Watching highlights from my Carson DVD set. What a truly interesting, fun guy who came into people’s bedrooms 5x a week for 60-90 mins. for 30 years!
So much of the pleasure of watching Carson came from watching for the spontaneous humor and unexpected live moments, and, especially from enjoying how he, a kind of hip Everyman, reacted to these openings, opportunities, and possibilities.
So much of life is about play and its possibilities as he showed, whether he was reacting to something unexpected an animal guest would do or a child guest would say.
It is the play that gives us the most pleasure of all–whatever it is. The most delight, the imaginative and funny bone turn-on, the word play, the situation comedy play, the spontaneous stuff, that breaks through the otherwise humdrum, conventional, steadily serious surfaces.
Most of my best and past has been about play whether it be from public performances with an audience or private play with individuals such as my grandson. In many ways, it is my most essential and potentially entertaining self. Possibly the freest and most loving self as well, I might add. In quite another sense, “The play’s the thing” as Shakespeare said. Play–a definite quiddity. Yes, I had and, luckily, still have that–my surface bloggish seriousness and thoughtfulness aside.