“The world is a
comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.”
~ Horace Walpole, 4th
Earl of Oxford, from
a letter of Walpole's to Anne, Countess of Ossory, on 16 August 1776
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| from Miss O's Drama Teacher Ear Accessory Collection |
This past month, Readers, your Miss O’ has
barely written a word. The household needs of new bathroom pipes and flooring, replastered
kitchen wall, repainting of cabinets, and working kitchen appliances (and the attendant work,
clean-ups, and deliveries) sucked up my summer. Then, in a blow to the heart
one day after my last
blogpost (an eerily titled “Big Bangs of August"), on August 11, 2014, Robin Williams died; and as if that wasn’t a bad enough loss to not only show
business and to culture, but to humanity, another legend, Joan Rivers, died just
this week, on September 4, 2014. His death of a suicide at age 63 was a
tragedy; hers sad but not altogether unexpected, being 81 years old, even from
complications during elective surgery. But it got me thinking about comedy in
the wake of tragedy, especially after the death of Robin Williams, as all those
tabloids took to their mastheads, and the outpourings of grief made their way
into online journals and newsfeeds. And HOW. So let me say this about that, and
a few other things, including the late, great Joan Rivers. And karate. And it
will all make sense. Mostly.
Improvisations in the Key of Joy
“The mind is its own place, and in
itself
can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
~ John Milton, Paradise Lost
Optimism. Defeatism. Robin
Williams, who
created out of his own mind, in the moment, but always working hard at that—a beloved
man universally, despised only by the hateful, seemed to be nothing if not
positive. As it turns out, he worked very hard at that, too. What is it about
optimism that is so hard, and about negativity that is so easy? Self-hatred
rules most of us; as a teacher I remember how it's the angry kid who slams
down his books who owns the classroom, and how it might take a half hour to
get the class back to a positive focus; or when one guy in the audience is determined to
destroy your act, how hard to you have to work to win them back. And it’s
usually over stupid stuff, all the negativity (and it's usually a guy who wrecks a moment, in my experience, but not always. I read a friend on Facebook who
was irate that some pranksters had knocked over her mailbox and removed her
flag from its giant front-yard pole, in post after hourly post, but could not manage any outrage over Ferguson.) So when a person makes that perfect funny remark in the
middle of a tense moment, how perfectly wonderful is that laugh? It’s like the blessed inhaling of air after surfacing from a too-deep plunge, when we weren’t
sure how we’d get back—nothing but relief.
Behind the clear blue eyes of the no
longer living and yet still ubiquitous Robin Williams was a very visible
sadness. Like many actors, he was at heart an introvert (so many accounts of
him in the weeks after his death bear this out) and it was apparent in the way
he performed—in his high-wire improvised comedy act he reacted to audience
suggestions without developing an intimacy with his audience. (I contrast him
with the equally bold, caustic extrovert Joan Rivers, who always talked to and asked
for the name of a person in the audience, and over the course of her act developed
a relationship with her, and you could see how she’d be a wonderful friend; and
also the gentle and hilarious Carol Burnett, for example, whose easy warmth
poured over an audience at the opening of every one of her shows, where she
took questions and playfully answered while also being utterly present to the
people who asked the questions.) While behaving as if fearless in front of a
crowd and exuding real empathy with fellow performers, he kept a very tight
cage around his being even as his genius verbiage was unleashed upon us in
manic streams. There was a real containment, for all his wildness—watch him on
talk show after talk show, fly out (physically or verbally) and just as quickly
pull back, as if responding to a leash. The fascinating and deeply sad
revelation, I think for most of us, is how much our hearts ached when we
learned of his death, and what made it feel like a sucker punch was that it was
a suicide. For so ubiquitous was his presence, and so wearing could his energy
become, it was as easy to take him for granted as it is to take for granted the
Grand Canyon, the Washington Monument. Or the World Trade Center. And we saw
how that turned out.
And here, before I get maudlin, let’s
pause for some levity from Joan Rivers.
Rivers will take the piss out of
anything. Shortly after I had lost a big job, she called, and when I answered
the phone a bit too quickly she said, “Really? The first ring? So desperate.” And then she hung up on
me. A few days after 9/11, she called and asked me if I wanted to meet her for
lunch at Windows on the Ground. She pushes as far as she can as soon as she
can. It’s compulsive.
(Do read that article, and watch
that documentary, A Piece of Work. And
now back to my grieving for Robin Williams.) The other revelation that first
week had to do with the generosity of his own heart, hiding in plain
sight—Comic Relief for homelessness (his idea); St. Jude’s Hospital;
entertaining the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; benefit after benefit for any
number of causes, including Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease Foundation.
This last proved to be ironic, and a literal (and by "literal" I mean "figurative") nail in his upcoming coffin: Robin
Williams was in the early stages of the disease, and for a physical comedian
like him that discovery must have compounded his depression to a degree we can
only know by seeing the results, his terrible death. But it's his life we want to remember, after all.
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| Who looks younger? -from Time, Inc. |
We Interrupt Our Grieving
Lots of people have posted on this
event, this loss. An actor friend who has also been grieving the loss of Robin was
sharing a lot of essays on Facebook, including the one below, which I’d like
you to read, if you would, because I had a comment. A long one.
Robin William’s Last Gift by Peter Coyote, asshole*
*Editorial comment –ed.
*Editorial comment –ed.
Robin and I
were friends. Not intimate, because he was very shy when he was not performing.
Still, I spent many birthdays and holidays at his home with Marsha and the
children, and he showed up at my 70th birthday to say “Hello” and wound up
mesmerizing my relatives with a fifteen minute set that pulverized the
audience.
When I heard
that he had died, I put my own sorrow aside for a later time. I’m a Zen
Buddhist priest and my vows instruct me to try to help others. So this little
letter is meant in that spirit.
Normally when
you are gifted with a huge talent of some kind, it’s like having a magnificent
bicep. People will say, “Wow, that’s fantastic” and they tell you, truthfully,
that it can change your life, take you to unimaginable realms. It can and often
does. The Zen perspective is a little different. We might say, “Well, that’s a
great bicep, you don’t have to do anything to it. Let’s work at bringing the
rest of your body up to that level.”
Robin’s gift
could be likened to fastest thoroughbred race-horse on earth. It had unbeatable
endurance, nimbleness, and a huge heart. However, it had never been fully
trained. Sometimes Robin would ride it like a kayaker tearing down white-water,
skimming on the edge of control. We would marvel at his courage, his daring,
and his brilliance. But at other times, the horse went where he wanted, and
Robin could only hang on for dear life.
In the final
analysis, what failed Robin was his greatest gift---his imagination. Clutching
the horse he could no longer think of a single thing to do to change his life
or make himself feel better, and he stepped off the edge of the saddle. Had the
horse been trained, it might have reminded him that there is always something
we can do. We can take a walk until the feeling passes. We can find someone
else suffering and help them, taking the attention off our own. Or, finally, we
can learn to muster our courage and simply sit still with what we are thinking
are insoluble problems, becoming as intimate with them as we can, facing them
until we get over our fear. They may even be insoluble, but that does not mean
that there is nothing we can do.
Our great-hearted friend will be back as the rain, as the cry of a Raven
as the wind. He, you and I have never for one moment not been a part of all it.
But we would be doing his life and memory a dis-service if we did not extract
some wisdom from his choice, which, if we ponder deeply enough, will turn out
to be his last gift. He would beg us to pay attention if he could.
This angered me, and as to why, I didn’t have to think
about it long. I sent the following comment on this essay (ass-ay) by Peter “I’m
a Zen Buddhist priest” Coyote to my friend, with apologies:
I don't like this piece,
or this perspective. It puts all the “failure” (lousy word) “of imagination” on
Robin Williams (owner of that imagination), which is what he believed was the
problem (right? he's a failure?) and so he killed himself. "Take a walk
until the feeling passes"? He was an avid cyclist. "Find someone else
suffering and help them"? He entertained troops in Afghanistan and Iraq,
relentlessly, and never spoke of it; he volunteered at St. Jude's. Robin
Williams didn't fail himself or anyone else. Peter Coyote, all due respect, is
simply clueless about depression. It's like proposing, "think happy
thoughts" to a diabetic. You are not a “failure” or “unimaginative” for
having diabetes. You are not a “failure” or “unimaginative” for having
depression. Thanks for sending this ass-ay, though, because it's enlightening
when we are reminded of how unenlightened the "enlightened" really can be.
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| by Roz Chast for The New Yorker |
I am considering Walpole’s epigram,
there at the top, one I’ve thought about for years, since coming across it (I
think my mom, Lynne, may have given it to me, along with others by Thackery,
Milton, Tagore; I wrote them up in my own particular calligraphy and pasted
each into my three-ringed binder end papers, which binder I used all through
high school), rethinking its implications. What would Joan Rivers say? What
would Robin Williams riff? What is “the world” to humans such as they were, two
people who thought and felt in equal measure, and who, like all people, had
their exits and their entrances, good times and bad times, and yet were fully
here while they were here.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger.
Comedy is when
you fall into an open sewer and die.
~ Mel Brooks, The 2,000 Year Old Man
Joan Rivers told jokes where Robin
Williams created worlds, and both were by turns hilarious and exhausting. Both
Joan Rivers and Robin Williams were certainly feelers, and clearly they were
thinkers. But given their responses to both hecklers and critics, to turns of
events in the world and to the people around them, Miss O’ would say that Robin
Williams was more of the thinker, Joan Rivers more the feeler. But considering
their ends, last interviews, etc., Rivers was becoming more of a thinker, and
Williams was broken by his feelings. What I mean to say is, it doesn’t matter,
labels like this. Life is both a comedy and a tragedy (any Facebook newsfeed
reveals this, unless the Team Facebook has been dicking with our feed for
funsies), and all of us at any given time both think and feel, and can
experience tragedy and comedy. It’s a question, finally, of reaction, a question of discipline, a
matter of control. There is only so much we can control, and stand-up comics
know this better than anyone. Hecklers try to take on comedians, and the comics
who can show the hecklers to be fools will survive. But in the end, back to
being only human, Rivers couldn’t control her heart’s reaction to anesthesia,
Williams his mind’s reaction to depression and the news of Parkinson’s disease. (I started laughing just now, thinking of a
really lousy Daily News-worthy prose
line, like “God was the final heckler.” Oh, me.)
But the lives of Joan Rivers and
Robin Williams show us what great can
be, what “over-the-top” is, what “flopping” looks like—and their resilience in
the face of it all, the relentless drive, the constant working, show us what
professionalism looks like. (Watch every YouTube Clip you can find of Joan Rivers hosting The
Tonight Show in the 80s—she was the first person to use the word “pregnant”
on the air, and told us to “grow up.” She talked about being single, being
married, lovemaking, children, periods, IUDs, menopause—she was a female and a
comedian, and she kicked down male-constructed walls, a balls-on “vagenius” as
Roseanne called her. Whew.) (And watch Robin Williams’s last
appearance on The Tonight Show: on the second to last night of the week he
retired, Johnny Carson had only Robin Williams on for a full hour. Because Johnny
loved him, and it was his show. Whew.) Whatever you thought of their comedy,
they were honest about their lives, their reactions to the world around them,
and they came out onto the stage disciplined yet also unfiltered—the thrilling
knife-edge world of real geniuses.
What is the difference between
someone who is good, and someone who is a master? It’s that ability to walk the
knife-edge of comedy and tragedy, because it’s all there in potential. And that
is the thrill for us, the ones who can only look on.
Hai Karate!
~ Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview
(1971)
I
have come to discover through earnest personal experience and dedicated
learning that ultimately the greatest help is self-help; that there is no other help but self-help—
doing one’s best, dedicating one’s self wholeheartedly to a given task, which
happens to have no end but is an ongoing process.
~
from The
Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996)
So let's talk about Zen. (I really cannot even begin to express the depth of my anger over Peter Coyote's essay. Seriously. Jesus. Okay then.) My boyfriend, H, defended his black
belt last night. An Albanian who is 5’7”, 115 lbs., and 60 years of age, H was
chosen (by the manager at the facility where he trains) to match up against a Ugandan
man who was 6’4”, 248 lbs., and 48 years of age, who was trying to earn his
black belt. If H lost, he would lose his black belt. He did not lose. The fight
lasted 180 seconds. Before they entered the circle, the belt-seeker took one
look at H and said, “I’m a lot bigger than you.” H said simply, “You are.” When
the match concluded with H flipping the man over his head (flat on his back,
the man did not have the wind to get up), a young woman who had lost her own
match told H, “I was sure you were going to the hospital,” and asked him to
train her. “Why?” asked H. “I want a master,” she said. “The master is in you,”
H explained. He’s not being “Kung Fu” deep, or deliberately tricky—his mind
doesn’t work that way. He could give her some training tips, and did, but his
point was she had to find that ability, that control,
within her own body, her own mind. It would be like if you wanted to be a
stand-up comic, asking Joan Rivers or Robin Williams to be a mentor: In the
end, whatever their help, either you’re funny or you’re not funny. It’s in you.
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| A 1970s fragrance, best left unsmelled. |
This question of providing and
encouraging training, whether for a
black belt or a headline gig at Caesar’s Palace, at whatever age, is something
I think is sorely lacking in America in every area—because I know you give a
huge fuck what Miss O’ thinks. H is sorry, for example, that the NYPD—and every
policeman in the U.S. (Ferguson, is this on?) and in the world, as well as
every military person in the world—isn’t trained fully in martial arts. Far
from being more dangerous, they would be more effective, and use less violence,
not more. “They would know they have the control,” H says, “and with one hand
on the wrist, one turn”—H demonstrates on me—“the suspect is helpless.” No more
choke holds, no more gunfire. And if the police knew they had the control, they
would lose the aggression born of fear. In fact, if everyone had that training,
that control—“that education,” as H puts it—there would be no more fighting.
The master is in YOU.
Prince Ea, a hip-hop artist and
founder of The “Make SMART
Cool” Movement, with a degree in Latin (he graduated with honors from the
University of Missouri-St. Louis), had wonderful stuff to say in a
video that went viral in the wake of Ferguson. Measured, thoughtful,
philosophical, and casual (he was on his way to his car, being filmed by a
friend), he shared the most reasoned and mature commentary on the events I've heard, and it could
be the answer to all the world’s problems. (After Ferguson, H said, “You are a
racist, fine, go be a racist. Don’t marry them, don’t eat with them, don’t talk
to them. But don’t SHOOT them. What’s the matter with these white people?”) This
knowledge, H’s training, Robin’s and Joan’s senses of humor, a love of reading,
and a good, steady job—really, life doesn’t have to be as ugly as the
Republicans want it to be. Life is improvisation. We are the agents of our
lives, the victims of our circumstances, the survivors of our stories. It’s
important for all of us to TRAIN to be good people. (And I don't mean "spiritual" "training" in the "sense" expressed by Peter "Let Me Mix Some Metaphors About Body Parts/Horse Racing/Watercraft" Coyote.) Politeness is not a reflex,
but a muscle in atrophy that must be coaxed into fitness, to make us fit for
society. As Emerson observed, "Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy." And a good joke.
Oh, Grow Up. Can We Talk?
“Honey, I know you
don’t want to hear this, but your dad and I want you to know that a
foul-mouthed woman is a real turn-off.”
~
My mom, Lynne, in an email to Miss O’, ca. 2006
The epigraph above is by way of
setting up a little global hypocrisy, to wit: Daily Show host Jon Stewart has some variation on “fuck” bleeped
out maybe a half-dozen times each episode, and my mom and dad wouldn’t miss a
moment of it. But my parents really couldn’t stand Joan Rivers. Joan made them
uncomfortable, liberal though they were (and are). Because Joan was a woman, my
mom (the feminist! more Maude than Maude!),
thought her swearing was distasteful. Joan Rivers (unlike her closest female
contemporary, Phyllis Diller) worked “blue,” as they say in comedy. But so did
Robin Williams. “Fuck,” “asshole,” and every other foul word came comfortably
and fluidly out of both of their mouths throughout their acts, but only Joan
was taken to task for it. (It’s one of the reasons I adore Sarah Silverman, who
is branded (and, therefore diminished in her genius) a “shock comic” for her
use of language. No one I’ve read or spoken to has said that of Robin
Williams.)
A sweet reader of this blog, who is
friends with my friend George, messaged me on Facebook a little while back to
ask me why I used the “f-word” so freely in my blogs. She wasn’t criticizing, she
noted, but as she herself does not swear, she found herself wondering at my use
of foul language in my own writing. Here was my (slightly edited) response:
I think it's a great
question about the "f" word. While my mom, Lynne, cautions me,
"A foul-mouthed woman is a real turn-off," I realized while at Bread
Loaf with George and Jean (where we met), that among ourselves, we could talk
about anything; so if at the table for six in the dining hall a new person sat
down, one of us might use the f-word, and depending on the reaction from the
new person, you could figure out how far to take a conversation. I used to call
it "breaking the f%@k barrier." It didn't mean I rejected anyone, but
it made me aware that there were limits. When I started my blog, I knew that if
I used the f-word, readers would know that everything could be on the table.
It's why Jon Stewart uses it, I'm sure. I use it consciously, and try to place
it strategically. For some, it's a vulgarity only, but for me it's an
invitation to stay at the table. Does that make sense? I just love that you
asked about it, because until this moment I never thought it through.
Not a few days after this exchange,
a meme floated around Facebook which said that people who
swear have been found to be more honest and trustworthy than people who don’t.
I posted the meme, because I’m a swearer (ahem), despite the fact that I
couldn’t find any corroborating Internet info (think about Goodfellas: all those guys speak is the language of “fuck,” and
then lie to their moms, and then kill people). I did find
this article in Psychology Today, indicating that a little swearing is
probably healthy. But what about the honesty quotient?
There’s no doubt, I think, that
whatever the plastic surgery Joan Rivers had, and whatever substance abuse
issues Robin Williams experienced in his life, these two comics are loved and
missed so hard because they were honest. They did not have agendas. They looked
at the world, lived in the world, looked us in the eye, and told the truth as they saw it, and
fortunately for all of us, they saw it funny. Relentlessly.
Here they are, photographed
together, when Robin Williams was making
fun of the Royal Family, as Joan Rivers also liked to do. Nothing like
poking holes in overstuffed non-ruling monarchy, because you really can’t hurt them, and they can't hurt you…anymore.
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| with Andrew Sachs (of Fawlty Towers fame) and Eric Idle from royalista.com |
In a short span of weeks, Robin
Williams and Joan Rivers are dead.
And Dick Cheney lives.
See? The world can be both tragic and funny.
In memoriam and in love, too,
Miss O’
