To thine own self be true

Jean-Paul Sartre, the key French Existential philosopher, correctly stated that life is mainly and ultimately an individual matter, even if ‘we make it up as we go’. He’s right that, over time, we largely exist and, in reaction to this fact, we have the responsibility to define the potential meanings and purposes of our life. For Sartre, this is a matter of honest and free personal choice, quite apart from all the typical conventional buck-passing and avoidance of responsibility that plagues modern man even more than ever, especially today.

Seen this way then, life is a serious, weighty process of neverending choices, by which we define ourselves through our choices in media res. (This, in turn, consequentially, sets an example or role model for and influences others.) Life is quite risky and there are no guarantees except for what we can choose, will, and act on. In Sartre’s view, because one’s basic choices are honest and true to oneself, there is a tangible positiveness and optimism engendered, if one is willing to actualize one’s own destiny, so to speak.

It should be said from the outset that this is not of one of The Master’s best plays or comedies. However, this is a suitably frivolous, raunch-realized play for our coarse-focused age and so an unexpectedly successful Edmonton winter diversion. As mentioned, expect lots of weaker, heavier-handed writing. Not surprisingly then, the production chooses an over-the-top approach for this low comedy farce, book-ended by a 36 month sex fast (by the men) and a 12 month fast (by the shrewder women).

Although there are some better-written scenes where the language is allowed to prevail more conventionally, this version relies heavily on its look, notably in the French women’s costumes, the black-light Shakespeare rap, and added music including sax take-offs on a couple of olde pop songs. Entertainment, all-out zaniness and unpredictability counterbalance the outdatedness of the language and weaker speeches from many minor characters, especially.

There are some strong performances though, notably by the likeable Berowne (Neil Kuefler), easily the actor most comfortable with Shakespeare’s words and tones. As Don Armado, Oscar Derkx is humorously stupid and chauvinistic. And Boyet (Braydon Dowler-Coltman) does a reasonable facsimile of many of Danny Kaye’s manic performances.

Live and recorded music is used effectively to ironicize character introductions, to provide mood background, and to conclude the show. Despite the overall liteness of the plot, Director Kevin Sutley still manages to highlight the main theme of hypocrisy in relationships, and fashions a strong second act and a satisfyingly boisterous finale to complete the show.

Despite its heavy modern tv-toned raunchiness and one gratuitous partial nudity scene, Studio Theatre’s production of a liter/lesser Shakespearean comedy is well-worth seeing simply for its campiness and actor enthusiasms.

especially many women, who simply try to do their best–the key, defining word being “try”. They are among the nicest, kindest, most decent, in doing for or serving others–whether or not they are ever even noticed, acknowledged, understood, appreciated, gifted or loved, commensurately, in return.

(Random quotes from Virginia Woolf’s last-published, posthumous collection of criticism)

Each one rich, expansive and yet so-o concise. Each one a potential subject for a meditation, a blog entry, an article, an essay, a talk, a workshop. Quintessential Woolfisms.

(from “The Narrow Bridge of Art”)

“There is a zest in their presence, an interest in their doings. They seem alive all over….when they come into action, they cut real ice.”

“Shakespeare’s plays are not the work of a baffled and frustrated mind; they are the perfectly elastic envelope of his thought.”

“And the very freedom and curiosity are perhaps the cause of what appears to be his most marked characteristic–the strange way in which things which have no apparent connection are associated in his mind.”

“Poetry has always been overwhelmingly on the side of beauty.”

“We long for ideas, for dreams, for imaginations, for poetry.”

“Every moment is the centre and meeting-place of an extraordinary number of perceptions which have not yet been expressed. Life is always and inevitably much richer than we who try to express it.”

(from “Hours in a Library”)

“It would not be hard to prove by an assembly of facts that the great season for reading is the season between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.”

(from “Phases of Fiction”)

“Truth-telling implies disagreeableness. It is part of truth–the sting and edge of it.”

“The true romantic can swing us from earth to sky.”

“The novel is the only form of art which seeks to make us believe that it is giving a full and truthful record of the life of a real person.”

“Prose perhaps is the instrument best fitted to the complexity and difficulty of modern life.”

“How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.”
–Shakespeare, Hamlet

Agendas, dishonesty, betrayal, manipulation, and control are all too common in our brave new modern world. It’s not surprising that one may finally end up with just a few close friends–people who are themselves and who accept, understand, and appreciate you for who and what you are. The sort of unique positive experience far from the madding world of being treated as simply a means to an end–a checkmark in a boss’s year plan, the people who want desperately to find a great love, a ‘shack-up’, or a spouse, those who want lots of babies, or who want to live the ideal tv fantasy rich-and- famous lifestyle, very surfacely ‘having it all.’

There are those, however, who provide much relief and perspective from the usual uses of the human world–something I’ve found much of the past two years with both grandson and granddog. Dogs certainly are more honest than a lot of human beings from the get-go. They are what they are, needing little, often no more than being let outside, walked, fed, played with, and occasionally cleaned up after. Most make excellent companions, are funny, have their own unique personalities and presences. They will happily greet you no matter what mood you’re in, regardless of how lousy you look and feel. Their honesty and basic good natures are a shining contrast to the many users and game-players you have met in your life.

Refreshing, too, are very young children from babyhood to pre-school years. True, they eventually may ‘exploit’ parents and grandparents and even become nags re. potential toys and gifts, but to begin with, they (like dogs) are pretty much simply who and what they, basically and essentially, are. Simple beings mostly interested in the possibilities of play, who (like dogs) appreciate others’ attentions and time spent with them. Dogs and young kids are essentially innocent, ‘pure’, guileless and game-less and they are refreshing beings to be with. No social masks and totally unconcerned with ego. They accept what they are given and happily ‘take’ whatever attention and play are bestowed.

Many daze with all the negative nonstop non-caring changes, the mass-mindless buying into technology and e-media, the neverending war and violence, the fundamentally ‘entitled’ ego-centered politics, the continuing abuses against women and children, the insane extremes of political correctness, the relentless selling and advertising, etc.– those larger uses of the world, as well as the more immediate social ones within one’s life, demand respite and moratorium–in order to offer one a more pleasant alternative way of being and experiencing.

My advice to anyone who has reached a cynical state about the innumerable uses of the world would be: Get a dog or go hang out with a two-year-old. But be prepared to empathize and enjoy, especially on their levels. Re-learn life on the floor or grass in a simple, old world of mere play and fun. It is there you might even re-conjure your own, likely long-forgotten Inner Child.

“Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make. I see
the heavens laugh with you in your jubilee,
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
the fullness of your bliss, I feel–I feel it all.”
–William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations on Immortality”

“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.”
–Simone Weil, Gravity and Grouse

“I have to protect myself from the toxicity of this culture.”
–Kate Braverman, quoted in “From the Tropic of L.A.”

“The moment of change is the only poem.”
–Adrienne Rich, “Images for Godard”

“A poet is a state of mind.”
–Virginia Moore, “Saint Teresa”

“I am like an owl in the desert.”
–Anne Clifford, Diary entry, May 1616

“There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
–William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“In delay there lies no plenty.”
–William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“Everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities.”
–Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

“Live from your own centre.”
–Joseph Campbell

“Irony is wasted on the stupid.”
–Oscar Wilde

“I dwell in possibility.”
–Emily Dickinson

“I dream therefore I become.”
–Cheryl Grossman

Tennessee Williams’ The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is, basically, Blanche du Bois revisited: the ‘problem’ of lonely, aging women. Karen Stone’s husband who was some 20 years older than her was more of a father-protector than a lover, so she has missing pieces that she has avoided out of fear and not faced honestly (as things are always finally framed in a Williams’ work), notably about the connection involving desire, consummation, and possible extinguishment of loneliness and alienation. Because of ego, pride, and integrity, there is also something within which refuses sometimes to ‘use’ or employ others as a means to an end, or to be used that way in kind.

The author’s main view, as reflected by the novella and movie’s endings, is that life and love are basically ambiguous and risky. The latter offers possibilities and a chance to end loneliness and to explore natural, very human desire, with whatever implied fragility and ephemeralness. Mrs. Stone and Paolo do use each other (as in ‘agenda’) and do drift, finally, apart. But, for a time, the treatment of one another as a means to end simply did not matter to Karen. Before it was too late, she had addressed her need and filled her emptiness with Paolo’s attentions. Briefly, she no longer lonely and just drifting, as she had done for most of her life. Even her final act of throwing her keys to a complete menacing young man is a brave choice to move ambiguously ahead and forward, regardless of risk. At this point, she knows herself better and has honestly assumed more control over her life, independent of Paolo. As Joseph Campbell said, Sometimes you have to break eggs in order to make an omelette, or that one sometimes needs to jump; the chasm is not as wide as one thinks. (Mrs. Stone breaks eggs and jumps that chasm.)

It would be quite unfair or wrong to pass moral judgement on Mrs. Stone as being simply weak and finally ‘corrupted’. We have all of us been lonely and alienated at various times in our lives. We have all, as Williams puts it, in A Streetcar Named Desire, “depended on the kindness of strangers” to get us through whatever dark nights of the soul. Much as one might turn to artificial/technological means (e.g., Prozac), when nothing natural works, to alleviate darkest emotional and spiritual times. Perhaps we need to adjust our language from the harsh, judgemental (e.g., “weak”) to the more fair, more human (e.g., “basic need”) in how we view people like Mrs. Stone and their significant life-altering actions and choices.

“The authentic possibilities are singing everywhere around us.”                          

“This is IT. This is as good as it gets.”                                                                              

“Love is a delightfully, pleasurable, irrational. excessive empathy for someone else.”

“A man’s consciousness exceeds the limits and limitations of whatever physical diagnosis and technological information regarding self.”

“The significant individual life will always transcend whatever limited, limiting medical circumstances.”

“The human spirit and soul are greater than the limits of body and physical information about it.”

“Love is the truest gift of self.”

“When we’ve said, done, and offered our best and it has not been understood, appreciated, and reciprocated, then it is time to move on, to move forward without ever going back.”

“True Empathy is 100%, especially when it’s reciprocated.”

The freedom, integrity, and spirit of a true individual will always be greater than whatever limited, or potentially limiting information revealed by technology and technicians.

“I will begin the world…”–Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House

“Begin the World…”–added finale spoken by Esther Summerson to Mr. Jarndyce as she hands him Ada’s baby son Richard; BBC tv series of Bleak House (1985)