Hi folks. It’s time to be the adults in the room. And it has nothing to do with how old we are. Adults are supposed to be mature, protective, a source of perspective, the healers, the trees that have swayed in the winds, road signs, constitutions within themselves. We gain stature by distilling experience into wisdom. The human being — body, mind, and soul — is not an isolated entity. As with all life, we live together, as humans we’re allowed to dream, the mind contains the artist in us, the practician, the consoler, our connection to higher reaches, the engineer, the friend, spouse…
I like to think we can be anything we choose to be. Of course we don’t have unlimited freedom. We’re planetary serfs; obey natural laws or perish. I return to these basic conditions because we’re also in a world that is trying to escape its limitations, either become super rich like Elon Musk, or seek higher orders of experience. The second is obscured by the limitations of the former. The order of our universe is subject to limitations, sometimes self-imposed, sometimes ephemeral, sometimes misplaced moralities.
OK. Where is Harris taking us today? We know he’s part philosopher, part pragmatist, part idealist, part undercover operative, semi translucent caricature of a late 60s hippie, incipient novelist, and erstwhile husband. So I’m infinitely qualified to waste time ruminating on the state of our affairs.
I mean, how do you think we’re going to get through these times; by pretending we’re ever so sane? If we take ourselves too seriously and then complain we were ill-served by those observers who laughed us off, then perhaps we need to step back. There’s nothing pure and simple today. That template sits in the subconscious while we’re out tackling what we’re led to believe are the big and crucial issues facing us today. All while our poor subconscious is pleading with us to return to the immediate, the postponed, the dreamed about.
The villains of today do not cover their tracks. They parade in broad daylight. And the truth, now connected with “social,” hides actual facts with language. Villainy is now a fine art with deception masquerading as entertainment. This is all theater. Trumpian theater, unrelated to facts, or facts simply re-costumed. The script was written ages ago, and now we get to experience and enjoy it, all at our peril. The bill of sale reflects just how cheap and gaudy the contents are.
But don’t get too comfortable. There’s so much more trouble afoot.
The Israeli movie “Yes” has come along to baffle both sides of the coin. Can’t wait to see it. Bothsidesism gets its due. That’s where confusion reigns supreme and our preconceived notions of whose got the story straight get challenged. History apparently gets a reboot with “The Odyssey” where myth is brought back down to Earth. So some artists are actually trying to reframe the way we see history, or how actual events reframe the present. The point here being that terrible times still produce artists that see right through the illusions being built for other than our well-being.
Hideous laughter permeates the gallery of onlookers, myself included, because “too true to be good” prompts tears I’d rather be shedding for genuine causes. These pseudo-conflicts coming from the Middle East but originating from the back rooms of overly ornate ballrooms here and elsewhere are slaughterhouses. What will it take for all of us to take arms (so to speak) and neuter the abject and foul stench that’s ruining so many lives for naught? What can stop the personal and cruel selfishness that still makes feeble attempts to hide its calumny while rolling over swaths of population just because it’s our right to bomb out towns and breathe fire? A pause in the battle? What pause? Whose cousins, whose sons and daughters?
Answer- They’re all ours, or as Arthur Miller titled his play, “All My Sons.” It was a post-World War II reflection on how we sold out our values and directly caused our own deaths. Joe Keller let pass defective airplane engines valuing expediency over moral conscience. It was based on a true story about wartime manufacturing corruption involving the Wright Aeronautical Corporation. My cast at Florida High in Tallahassee was all high school students. They were incredible.
So where are our values? What do we strongly believe in enough to make sacrifice have value? What we see around us now is Joe Keller passing off incompetence and his own guilt for a nice family in the burbs. But it caught up with him finally. Like the classics, the past will always catch up with us. What we see now is untenable and has to change. We have to be the change. Somehow.
Alan Harris lives in Shelburne Falls with wife Jane, son Paul and cat Kiko who is scrupulous in all matters of cat protocol.