“When we are born, we cry, that we are come to this great stage of fools.” William Shakespeare
You’re gonna love this one. I don’t know how many times I have already shared that I began this whole writing deal as a way of expressing myself. It was the start of a word adventure that began on Halloween evening, October 31, 2011. Back then, my intention was to share my life history with my very, young grandson. I never imagined myself pontificating about the state of the world, but it did manage to seep in throughout the recounting of my personal history. Who I am and where I am dance together with me always.
Since January of this year, it has been impossible for me to write any stories without addressing the Great American Shit Show. The challenge for me and the way I write is that I just can’t do negative diatribes, no matter how easy it can be to fall into that bottomless pit these days. Life is challenging enough and who the fuck needs me to blow out the candle and make the darkness even darker?
Do we paint our life’s picture or is it painted for us? I think it is probably a combination of both. More importantly, what the hell is this doing in the third paragraph of my story? As luck would have it, I have an answer. I felt like I needed a break from the heaviness in my recent stories, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. All it took was a message from a long lost college buddy. It precipitated some communication between us, followed up by a great phone conversation.
My college days were sixty years ago. The longer the memories, the richer the colors in the paintings of the past. Around that time in my life, I was feeling torn between a life of convention or one that followed the spiritual whisperings that weren’t quite audible yet.
After realizing a life in medicine was not going to happen, I dog paddled through the rest my college years at Queens College in NYC. I grabbed at an opportunity to work the ’64 presidential coverage at NBC, a result of being in a radio/TV course. I loved the experience and ended up getting a job as page. I’d hop the F train every afternoon to 30 Rock, where I worked the Tonight Show, when Johnny Carson was still there. The pages were all older and most of them were looking for careers in show biz. I felt completely at home with these colorful characters.
In college, I was getting tired of being popular, a personality affliction going back to the time when I first began socializing as a kid. Like I said, the expanse of years gone by, allows for the possibility of a richer clarity regarding one’s history. I got no ego at work in that admission. It is just how it was for me. Something was going on and I wasn’t quite sure of it. I befriended a couple of guys in my college fraternity. They were the “bad boys”, moving me away from the center of that world, a little closer to the fringe. I was in line to be president of the fraternity if I wasn’t careful.
At that time in my life, the closest I could get to being different was to hang out with people who were. All the way back then, I certainly wasn’t thinking that way. When you are in the middle of something, the absence of perspective makes you near sighted. This all came up as a result of connecting with my long ago friend. He was exceptionally bright with an acerbic sense of humor, always wielding a sharp blade of words. It was really interesting, trying to relate to him today with yesterday’s memories. I could feel myself trying to catch up, bridging the years in seconds, in between sentences.
While we were talking, he sent the image of myself with Shakespeare, both miraculously leaning on Flaming Lips. I soon as I saw it, I knew this was the distraction I was looking for, without having any idea what to do with it. One way or another, I wanted to build a story around it and here we are. Actually, it felt like two stories. One had to be about my friend and my life, wrapped around those long ago years, which I’ve already touched upon. Going backwards is a much easier creative direction than the opposite, a void with no tracks to follow.
When I think about Shakespeare, I think about a guy, who was more prolific than Taylor Sheridan is today. He created these multi-dimensional archetypes. He put them in the middle of all sorts of conflicts and intrigue. His plays were like complex, intellectual/emotional cartoons, behavior taken to extremes, coupled with extraordinary dialogue.
Mactrump could easily have been the work of The Bard, if only it were fiction. Although, I am not sure about the dialogue. His genius for language, uttered by idiots, could go either way. Each daily curtain in our lives, feels like a dark fantasy, populated by a cast of characters that can’t possibly be real. They are perfect caricatures. It is a black comedy with ongoing, tragic consequences. I would love to drop my Playbill on the ground and jump up to furiously applaud the death of the king from a tainted, Diet Coke, the work of Sir Bernard of Sanders. Applause! Applause!
When the house lights come back up, here I am, sitting in front of of the screen, thinking about my next story. All those years ago, if you told me this is the life I’d be living, I never would have believed it. Back then, life was like a paint by numbers image, kind of predetermined, using a rather limited palette of choices.
In the late ’60’s, I was living in the East Village with a group of guys from NBC, who loved to party. This was decades before it became gentrified, very rough around the edges. I had a 250cc Honda motorcycle and by night, I dropped my conventional, corporate camouflage, feeling a kind of freedom that was very intoxicating. I was dangerously close to being the person I was meant to be. I could feel it and it scared me. I just wasn’t ready to take that leap of faith. Twenty years later, the time had come to leave the imposter behind. It wasn’t until I could actually feel the rest of my life that I began this journey of mine.
The decision to change everything about my life had its seeds planted decades earlier. The resolve to finally make the move seemed like flipping a switch, leaving forty years of life in NYC to move to the high desert country of Santa Fe, NM.
I had purchased a small adobe home, sitting on five acres of land. I didn’t have a job, just some names and numbers. I was fearless and I can’t tell you why. I was never comfortable in my skin until then. It was like acting in a play I didn’t write, until my inner Shakespeare handed me a script with no words, to be written with each new breath.
I think it is important to remember that no matter what is going on around us, we are starring in the play of our lives. We can’t let circumstances commandeer the keyboard of our life libretto. Opening night is every night for us and we have the best seat in the house. I have enjoyed concocting this tale and hope it has provided at least a few minute respite from your own travails, a forever work in progress.
LISTEN TO IT HERE:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/17039835-me-and-bill