RUDIMENTS, PT. 251
Making Cars
I guess I got sidetracked a
hundred times. I fell for this,
and I fell for that. But nothing
for very long. My own life had
become as one long, unfolding,
moment, and I was enjoying it.
The biggest, and most initial
struggle was in getting free.
One fault of my results is that,
somehow, after I really was
free, and, I guess, not recognizing
that, I let myself to be drawn
back into the usual lockstep:
work, family, child-rearing, house
and home, possessions. You know
the rest. Everything sort of comes
with those invisible chain-links
attached that you never see. They
should make some special glasses
for kids, for that. Anyway, how
are you going to explain that to
the others around you - dear and
kindred. At the same time, I felt,
you can't really say 'thanks,' either.
-
It's unacceptable to say 'Prison's
what you make it,' because that's
not true at all.
-
There was a certain point, a dark
and dreary interlude, when Drama
saved me - I mean Drama as in
theater and plays. Not so much
the performance - I didn't care
about that and I always have
disliked 'performers.' Of any
sort. I understood their material,
but never understood them. Why
anyone would want to take their
personal baggage out on stage,
or film, and pawn It off into
and as another character, and
expect it to somehow be believable,
was beyond me. A writer, in the
smallest way, does that, I suppose,
but at heart it's still the writer.
There's no intermediary, and no
stage tricks. It's raw and it's
personally vivid. It can be
answered to BY the writer as
being his or hers. So can a play,
or a show, but, it's the performance
part of it that has no validity. The
portrayer is just faking. 'When I go
out on stage, I am Johnny Ducane;
I become him.' News bulletin: You
are not, and you do not.
-
But. nonetheless I went at it. I
studied and clawed - long library
nights, mainly because there wasn't
another anything for someone like
me to do. High schools kids were
shit; pains in the asses all around
me. Joyrides. Fun. Stupidity. Lust.
Sometimes, to me, it seemed there
was a confessional at every street
corner; maybe even doubling as
a phone booth - everyone always
retelling adventures, spilling the
beans, going on and on. It was
tiresome. I've made mention before,
probably a million chapters ago
somewhere, of my two biggest
undertakings in senior-year high
school - neither of them actually
ever completed to my satisfaction.
One was to have been my epic
compilation of the 'European Coal
and Steel Community' - later just
called the 'European Common
Market' (postwar, 1954). I
started on it, worked on tons of
it, compiled stuff, but I never
really brought it off. The second
was my work on the playwright
Eugene O'Neill. That was really
deep, made of every insidious
piece of psychology and cross-
introspection I could find. Old
Greenwich Village, Provincetown
Playhouse on MacDougal Street,
those early days, The Golden
Swan, etc. NYC right there was
still rich in the traces of those
things - Minetta Lane, Minetta
Street, Sullivan Street. I could
have gotten lost, and if there
had been a time-door found, I'd
have gladly walked through it.
I go back there enough now, as
often as I can, just to sniff the
traces of what I can recall, even
though most all of it is now fakery
and bluster. Man, I hate how people
have gotten their noses all twisted
around bad hankies - overly
sensitive, bastardized college kids;
the fey theater and dining crowd,
the voyeurs and touristas knowing
little about what they see and
caring less. When you start to go
to the theater for just the clothes and
the food, it's wrong. Sometimes I feel
to the theater for just the clothes and
the food, it's wrong. Sometimes I feel
to go to the Northern Dispensary,
sit on the ground there, shoot up,
and just expire, leaning on the wall.
Just like the old days. No one home.
-
I found so many things. "There's
a doctor who comes to you because
he wants to make money, and there's
a doctor who comes to you because
he's interested in science, and there's
a doctor who comes to you because
he cares for the poor." That's Stella
Adler, in one of her acting-tutorials.
Mixing in with my studies of O'Neill,
I slam up against her (on purpose,
'sorry lady'). She said so many
great things on the subject. Here:
"Thousands of millions of years
are in us. I'm going to treat you as
if you were millions of years old,
not just a pisher on the street. [A
pisher is Yiddish for an 'inexperienced
person, or someone of no importance'].
I want you to know that the most
important thing in opening a play is
to know the circumstances. Where
does it take place? Is he writing
in Venice? Are you in a garden in
1870, or 1970? Is there a thunderstorm?
In 1970 you have something that
diverts lightning from striking your
house. In 1870 you could not divert it.
It struck your house and the house
burned down. Time and place give
you a great deal - the social
circumstances. An actor who
doesn't know where he is is crazy.
You must know, and on that stage,
that you're in the garden, in prison,
in an insane asylum; in a house,
if it's 1870 or 1960. You've got
to know where and when. This
is a crucial part of the craft. You
must know this, but the actor who
does not is a bad actor. Emoting
and sobbing? What are you doing?
The cheapest thing in the world is
beauty and temperament. Every
stinker has temperament. A cab
driver has temperament. You've
got temperament. So what? You're
just acting. You have to know.
You have to know the season,
what class of people you come
from, the ethic of the time, the
morality of the time. You must
know that every play starts with
the present but every play has a
past. If you don't know the past
of your play, you don't know your
play." None of that sounds like
too much, but here it means a
lot. O'Neill was a stickler for the
most detailed scene descriptions,
letting actors, and the rest, know
exactly what he was portraying
and laying out. Nothing was to
chance, all was stipulated. The
idea with O'Neill was he hated
actors. Because of that, he MADE
them do. He dealt with ancient,
inexorably horrible themes and
shoved them down the actors'
throats. In an O'Neill play, you
almost have to play the symbol
and a man, at the same time. It's
that brutal. (And it's also why, for
so long now after the 1950's, he's
fallen out of fashion). He does not
deal with trivialities : He gives
you a man's struggle with his
fate against superhuman forces.
In Mankind's history, that sort
of struggle used to be with the
Gods - the Greeks. Now it's
with himself and his/her own
past. That's the underlying
theme in all O'Neill plays :
Man struggles with all aspects
of life on an epic plane. It is
not lyrical. It is melodramatic.
-
Two more things, and then I'll
let this rest for a while. The
first is : A poet recognizes he
is detached from reality. He
knows somehow about life,
death, and love; or thinks he
does. Secrets, that no realist
can explain with mere 'realist'
writing. It has to be drawn out,
into that step beyond, where
a true writer will live. Or at
least where the true poet lives.
Past that point, for the writer or
the poet, life fails and crumbles
because nothing else will work.
All is abandoned; into a no place
that is both a nether-world AND
a Heaven too. And, secondly,
'Someone once wrote that
O'Neill writes as if no one else
has ever wrote before, as if he
discovered writing.' That's
good enough for me.
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