disciplined away
they repeat themselves like the movies
over and over again
their variety is only gimmickry
The villains, the heroes, the lovers, the clowns
the coming of age(s)
the realizations of the meaning of life
the noble deaths
the punishment of immorality
the lust
the thrills
the boredom
the change overlaid upon the constant
the constant is that empty space
that nothingness from which all of our something reifies
something out of nothing
the only thing that changes is our perception of the process
It’s impossible not to be humble in the face of reality
and the necessity of our dreams.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/6/21: Manchester by the Sea (2016) — What Trump Supporters Could Have Been #poetry
Manchester by the Sea was made in 2015 and released in 2016
Just like Donald Trump and the mainstreaming of QAnon and the rest of the fascist bullshit …
Manchester by the Sea is a tragedy of the ordinary white working person
Trump and QAnon are the farce of same
Manchester by the Sea is delicately and fiercely written
and beautifully and honestly acted
Trump and QAnon is craven lying bullshit
as if you didn’t know
Manchester by the Sea is about an ordinary man who goes through grief
goes through it
we are required to do that
Morality isn’t sanctimony
It isn’t tsk tsk
and it is the opposite of being perfect
or even good
morality is being good after you’ve been wrong
that’s what morality is
It is what that character in Manchester by the Sea goes through
like a search party in a snowstorm that lasts decades
Amazing Grace
was lost but now I’m found
But morality isn’t the forced smiles of a congregation
it’s not the condemnation of the weak and the foolish
Morality is what this character goes through
owning who he is
who we are
a fallible person
walking a tightrope
unconscious on the edge of despair
You have to go through it
you hurt people
you follow impulses that have unintended consequences for other people
and then you care about those people
you try to fix it
you work hard to be more careful next time
you stand by your fellow fuck ups
you make hospitable space for them when they offer their confessions
You have to deal with both who you are
and what happens to you
and all the impacts on other people
You don’t spend time thinking about yourself
rather you spend your days reflecting on the impact of your words and actions on other people
There is no vanity in living a life of art
and/or living a human life
You atone
At-one
You atone with the world
When considering you, it’s not just you …
You have to
It’s not optional
It’s either that
or a trip to Fantasy Island
and storming the Capitol
The hero of Manchester by the Sea makes no excuses
His problem is that he blames himself too much
Art is the brutally honest love for the imperfections of the world
The paradox of our imperfection and the perfection of all things
Humans are born the most innocent of all animals
Babies have to learn everything
The only thing that comes natural is learning
We learn from experience
We get fed a lot of bullshit
because the world is perfectly fucked up
then we have to sort out the shit from the real
it’s complicated and hard
The hero of Manchester by the Sea bravely makes himself a danger to himself instead of other people
that’s a big mistake but it’s a noble one
He’d rather implode than ever hurt anybody again
The hero is the opposite of a narcissist
Narcissism is laziness run amok
Being human is so tough
and bullies bray about how strong that they are
they compensate
they know that they are wrong
Jesus said “Father, forgive them know not what they do”
Jesus forgive me because I think they know
Is that my arrogance?
I am always reflecting
wondering
trying to get to the bottom of things
Is that because I am an artist and a writer
Is it just my nature?
I think not
I think its human nature
and I think free will means you either take the cross or not
I think we all can be Jesus
we aren’t the people he forgives
I think of the basketball player who pretended he was snoring in my college American Lit seminar
he knew that English class was a thing
something to consider
he just didn’t need it
he was going to get rich and famous playing in the NBA
so fuck sensitivity
the unexamined life is not worth living
yeah, as a matter of fact they aren’t lived at all
One may or may not study the humanities
but humanity is a required course
if you want to be one
a human that is
Trump and QAnon?
Something happened to them alright
It wasn’t
political or economic or racial
It was psychological and historic
Narcissism and envy
The hero in Manchester by the Sea cares for his nephew and mourns his losses
and faces his pain
YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH IT
no concrete happy outcomes
not about outcomes
about transformations of the soul
like any good story
Manchester by the Sea has a lot of humor in the screenplay
because humor is human
The only humor in Trump and QAnon is when the rest of us make fun of them
They want so much to be better than human
Better than the blacks, better than the libs
Better than everybody
The Master Hicks
Fucking hilarious
So needy
They demand that we see them as superior
because they are so inferior
hahaahahaahaahaaaha
and they threaten to kill us if we refuse to bow
and they know we are laughing at them
these idiots that don’t know anything want to run everything
these frauds want to hold our wallets
and when our knees buckle
and our torsos shake with laughter
they come after us
with lead pipes and poles and guns
and scary Facebook posts
What to do with these malicious morons?
They should watch this movie
The problem is they would never go to see Manchester by the Sea
and if they did they wouldn’t sit through it
not enough sensation for them
this show is beyond them
you have to be human
or want to be human
to work through this show
Too bad
If they could watch it
Manchester by the Sea
would show them an heroic vision of themselves
a real beauty in their struggles
The movie shows no victories
no happy endings
just human life
sad, painful love
and the wounded solace of understanding
It would make the Trump QAnon people feel a little good about themselves
their real selves
if they would watch
but like I say they never would
They are too ignorant and self-involved
to access art
or humanity
They could be beautiful like the characters in this good movie
We get to be beautiful — and they don’t get that
Instead they need the fucking sensation
frauds to themselves
they elevate their emptiness and call it full
(Manchester by the Sea goes knowingly into the emptiness and waits … that’s what humans do)
The fraudulent fullness of:
the harsh jokes
the profane screaming
the beatings and death
the insults
and threats
They choose to be ugly
The human being knows when it engages in perversion
but becomes addicted to the sensation (reprise)
and stops being human …
I don’t like to criticize people’s physical appearances
I’ll describe how people look but normally I won’t blame them for it
But sometimes it is an apt thing to do
when people turn into something else
Lincoln said that a man gets the face he deserves by the time he is 40
I don’t know how old Marjorie Taylor Greene is
and I don’t want to look up her age
because I am afraid I’ll run across a picture of her
and I can’t take it
She is the ugliest
most repugnant
disgusting
repulsive
woman that I have ever seen
She looks oily
and dirty
she has a face as square as the pan we make brownies in
the one I scrub hard with Brillo to get all of the shit off it
Her voice makes me feel like I just took an anti-psychotic drug
and it feels like little rodents are racing through my nervous system
She has turned herself into a kind of inhuman creature
Trump is ugly too
but I am a straight man
so I am kind of indifferent to how he looks
but when the Devil assumes an appearance approximating a woman
it freaks me out
We don’t have to be perfect
We can’t be perfect
Manchester by the Sea is about the extremely imperfect
but we can’t be
that
we can’t be what Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene are
we can’t
people who choose that
renounce their humanity
We live we die we fuck up we get sorry we bear shame we understand we forgive we comfort each other we feel compassion for other people’s pain we try
we try
we try to make things better
we suffer the pain of understanding
we don’t do what these former fucking people do
these post-humans
I don’t write with anger
or hate
or rage
or frustration
I write with wonder
what do we do with these creatures
I don’t write to dehumanize them to legitimatize cruelty toward them
Oh no
The first steps are obvious
we have to defend ourselves
we need vaccines and masks and social distances
to protect ourselves from these people who have mutated into deadly viruses
but what do we do with them after its over
Will it be possible to help them become people again?
Will Marjorie Taylor Greene ever be a woman again?
I know what I can do for myself
Seek out things like Manchester by the Sea
and try to write them myself.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/7/21: Julie & Julia (2009) — How Born Writers are Made #poetry
First comes the early promise …
most likely to succeed at something
Then comes the wandering and confusion …
who am I, what can I do …
Next comes the crisis of confidence
and the descent into under-employment
Politely running errands
powerless
observing those in power
then comes the hurtful insults
Silent rivals who envied the writer become vocal
bitterly asserting superiority against the person they never felt that they could best when they were young
The painful wound follows
The agony demands change
But what what what?
True friends, partners, family and lover reveal themselves
They see who you are
and they coax you out of your shell
They listen to you
and repeat back every word that you say that identifies who you and what you are meant to do …
You stand warily at the precipice of commitment
and you jump
You naively tell your dream to a few of the wrong people
and you learn to defend yourself
and when to retreat
You finally realize that the best way to achieve your dream is to start doing it
You start a blog
and stick with it
You don’t need a publisher
You can just write
So you write
and develop your gifts
and eventually your writing gets good
A small dedicated audience keeps you in the game
You have a worthy audience
You would never dare ask them for money
The writing and the reading is an act of friendship
The best friends tell you that you are ready to be published
The smartest help you make it happen …
Some of you might teach along the way
Some of you might perform
Publication, teaching and performance
but the foundation of it all is your writing
and the foundation of your writing is your life
A writer is an adventurer
The adventures can take place in faraway lands
or the privacy of your home
It doesn’t matter
Your restless dissatisfaction is the energy source of your peace and satisfaction …
I met the writer/director of Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron once
I was cast in “Heartburn” her first time being “published” in the movie business
She was warm and nice
Her movies are about success
and I have always distrusted that
but that is my problem, not Nora Ephron’s
I have had the misfortune of knowing too many people who pursued career success at the expense of their humanity
and not observing closely enough the people who made their humanity the source of their success
I think Nora Ephron was probably one of those
I didn’t know her well enough to say for sure
Julie & Julia was Nora Ephron’s last movie
She died three years later in 2012
Bitter sweet is the most honest flavor
Tragicomedy is the best theater
We pursue our victories
bravely
in the shadow of the ultimate defeat that waits for us all
Nora Ephron knew that she had a rare form of leukemia when she wrote and directed Julie & Julia
She told no one except those most intimate with her
Because of my distrust of success and by extension the successful, I often wondered if Nora Ephron was a cynical audience pleaser
Studiously avoiding even mentions of failure and death in her work
to keep her audience of suburban professional women happy
as they forgot their troubles with shopping, dinner and a movie at the mall
But
No, I didn’t really know Nora Ephron
But I know that she was kind to a young actor with a very small part
which she knew was important to him
when she was trying to make good in what could be the greatest break of her career
and she kept laughing and dancing while she was terminally ill
and maybe she felt that failure and death were personal matters
and no one else’s damn business
and maybe she knew better than I did that her audience knows they are going to die
and have bellys full of failure
and what they really need is
encouragement
they need to know what is possible
they need to identify with women who created the lives that they wanted
that there are wonderful people to love and marry
and fine friends who wish you the best
and that you are good at things
and your biggest dreams
if grounded in physical reality
the fulfillment of your deepest yearnings
and useful to other people
are possible
Now that is a fine moment of a born writer fully evolved
and very well made.
Years later I reconnected with a former friend who also had the acquaintance of Nora Ephron
She thought ill of Ephron
but my former friend was of the type that opted for the success without the humanity
It’s a funny world.
Writers make choices
and they often are disguised
in Technicolor.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/8/21: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) — Portrait of the Blocked Artist as an Old Man #poetry
Charlie Kaufman is a surrealist of the subjective point of view
The setting of his films is the unsettled psyche
An individual’s mind in Cinemascope
A mind projected on a screen
or digitalized
and streamed
Streaming of consciousness
Epic views of microscopic events
Thoughts and feelings made cinematic
ripples in a person’s conscious and unconscious and subconscious and pre-conscious seas
All of the layers of human existence are fair game
our perceptions, our realities, our empathy. our lack thereof, our wounds, our blindness, our emotions
and what lies beneath them
“Inside Out” (Disney/Pixar) on steroids and for adults
Kaufman made an animated cartoon about a psychological disorder being penetrated by love
Cupid’s arrow lances a psychic boil
or at least the process begins
in “Anomalisa”
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is live action
“live action” seems a funny way to describe Kaufman’s films
To be or not to be
Is that really the question?
It is for Kaufman’s characters
For us all?
Too?
Kaufman’s movies are told in a peculiar and challenging way
a distinctive voice
but the movies are easier to follow once you know who you are dealing with …
Isolated intellectual janitors are big on Netflix this season
The chess master mentor custodian of “The Queen’s Gambit”
and
the high school maintenance man
who is the host of the archetypes
animus, anima, mother, father,
and the arts, poseurs, ideas and pontifications:
Pauline Kael, John Cassavetes, the canon of the American musical theater, David Foster Wallace, Ron Howard, Dairy Queen and some writers and visual artists that I never heard of …
in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”
The conceit of this hypnotic movie
where set pieces are connected by long drives through a snowstorm
of near zero visibility —fogged windows and blizzard conditions, presented with an air of resignation,
an acceptance of mortality,
a shoulder shrug at the notion that disappointment is the primary emotion attending the human condition,
the conceit of this hypnotic movie,
is that every character and every allusion to anything
exists only in the mind of a sad, alienated, lonely, elderly man
speeches taken from film criticism, screenplays of famous commercial films, books of poetry etc.
and the memories of a person who rarely or perhaps never did a thing that he wanted to do
never kissed a girl
or sang a song
or wrote a poem
or did anything more than the requirements of bare survival
cleaning other people’s toilets
invisible to others except when he was the object of their ridicule
a man
weighed down by regret
locked in his adolescent bedroom
is it fear or inertia?
who condemns himself as a failure
a life of consuming books and paintings and DVDs
and remembering every human interaction that never happened beyond his imagination
remembering every rejection that he survived
how fast he was discounted and dismissed
he didn’t have to say a word
he looked at people and he heard the words form in their minds
“Go away!”
Humiliated by his strangeness
Staring across diners at pretty, young waitresses
Averting his gaze when they look back at him
Feeling like a sex offender
Having once imagined an ideal female partner
but now too old to even keep the thread of his own imagination
exiled for so long from his own masturbatory desire
he can’t even recall what it was
that he liked in a woman
trying to imagine warmth and connection
grimacing in a constipated way …
He listened and watched so many writers and actors and singers and dancers
and now as an old man he has no opinion about their work
He is just an old man happy to listen to anybody
He recalls their creations
and is grateful for the illusion of company
He’s not there
and they aren’t either
He can’t be provoked anymore
He can’t even connect to an image in his mind
The spectres in his mind come and go
The center doesn’t hold
but something is there
one thing is left
the pain is there
the dead don’t feel pain
His soul is pain
that’s all …
No wonder he is
thinking of ending things.
I knew a man in Rochester …
I was friendly with him
We met at the bagel place in the strip mall
He wore a jacket that was a little too short
and a tweed cap
He was nice and sad
He told me about a young woman
who worked at the Worldwide News
behind the cash register
He said that she was so pretty
She could have had a job as a receptionist at one of the big law firms downtown
He didn’t have intellectual interests like the protagonist in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”
but he had his avoidances
the stock market
the sports page
the news
movies
He told me that he wanted to be a pilot when he was young
He told me about old time record stores
where you went in a booth and listened to a side before you decided if you wanted to buy something
An old lady walked by and said, “he never did anything like that”
I suspected that she was right
He was a watcher
He heard about those stores
Always wanted to go to one
Never did
I don’t think he ever broke apart like Charlie Kaufman’s victim
The old man in Rochester wasn’t an artist
Kaufman’s guy was
What is more pitiable than an artist who has never acted on his or her impulse
who betrays his own essence
or worse never understands her essence
not oppressed like closeted gay people in the old days
who were shamed by the general culture
the blocked artist is the victim of an existential malaise
something beyond social or psychological oppression
a mysterious illness
deserving of great sympathy and largely misunderstood or ignored
Rochester man was just an ordinary introverted guy
who felt life passed him by
and the feeling became a self-fulfilling prophecy
“Don’t let your mother ruin your life” he told me
He didn’t know my mother
“Find a nice girl and make some money”
The lonely Rochester man was a simple man and he had simple answers
answers that he could keep track of
He just couldn’t reach his promised land
I don’t know why — his malady is as sad as that of the failed artist
If an unhappy person reaches old age
even he or she knows that there is no one to blame for their life of regret
except themselves
and that is just not fair
Some babies go to Limbo
and some old people go to Purgatory
through no fault of their own
Eleanor Rigby and Father MacKenzie
where do they all belong
Nighthawks
A Carmelite monk in a bare apartment drinking himself to sleep
Lives apart
Nature has miscarriages
Children die of cancer
some beings never come to term
Rochester man must have passed away by now
I’m sure he died alone
having connected with one or two of his final healthcare workers
in a way that approximated friendship
The Rochester man was the epitome of Thoreau’s famous “most men”
who live “lives of quiet desperation”
He was only a cousin to Charlie Kaufman’s blocked artist
who knew how to love women and write and paint and sing and form intellectual treatises
but never did
but both suffered
because …
everything doesn’t come to term
and that that doesn’t fully grow deserves our sympathy
Charlie Kaufman wrote a screenplay about suicide
I wrote a poem about compassion for those who never get to enjoy the parts of life that we love
and an admiration for their heroism
The woman with down’s syndrome rides her bike to her job at McDonald’s
and has a social life and a career
The people who can’t access their desires and attractions and their essential natures
still have their imaginations and interests and glancing connections in rehab centers and coffee shops
and maybe that is something to celebrate too
Do people live lives of quiet desperation or live all of the life that they can handle?
I think it is the latter
The suicidal impulse is in the imagination of the screenwriter, not the heart of the janitor
Somewhere an old person about to die
turns her face to the sunlight coming through her hospital window
and is grateful
and somewhere a disappointed person who knows that their dreams never came true
gets up in the morning and has coffee and a bagel
Books need edgy chapters but the good ones end somewhere else.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/14/21: Cracked Up — the Darrell Hammond Story, The World is a Trauma Center #poetry
When I heard that John Mullaney was taking a job on the writing staff of the Seth Meyers TV show, I wondered why
Mullaney started as an SNL writer, but had moved on to an independent career as a stand-up, actor and writer with a distinctive personal style
Why write for someone else?
Then I saw that Darrell Hammond was a victim of childhood trauma and I got it
Oh that’s why Darrell Hammond is the studio announcer for SNL after many years of starring on the show
Mullaney checked into a rehab center shortly after the Seth Meyers job was announced
and that is the first lesson of life in the worldwide trauma center
Kindness
Lorne Michaels, the producer of SNL had seen too may premature deaths on his show
John Belushi, Chris Farley, Phil Hartman … there must be others — meteors fragmenting on the way to earth
Michaels decided that there was two things that he could give “his” people when they were in trouble:
Work,
and a kind of protective support —
Good doctors
Money and other resources
and time
Time, we all need time … we the people of trauma, need time to process what has happened TO us
So those are the first two lessons of life in the worldwide trauma center
Kindness and time.
Darrell Hammond’s experience is the world’s experience
The documentary about Darrell Hammond provides answers for the world
Atoms look like solar systems
Lesson 3 — forgiveness
People get abused and fucked up
Darrell Hammond’s mother cut his tongue with a steak knife when he was a little kid
He remembered the blood all over the kitchen floor
And then she kept it up
fingers jammed in electrical outlets
Cold and distant stares …
Consistent abuse
An unnatural relationship
an absence of maternal love
Hammond dreamed about a little girl
a little girl who unnaturally had the eyes of his mother
a little girl being abused
and when Hammond woke up
after several years,
he forgave his mother
He saw that she had suffered in the very same way that she made him suffer
and
after several years,
Hammond forgave himself
he didn’t suffer from mental illness
he suffered from “mental injury”
Trauma
So all of his anger and inability to maintain intimate relationships
his drinking and drugs
and his habit of cutting himself
all of his self- destructiveness
is forgiven
Hammond is not ashamed of himself
Our personal problems are nothing to be ashamed of
we all do the best we can …
even the most feckless
and the worst of us …
competence and morality are the tools with which we repair the world
and that repair job is a collective project …
evil is something outside of us …
people aren’t evil …
people get captured in evil’s sway
and have to be rescued
we are all called to save the world …
Darrell Hammond has a kind of sad, detachment now
and a paradoxical twinkle and joy
What an unlikely heir to Francis of Assisi
A nightclub impressionist
from a lower middle class neighborhood in Florida
We can only love the world to the extent that we understand the world
and none of us understand that much
but Darrell Hammond has done a nice job
He is sad about what he has lost
but he doesn’t blame himself
He doesn’t blame
Period.
Lesson 4 — therapy
If you are injured, you have to rehabilitate yourself, and you can’t do it alone —- as in all things, there are people who know more about how to deal with the health concerns of trauma, mental and physical, than other people — and you have to be open to their help
Lesson 5 — storytelling, we the people of trauma, the human race have to tell our stories
Our secrets have to be released
We are in a conspiracy with our abusers against ourselves
Covering up their crimes
until we break away
It’s a brave thing to do
and it hurts
but the clearer we get about what happened
the better we feel
To heal the wound, you must address the wound
and treat it tenderly
The truth really does set you free
Our stories save us and save others like us
free us from our pain
That’s why we tell them and listen to them
Good stories are
miracles
and miracles are commonplace
They are told every day
Lesson 6 — art
Some people make art
Some people consume art
Ultimately the experience is the same
The transformations for the artist and audience
are identical
Art goes beyond therapy
Therapy heals us
tends to our wounds
Art transcends the necessary psychological and biological
and addresses the existential
First I was happy
Then I was injured
Then I got angry
Then I failed for years
Alienated from the world
Then I went to work
I met some good people along the way
Then I stopped being ashamed
I understood that something happened to me
and that I hadn’t done anything wrong
Then I started telling my story
and elevated it beyond therapy
though I appreciated all who cared for me when I wasn’t fully capable
The story spoke honestly about who had injured me
and what had injured me
and my journalling became art when I realized that what happened and happens to me happens to the world
To everybody
Darrell Hammond is a perfect storm
Abused more horribly than most
Blessed with a talent that allows him to powerfully communicate
Positioned in a privilege world where he was allowed elite level care
Good doctors, good jobs, good friends
But those superlative conditions are beside the point
We all are called to do what Darrell Hammond did
Be born in inoocence
Bleed
Suffer
Figure it out
Tell our stories
Forgive
Ourselves
and our abusers
and save each others lives.
You have to go through it
There are no quick answers
Only the people in the greatest pain
like Darrell Hammond
like me
like you?
Finish the job
If we don’t process our pain
we are self-destructive
and hurt other people
forever
we have to break the cycle
How can we not be compassionate?
Everyone is living on a ring of hell
victims of trauma attack new victims of trauma
The best are the drunks, the sad sacks, the failures
the ones who cut themselves
as opposed to the bullies
I don’t know what brings a bully redemption
oh yeah, I do
they have to be brought low
for their own good
Brought low by our true stories
and forgiven.
I wrote a piece awhile ago about feeling sorry for Donald Trump
The piece disappointed several of my readers
but it was a good impulse
The samurai defends himself without anger
I hated Trump when I started writing the Rick Blog
I hated him because he personifies the personal qualities of many of the abusers in my personal life
Fascist business people
Persecutors of my peculiar poetic type
I have pages and pages and pages about how they are
But the world has turned in my direction
at the same pace that my soul has turned in the right direction
The world is not putting up with my oppressors’ shit anymore
and demanding something new
The trauma has ended and the treatment has begun
and ultimately
after precautions are taken to be sure that they can’t hurt us anymore
and the truth is fully told
and they are held accountable
we have to understand what happened
to them
We have to have Darrell Hammond’s dream
see the fascist bullies as little girls with Hammond’s mother’s eyes
and forgive them
and ourselves, again
Then we can just see that bad things happened to us
because bad things happen
Instead of wishing revenge on our enemies
Payback
No
Instead we can simply solve problems
and get on with our lives
Last lesson from this movie
The need for good partners
Creative collaborators
Darrell Hammond took his pain
and with the help of doctors and friends got better
still maimed — that never goes away
but better
and then with the help of a good editor made a book
and with the help of a good director and other theater artists made a stage show
and with the help of a good documentarian and her crew made a movie
and in concert with all of these friends and co-workers
and audiences
and with an understanding of past hells that he doesn’t have to live in
Created a life
I think America and the world is doing the same thing
America and the world are getting better
not from optimism
or escape
but by simply
simply
dealing
with the
complexities
of our collective trauma.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/16/21: Howards End (1992) — An Object for My Personal Meditation (like all of the other movies) #poetry
You know that all of these pieces about movies are really about me, don’t you?
You know that all of my writing that you read is really about you, don’t you?
We all see different things
intention seems like folly
I see things in Howards End that its creators probably took for granted
It represents so much of what I want
Hipsters might laugh at it and call it middlebrow
Young people might think it is terribly old-fashioned
to the point of inaccessibility
Those criticisms and reservations may even have merit
Surely they do
In a way
For some people
But they are not what I see
The first thing that I see is the audience which existed in 1992, and I think exists today (you’re reading this aren’t you?)
that doesn’t have to be flattered in any way
An audience that comes to hear the artists out
Before I started writing, I talked a lot
The talk charmed some people, and got on a lot more people’s nerves
But that is all an artist wants to do
He or she wants to share all of these thoughts and feelings he or she has inside of him
and he wants to say it in his or her particular way
He or she wants to breathe
to share their view of the world
The artist doesn’t want to manipulate your out of your money
He or she loves you, you know
He or she pays all sorts of attention to you
and wants the same
But he or she wants to be honest
wants to be real
not to make you agree
or defer to his or her ideas
or be showered with your admiration …
Not for anything vain as all of that …
We live in solitudes
We are all alone
That’s what I think
and we warm each other with words
Communicating who we are to one another
and recognizing ourselves in the mirror
We don’t have to save the world;
by living in the world
by participating
we make the world perfect
Artists just need someone to talk to
and so do audiences
We get to be consciously alive
we don’t have to work on the assembly line
or be put together on top of it
and sold in a showroom when we are done
Movies are popular art, and so is my writing
By popular I mean movies are accessible
There are no prerequisites
you just start watching them
Accessible
that word again
Howards End is accessible
but the audience has to work a little
A good audience listens actively
engages the piece
When the artists try to make something in a way that their audience finds interesting
They lose the soul of the piece
It either interests a person or it doesn’t
The artist doesn’t have to think about it
TV commercials grab your attention
but who really listens to them
Commercials share information
and stimulate desire
You can’t sell a soul
That’s why art traditionally has such a difficult relationship with money
Art can generate money
but the trick is to get it in front of the people who want to hear it
not to sell people who could care less
like serious movies that look like comedies in the Coming Attractions
and then piss off the suckers who get a challenging evening when they wanted a laugh
I don’t think Merchant Ivory planned a thing to sell an audience
But Merchant, the producer was a genius at finding the people who would love what they made
I love the collaboration
Merchant did the art business
Like an art gallery owner
not like a car dealer
Ivory directed the movies
Hired other great collaborators
Great writer
Great actors
Great composers
Great cinematographer
Great art direction
Great everything
All of the perfect parts
a collection of masters
Exquisitely rendering their separate and distinct tasks
Singing their soulful arias of their visions of the world
all harmonized by Ivory
and sustained in all of their material needs
by Merchant
Even their names are perfect
Merchant is a classy word for buying and selling
Nothing corrupt about it at all
And what is more pure
than Ivory
Art has to be sincere
Art has to be authentic
It doesn’t try to be pure
It just is
or its not art
and God knows not to be superior in any way
Just to be
to be what it is
The world needs the unadulterated soul expressed
The Soul is here
It can’t be ignored …
The soul dies
People die from being ignored too
We need the truth
It’s not optional
We have to know the way that we are
Masses of people live being pushed to and fro
Never understanding the forces that determine their lives
Never aware that such forces even exist
We need to engage the mystery from which we come, live in and go back to …
Art doesn’t transform us
we transform naturally
It is our consciousness that transforms
The more we know ourselves
and our predestined roles
The more we serve the world
The world is an artist
and we are its paints
All subtly different colors on an infinite spectrum
Mixing and contrasting with one another
Once we understand that
we stop wasting our time
Howards End takes it’s time
No anachronistic music on the soundtrack
No scenes of the Napoleonic Wars scored with covers of Bill Withers tunes
Maybe the director guides us past visual art and symphonic music with the reverence and civility of a museum docent
But I like that
I like civilization
I like reverence
I like creator and audience respectfully encountering strangeness together
The strangeness of a bygone historical period
The strangeness of art
We are given an opportunity to access
but we have to take it
Howards End was marketed like every movie has to be
But in an expert way
The movie itself isn’t marketing
The story comes from the soul of a great writer
Not survey cards from test audiences
I used to love the Merchant Ivory movies
I never saw this one before
but I got to see several of them at the Paris Theater in New York
Off of Fifth Avenue near the Plaza Hotel
A neighborhood of great aspiration
at least it was in those days
A confident pursuit of beauty and power
A great neighborhood for Merchant
and Ivory
I had a romantic view of New York City in those days
It never really existed
this dream of wonderful art and responsible wealth and power
I saw the actor James Spader waiting for the light to change near the Paris Theater once in the eighties
Just at about the time that he decided to go exclusively for the money
and he looked like it — like his art was just his path to the auto showroom
kind of smug and selfish and a little mean
He wasn’t paying attention to the city at all
or the people in it
He was focused on something else
all Merchant and no Ivory
and my dream of New York City ended
for the City
but not for me
and I still think it’s possible
As a matter of fact I think it si the time for my dream to be real
I think people are desperate for it
And I live in a kind of anticipation
a hopeful feeling buoyed by something greater than reason
The soul and the world turn toward each other
and when they are both ready
They embrace …
One time Francis Ford Coppola was waiting in line outside of the Paris and in front of me
The Godfather and his other movies seem like they emerge from a frightening chaos
Frustration is followed by an explosion
and the result is a surprise
a relief
a miracle.
Coppola is a daredevil on the edge
of art or disgrace
fortune or ruin
Masterpiece or disaster …
I love Francis Ford Coppola movies
Like Orson Welles he is a fat indulgent genius
Genius is fat and indulgent
It isn’t moderate
It takes discipline
but it is a discipline of another kind
A discipline that requires obedience to all of genius’ unreasonable demands
all of its excesses
Genius
fashions a generous world
a world of operatic feeling
a free and thrilling place …
A place beyond all fearful and arbitrary boundaries
Welles and Coppola, fat martyrs who sacrifice themselves to assert the world’s glory
The glory that most people are too timid to see
let alone acknowledge
Merchant Ivory appeals to something else in me
I like their films’ civility
Their order
Their social structures
however imperfect
and at times the social structures are monstrously cruel
The characters are tragic
and I find the whole thing reassuring
hahahahahaha
at least they have a structure for their suffering
The characters belong to civilizations
most often Great Britain, but France, America and India too
that tried to make something out of nature
Nations as
Grand epic works of art
Culture is where the soul meets the material world
Merchant Ivory films are so cultured
Not missing the dark bits
or the light
The struggle to make something of this damn thing
this world
this life
come to think of it
the same glory and failure of Welles and Coppola
of us all
told in such a controlled way
How beautiful and wonderful and sad
The Remains of the Day is one of my favorite movies ever, and it is so beautiful and wonderful and sad
The characters’ sadness in The Remains of the Day is a much more preferable state than the deranged feeling of the last episode of the recent hit TV series, The Queen’s Gambit
a show that had all of Coppola’s tormented fury
and Welles’ desperate innovation
and all of Merchant Ivory’s precise and ordered artistry
in all elements of its film making
for the first five installments
and then ends
THUD
with the pulse pounding triumph of The Karate Kid
with what people who aren’t thinking
think is a happy ending
The Queen’s Gambit gives up
Coppola and Merchant Ivory never quit …
This poem is a message in a bottle
a piece of yearning and fulfillment
notes on a blueprint
all the art that we can make out of the natural world
What’s more real
The concrete of the Paris Theater and the Plaza Hotel
or the grand dream their creators wanted it to be?
Our true dreams have nothing to do with desire
Our souls are seeded
with the future of the world.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/17/21: Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) — Things Change, What’s Next? #poetry
Francis Ford Coppola did a sequel to his pal George Lucas’ American Graffiti
From high school graduation to the high school reunion
and time travel
to the past
Peggy Sue Got Married ,
the past
Memory
even for the bitter
or confused,
is in Technicolor
with a Golden Oldie Soundtrack
written as a literary short story in the idiom of a sitcom
With a future All -Star cast
Coppola doesn’t have a directorial style
He creates a style to match his material
Coppola made The Godfather about an alien family blocked from full participation in the American Dream
That movie is darkly lit, tragic and operatic
Peggy Sue is about people who feel entitled to all this country has to offer and get disappointed
a serious story told in a light-hearted way
The Godfather is Italian – American
Peggy Sue Got Married is just American
The American myth that even us outsiders claim in some part of our soul
The pain of the Corleone family was that they were told not dream that dream
So they murdered and stole for the right
to be disappointed
The American Dream never works out for anyone
(it also always works out)
Because the dream is a young person’s dream
and we get old and die
The Chicago Tribune says that the Second City was sold recently for $50 million
To a video game manufacturer
Video games?
Second City has done shows on cruise ships in recent years
Cruise ships?
When I was an actor at Second City
in the 1980s
around the time of Peggy Sue Got Married
I thought I was part of the most influential theater of the 20th Century
A revolution in acting and writing
Bringing art to popular culture
It was thrilling
I thought my mentors were the greatest American artists of the 20th Century
and I was doing something brilliant and meaningful
None of it was true
except the dream
art was part of the chaotic mess that was Second City
Art, the minority owner who was eventually bought out
Commerce muddied every Second City palette
The shows weren’t that good
They were steps toward video games and cruise ships
not Eugene O’Neill
Second City was art in the beginning
And those founders who did the art were still around
But they were semi – retired
The real thing was in their workshops
time travel
not in the present performances
that were compromised by the crass audiences and agents and TV casting directors and advertising executives
who wanted sales technique on the stage where I pursued art
It was a ridiculous mistake on my part
a romantic, young, innocent deluded mistake
The right heart at the wrong place and time …
Oddly, I feel no regret
Life is lived through a strainer
the runoff and detritus disappear down the drain
The gold remains.
The Tribune article also mentions that the teachers in Second City’s Training Centers are going to unionize
The American Association of Comedy Instructors
A Union
for that shit
those awful classes
that have nothing to do with the workshops with the founding artists of my dreamy memory
those present day classes are playing party games on a cruise ship
Eugene O”Neill?
Are you kidding?
Charades and shuffle board is more like it.
The current Second City has nothing to do with me
strained and down my drain.
I drift away from my fellow Second City alumni who post photos on Facebook from decades -old shows that they were in at Second City
All that nostalgia
Unprocessed dreams?
Maybe
or maybe the other alums never had my dream
that’s closer to the truth, I reckon.
A mystery of life is our fate to spend at least some time with people with whom we don’t belong
We belong where we don’t belong
No one understands a country better than a foreigner.
The alumni hold onto one dream or another
or just don’t want to think about it at all
and attach their dream or indifference to the corpse of Second City
the alumni delude themselves
They tell themselves they are doing the Dream
or having an easy good time
while they play video games on a cruise ship
I guess it’s OK if all you want out of time is a pleasant day
A few want something more
but the others get in their way
Social clubs are fine
but they’re not for me.
I called myself an improvisor when I was at Second City and for years after
A large part of my identity was “improvisor”
Not any more
I now identify as “writer”
Change is an assembly of gears
the individual soul and the world mesh
People and things are never fully revealed
until their obituary is written.
Second City’s obituary is done
On the same day that part of my past is processed
Where does the dream go now?
What’s next?
Peggy Sue Got Married is about a woman who processes her past
The real person is revealed in youthful innocence
Outer frustration and regret brings her inner reality
to life
A PBS producer, a nice guy
told me somewhere in the 1980s that I was
“too sincere to be an actor”
That memory hurts at first and then is liberating
when I recall it in this context
Peggy Sue gives insight similar to that of the PBS producer to the other lead characters in her story
as she struggles to understand herself,
Just like writers do.
Peggy Sue is a story of a conscious mind coaxing the unconscious mind into the waking day
Our lives are dream interpretations
We “dream the future” as Peggy Sue says
She mines the past to retrieve what has value
Our lives have a constant
That never dies
What is real is our love
What is real is our aspiration
when things don’t work out
when our best efforts fall short
when we are betrayed
by ourselves
and others
when we got it all wrong
naively seeing greatness in something mediocre
the constant remains
We are the constant
the false steps and starts are just process
you are just working things out
It is the poetry in your heart that is your life story
not the whorehouses that you thought were Cinderella’s Ball
What’s next is what always was
you were right all along
Life is a process of learning how to make yourself congruent with the specific place in the world where you are meant to be
That’s home
and that’s
What’s Next.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/18/21: The Words — How to Succeed as a Bad Writer By Really, Really Trying (2012) #poetry
All you need to write is good enough health, good enough money, time, friends and people who love you
When I taught improvisational acting 1000 years ago I used to say, “Your audience will find you”
I had something different inside of me
Jeremy Irons plays a true artist of a writer in this airport novel of a multiplex romance marketed to women who find poetic types to be romantic
Bradley Cooper plays a sensitive young plagiarist
who is trapped by his desire to be a great writer and to be a huge commercial success
The movie seems to think that those two things co-exist
That what is great will always sell
Eventually
But one cheapens the other
Just like the occasional good acting and dialogue in this picture is pulled down by all of the shit
Marketing overwhelms art
Marketing is stronger than art
The way death overwhelms life
Life always ends
Death just keeps rolling along
Art is pure — it’s life
Business is dishonest — it’s corrupt intention
The plagiarist feels guilty
The artist struggles …
The life is the thing
The art is just the report
Of course the artist is obscure
even when everyone knows his name
The artist is obscure to himself
He writes what he doesn’t know
The mature writer is past so much bullshit
no longer a problem to himself
Come on,
To be famous
To be published
To be envied
To get rich
Mainly, mostly
to be recognized
to be seen as a successful person
in the eyes of others
To be what you desire to be
a great this or a great that
like him or like her …
Immortal in the public imagination
(until you are not, but hey it’s the sensation isn’t it … acclaim is a temporary thing … then its on to the next thing … people want to cheer and different teams play in the Super Bowl every year … old achievements go in history books and museums … in some instances fame becomes infamy … it’s all just perception, clear or cloudy …. Saviors become demons … heroes are exposed as frauds or even worse, merely human … mixed bags … we want myths … we want to believe in black and white … we want value to be an easy thing to grab onto … we want someone who went to the Promised Land ahead of us to show us the way, to show us its possible … we want to be saved … we want to be disappointed … we want to feel superior to that and who we have honored … we want the excitement of finding new people and things to admire, we call that progress … we want escape … we want an idyllic perfection … we want something more than food. clothing and shelter … we want the money, fame etc. but we want to tell ourselves that somehow it is more important and deeper than all that … we like to bullshit ourselves … we want soulfulness made material and in so doing we degrade the concept of “soul” … then the predictable happens, and we ignore it and keep churning along … on a hamster wheel of self -deception, ignoring reality and calling mass delusion “reality” …. over and over and over … old Best Picture winners turn into kitsch or trash … no one is exempt … not even the Founding Fathers … success is just a split second thing … wise or foolish respect for something worth a lot, a little or nothing — time and perspective will always tell if you go the other way … I decide the value of my life … no one else … I choose my words and deeds … no one else … the pursuit of success for its own sake seems to me to be a form of slavery … my point isn’t to be successful — it is to share who I am … to reach each and every person that I am meant to be with … )
Success had no value
that’s what I say
except …
that it brings resources to
connect the words to the people they are intended for
people that the writer can’t possibly know
as he writes on the outer edge of his existence
word by word inching into his unknown …
The real writer is too smart for any publisher or producer that he knows of when he is writing (writing is always a leap of faith … deeper, farther, farther, deeper … )
The real writer has no instinct for self-promotion
The real writer needs partners who handle the business aspects of his work
The real writer just writes
and has faith that his words will …
a writer talks seemingly to himself
with the faith that someone else is out there
who will appreciate them
who will need them
They always show up
in handfuls or by the thousands
I think the need for success for its own sake
automatically makes the work done to achieve that success
suck
and the person who is so driven to be a big deal
an asshole
That may seem simplistic, but in my experience
it’s always true
I think success
is an idea made up by salesmen
“The Art of the Deal”
blasphemes art
It calls manipulation creativity
It’s a big bullshit lie
I think a culture that worships success for its own sake
is no culture at all
Honesty, truth, knowledge
count with me
Power for its own sake
Not so much
But here is where it gets complicated
The world needs value to be recognized
the world doesn’t have to keep traveling in its sorry way
and some people who are really good
and their work which is really good
Get recognized
The question now is not
How do they do it?
The question is
How does it happen?
How does anything real happen?
You live your life in a true way
and you are open to what comes your way.
Success is a red herring
It’s pursuit deflects you from what you are meant to do
If you stick with who you are and what you do
it becomes something else and takes you places
Stick with who you are
Bradley Cooper’s character in this movie
is conflicted between success and art and personal ethics and integrity
It’s a phony conflict
It’s no contest
I don’t give a shit about making it
I just want to do it
all aspects of it
including sharing it.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/19/21: Hello, My Name is Doris (2015) — Seize the Day, You Old Introverted Bastards! #poetry
Are you old and introverted?
You can have fun and sex too
and whatever else you want
Free to be you and me muchachas
Go for it!
The director was in some sketch comedy group on MTV — ugh, oh no …
His parents were professors in the classics or something like that … that’s good …
He directed “The Big Sick” — oh that’s a good movie …
When I used to read a lot I would go to bookstores and walk up and down the aisles
and wait until a book vibrated and radiated light
and then I’d take it off of the shelf
and if a force field developed between the book and my face
I’d pull the book toward my eyes
and if it smelled good, I’d buy it
Then I took it home and read it …
I’d walk to the subway (if I was in New York), thinking about the book
I started reading as soon as I got into the subway car
and I wasn’t afraid to start one book while another one was in progress
I was in my late thirties and into my forties
That’s when I read a lot
I don’t read much now
Now is my time to write
I’ve digested enough written words
Now I excrete them
I guess I was what you would call “introverted”
But I didn’t feel introverted
I just felt like reading
It’s a waste time to worry about society’s issues
I never did
So they brought me up on charges
and I’d be forced to make my case(s)
Eventually I’d issue my ruling
and be on my way
Until another cabal of they came along
followed by the eventual trial
and disposition of the matter
They always have a problem with nothing
Why can’t a man in his thirties and forties always be reading a book
I wasn’t avoiding anything or anybody
I wasn’t intimidated or even afraid
or scared (afraid plus nervous)
I was spending time with interesting people
these writers
I was engaged in an earlier phase of my own life’s work as a writer
I was dead to the world and alive inside
I was doing something
It didn’t matter that the knuckle draggers didn’t (couldn’t) get it
An extrovert is someone who will do or say anything without inhibition
and not one word that they say, or action that they take, is of any use or interest …
The Texas power grid (and its stated rationales) is the handiwork of extroverts …
Real kisses are preceded by shy and awkward gestures
Real work is approached carefully
Gingerly
after great deliberation …
Extroversion is the idolatry of product
The misnamed introversion is the grace of process …
Extroverts go everywhere and are never anywhere
Misnamed introverts can sit alone in their room and be everywhere …
Like God …
Extroverts ask few questions and are very decisive
One bad decision after another
Misnamed introverts wonder about everything
and generally do the right thing
Extroverts are nihilists
They’d get angry to hear that
They’d like to think that they believe in many important things
but they actually think like cave men
Me eat
Me shit
Me cold
Me hot
Me fuck
Me get away from saber tooth tiger …
Misnamed introverts think essences are things to be observed
and that meanings are revealed
slowly and suddenly
Misnamed introverts see themselves and the world as beautiful mysteries …
Looking within is the path to the inner reaches of outer space and the outer reaches of inner space … you can’t actually see the outside without looking through the inside … misnamed introverts engage the world thoughtfully and tenderly; extroverts thoughtlessly bump into it, devoid of language, howling at shapes and colors, without manual dexterity — punching mindlessly or slapping with open palms
EXTROVERTS ARE THE ONES WHO ARE FEARFULLY SHUT OFF FROM THE WORLD, WHO ARE AT WAR WITH THE WORLD; MISNAMED INTROVERTS TOUCH THE WORLD, MAKE THE WORLD THEIR PARTNER AND CHANGE THEMSELVES AND THE WORLD SIMULTANEOUSLY … SOCIETY GETS IT ALL WRONG, LEADERS ARE OUTCASTS AND THE ID IS CHOSEN THE MAN OF EVERY YEAR … BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS BECAUSE INDIVIDUALS REGARD EACH OTHER WITH SYMPATHY AND APPRECIATION AND CREATE ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS IN QUIET, ODD VENUES FAR FROM THE BEATEN PATH …
Oh yeah … this movie …
(I hope you know that the ideas in my writing aren’t from these movies … before the pandemic I used to go to movie theaters alone and meditate and think while the movie rolled on … I was writing, you know, notes in my head … I’d carry a pen or pad or a laptop and I’d write down my words as soon as the movie was over, or before if I couldn’t hold it anymore … I’m just doing this now … these aren’t reviews … I don’t want to insult most of you but this note is for those of you who don’t get that … I also hope I didn’t insult the readers who don’t get it … as a misnamed introvert I can report that you are all strange creatures … I have to spend a lot of time thinking to figure out what you are like at all, and even after all of that work I could very well be wrong, but at least it gives me a construct so I can deal with you … I feel like 90% of you are great, and that I have to be circumspect with the rest of you … and I don’t think that is an irrational fear … I don’t want anyone to fuck this up for me … this writing … this is my home and I want no invasions … thanks for understanding)
Doris in the movie starts overcoming the ageism and the conformist persecution of individuality
I had the opposite experience … I was free and the villagers came looking for Frankenstein
That happened in a lot of villages
But both Doris and I got to the same place
We grew deaf to the world’s mean foolishness
and clearly heard its omnipresent symphonies of love and good feeling
and harmonized
Joy and sympathy …
I have been called old off and on since I was thirty
I’ve never felt old for a minute.
Life is a new thing
until the very last minute.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/19/21: Affliction (1997): Doing Things Right #poetry
In the 1980s, a guy at NYU got me a free pass into the Creative Writing Program there
can you imagine — someone did that for me — handed me something worth tens of thousands of dollars
and I don’t remember his name
A girlfriend that I had at the time thought he was gay
He wasn’t
He didn’t have an agenda
She did
She wanted an excuse to cut me loose
She didn’t need one
She was a cold “visual artist”
Who did things right
she followed all of the recommended steps in her painting
and in her career
It was my time of exposure to people who did things right
Russell Banks was my creative writing teacher at NYU for a couple of months
I quit the program
It wasn’t for me
Russell Banks wrote the novel that was adapted into the film “Affliction”
He wrote “The Sweet Hereafter” and some other good work
A proper body of work
A proper literary career
He did things right
I’ve got nothing against doing things right
But when you do
you don’t come up with anything new
I was a refugee from a legal career
I couldn’t detect a difference between legal files
and Russell Banks’ fiction
or my ex -girlfriend’s paintings
I couldn’t detect a difference between legal careerism
and literary or art -world careerism
I was on the other extreme
I was living on friends’ couches
and unashamedly eating in soup kitchens
I was a couple of years from a nervous breakdown
Wildness was slowly turning into rage
My eventual psychiatrist
who used to be a Navy shrink
Dr. Viener
I remember his name
He taught me more about writing than Russell Banks ever did
and loved me more than that girlfriend
Who never loved me at all
I have no idea why we were together
I guess we just wanted to have a non -romance and an angry break -up
I needed someone to hurt me so i could get on with my desired project of avoiding intimacy with women or anybody else
and she needed to get a brief of justification to get rolling on her useful lifelong habit of cutting people loose who were of no use to her ambitions …
Russell Banks just thought I was doing things wrong
and would never get them right
and he was correct in his assessment
he really wasn’t interested in me
he knew that I was in the wrong place …
the insight was mutual
and eventually I went away
Banks wrote stories about marginalized people suffering
but never connected — I don’t think — the suffering to creativity
The creativity belonged to him
Not the characters
Their pain was the raw material of Banks’ creative satisfaction
and to a properly lesser extent
the fodder for his recognition and awards
Banks saw pain
but he didn’t see its redemptive qualities
Just like the society that rewarded him
The limitation of Banks’ writing is that he never got outside of society
He chronicled suffering
He painted portraits of empathy
and left it at that
I think that — I really don’t remember
I just know for sure that what Banks was doing was not for me …
I see Banks type every word of the novel “Affliction”
I see the director story board every shot
I see the actors neatly prepare for their roles
and rehearse their scenes
Every moment of the film
every word
every image
every emotion
is chosen
Meticulous and precise
So much exertion to understand what happens
and then report
their immaculate findings
The affliction of the title is the wound of an adult man who was abused as a child
I admire this movie
in spite of its stiffness
It’s so focused
A masterpiece of attention
protecting itself from all strangeness and surprise
It’s important to study wounds
but I want answers
Maybe Russell Banks was trying to figure something out for himself with his writing
He had questions
I just follow along and wonder
I used to have these sweet Irish friends who sentimentalized sadness, loneliness, failure and death …
Banks fetishizes same
I think suffering is Banks’ gilded cage
He can’t afford to quit suffering
It’s how he made his name
And that old girlfriend has spent her life hanging pictures of dead things on the wall
and Dr. Viener
and the U. S, Navy
gave me answers.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas

2/22/21: A Quiet Passion (2016) — Ogres Avoided and Dragons Slayed, Paradise Preserved #poetry
Reminder … my poems about the movies are not about the movies …
Slay the dragon “Thou Shalt”
If you are an artist you were born happy
and possessed of a sure footed balance in the pursuit of the sustaining and expanding of that joy
Happiness never escapes criticism
Misery loves company
Cowards wish to hamper the bold
It makes them feel better about themselves
The story of the crippled poet is a rationalization
for those who have failed as human beings
The artist is born ancient
The hard won wisdom of all of the past ages of mankind
are natural endowments of the newborn artist
Immaculately conceived
in a moment of un – conflicted love
by all that is pure and innocent in humanity
The artist’s parents saw Eden at the moment of orgasm
and then returned to their confused and fallen natures
The art child remained with (at least) one foot in eternity for all of his or her days.
An artist is a proverbial “old soul”
beyond desires for achievement and success
The process is the purpose
The careerist never really does anything
Only the artist can create something new and needed and appropriate to the moment
The artist takes what comes and is where or he or she likes
He or she may joust with the ogre achievement and his wife the bitch goddess success
But eventually he
or she
simply walks around the ogre and the bitch
They remain dissatisfied with the artist
and throw fists and insults his or her way
fists and insults that once brought great pain
now bring sad smiles
The artists’ accusers suffer in prisons
and claim that they live in mansions
Is dishonesty a symptom of addiction?
Is mankind drunk?
Does the human race think it is on the road to fulfillment
while it reels in a stupor
mistaking desperation for joy and passion
while self -destructively bringing itself harm
and destroying its future
before being finally sick and hungover
broken and waiting for death
terrified by the truth
unable to face the reality
of its abdication of responsibility
it’s choice of murder suicide
over love and life?
The artist is denied support by his or her critics
who jeer “who do you think you are?”
“What gives you the right to be alive?
“To love?”
The critics will give no support
but the artist is safe and secure
carried by unseen hands
a dollar
a friend
an audience
an idea
they all arrive
when needed.
The Lord is my Shepherd
I will not want.
The artist follows the authority of his or her soul
and that soul relays to the artist
the Will of God
and God furthers his or her purposes.
Enough with past critics
I’ve processed them all
My anger was from an invasion of boundaries
How dare they tell me how to live my life
How to work
How to be
It was an invasion
a perversion
a kind of abuse
the bosses, the cliques
Society is a bad father
Bullying his children to do his will
Society tells us its hectoring is for our own good
but really
like any bad father
the motivation is the father’s pride …
The artist’s rebellion turns into integrity
The bad father’s sin
paradoxically serves God’s purpose
The sin is a forge
which shapes God’s vessel.
Like Emily Dickinson
I want some approval before I die
Not approval for performing society’s immoral missions
It’s cultish worship of death
Approval for my work as the world’s equal
In dialogue with the world
Life is constantly procreating
I want part of the world to acknowledge my love affair with it
And I am certain that acknowledgement is near
I have always received the job, the money, the friend, the love, the experience that I have needed
precisely at the time that I have needed it
My consciousness rolls forth
my dreams and my waking mind are one
I know that my chance is near
I am speaking of something far different than achievement or success …
Emily Dickinson suffered
She contained herself
protecting her gift
never leaving her family home
frustrated by her obscurity
and her lack of intimacy with a man
but fierce
in her poetry
All that sacrifice for art
Only after her death did Emily Dickinson’s writing reach wide audiences
Her sister found Emily’s body of work after she died
and the sister shared it.
While she was living, she shared her work with a few friends
and had a relative few poems published
Emily Dickinson wouldn’t compromise a punctuation mark in her poems
As you can see, she is one of my heroes
I intend to have the satisfaction of recognition of my work while I am living however
I ask God for what I want and need and he gives it to me
God listens to me
Emily Dickinson needed someone to share her poems
so do I
she couldn’t do it herself
nor can I
I don’t know how
I can’t write them and disseminate them at the same time
But I will not do what Emily Dickinson did
and hide my writing in a drawer
only to be found by my next of kin at the time of my passing
Someone will find them long before then
I am sure of this
My prayers are answered
I publish them on a blog
two birds with one stone
Sharing with the friends that all poets need
The kind and open souls who listen
and …
just as importantly
my words aren’t hidden
The worldwide web is not a drawer
The poet must be solitary and alone
(An artist is a hemophiliac — intense sensitivity creates easy bleeding … an artist’s partner must love the artist and be wise to the cruelties of the world — an artist’s partner must protect the artist and surgically transplant the artist’s words only in the regions of the world where they will not be rejected, for the sake of the artist and the world)
and his or her words
must be far more outgoing.
I write this poem as a prayer of abundance
I know my partner is walking toward me …
There are people whose art is planting the seeds of artists in other fertile souls …
Art doesn’t compromise
in order to fit in …
Art travels on odysseys
in search of where it fits …
Poetry fits in the open fields
beyond the silos
Each social grouping builds a silo
hierarchies and power structures
that have disdain and indifference for all of the other hierarchies and power structures in the other silos
business is a silo
the professions are silos
art institutions are silos
academia is a silo
families are silos
social cliques are silos
silos, silos, silos
all different
feeling superior to all others
but in essence the same
abstractions
all claiming to be better than nature
and better than God
all full of shit
In the fields beyond the silos
solitary persons wander
occasionally gathering in groups
and warming by a fire
It is near those fires
that my writing will be read
My words will resonate in the solitude of a thousand hearts
and all of those hearts will vibrate toward one another
in humming harmonies …
If you don’t do it this way you never create anything you never come up with anything of value …
I never wanted a career —- I pursued this from the beginning.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas