ENTR’ACTE

“I’ll believe in anything provided that it’s incredible. That is why I’m a Catholic, though I could never live as one” (Oscar Wilde). And in a confessional way, he added, “give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.”

Life can’t help but become a riddle tied to a conundrum in such a manner, after so many years of living life. Every straight line becomes opaque and refracted even when we’re on the straight & narrow. The hard and indurate go soft and pliant, and “tangerine trees and marmalade skies” (Lennon) go black and cold. Life “in repose” becomes one of measured movements and slowly shifting detentes.

It’s almost as if we enter a waiting room, an anti-chamber or foyer, between middle-age and infirmity. It’s the bridge between things held on to and that which lets everything go – left and right hands clinging to forward and rear rungs while we precariously swing. Is there no “sideways” swinging to preoccupy us, slow time down, to feign possible detours?

It feels like a kind of interlude when life’s hard labor fades along with physical strength, and thought engages us more in what lies ahead (while we deal with past contritions). Some people relish the extension of hard work as it becomes an excuse to avoid the future. But others see this space as almost an intermission between acts, a time to stretch our legs, find refreshment, co-mingle, and adjust our seating. We find those most like us to share, kibitz, and learn from with regard to the play – the theater of life under its cosmic proscenium. “How is it for you?” “Are you enjoying the performance?” “Are you witnessing the same themes and characters I am and in the same way?” Personally, I think too much of it is redundant and poorly written. Who wrote this thing anyway?

Are heroes really heroes? Is the truth really truthful, or there just truths? Is the real just klieg lights doing tricks on us, set at clever angles? Are the most impressive among us just gifted with masks, as Mr. Wilde said? Are we any different from them? Isn’t our purpose in life, in the final act, to give up those masks?” Have we been here before? Do we already know the denouement before it arrives? Why is the final message always unexpected and new to us? Is it new, really?

But we’re going too fast. Let’s just look at our protagonists for a moment. I mean, I go through the list of my own heroes and anti-heroes and I see different sides which simply reduce them to the most ordinary (and flawed) mortals imaginable (warning: don’t ever live with a rock star or an actor). Though he was a socialist, it’s been said that Orwell churned out propaganda for the government and “sold out” other writers. Hemingway allegedly joined the KGB and did espionage work for Russia (code name: “Argo”). Salinger picked up young girls. Jack London was a racist (calling whites the race “of mastery and achievement”). Hunter Thompson was a redneck and an owner-defender of guns. Kerouac aided and abetted in helping a friend dispose of a murder weapon. Gertrude Stein (it was rumored) supported a fascist puppet government… and on and on.

That’s just a small list. When you look at the broad brushstroke of “heroism,”we find the whole concept relative to time and circumstance. Just as the best “humor” is really just the combination of “tragedy plus time” (“Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?”), the most convincing heroes are those who fortuitously fall in some cracks between sheer luck and circumstance, both of which manage to conceal fear and confusion. The moment is totally out of their control and keeps them almost pathetically blind to the moment. But then we romance the outcome and inexplicably convert fear and bewilderment into images of Herculean steel and nobility. The truth is subordinated for a greater need to create a narrative designed to inspire. As Elvis said, “it’s impossible to constantly live up to an image.”

I think of what Martha Ghelhorn said: “We are not entirely guiltless, we the allies. Because it took us twelve years to open the gates of Dachau. We were blind, and unbelieving and slow, and that can never be again. And if ever again we tolerate such cruelty, we have no right to peace.” These words put a sobering pall on any notions of national heroism.

So much for the actors. How about the backdrop to Scene One? Did you notice it? Did it move you at all? I saw only a smearing of warm colors and drawings from childhood. I also saw a tall wooden ship which I’ve has been stuck in my subconscious since I was a child. It still transfixes me. Everything stops. – But what about you? Were the painted scenes vibrant and real, soft and friendly? Dark and foreboding? Did they force you to see Act One through at a particular angle, through a different lens? Is the seat you’re in one you’ve chosen, or was it assigned? Do you like it there?

Act Two for me had little-to-no background texture or context. I guess this would be “middle age.” I was too wrapped up in the lines and characters all of which are still too fresh. These are dramas still too much in the present tense. I say the words and feel the feelings still now, in this interlude. I can only try to avoid taking that script into some final act. Will Act Three officially arrive only when Act Two crystallizes enough to see it clearly? To make it “past tense” does it have to be remote enough to recall with felt retrospection?

Is the last act fore-ordained, predetermined? Is Calvin to be hailed even if he believed in the “depravity of mankind?” What kind of hero is that?! Personally, I think we write our own scripts between acts. They become their own scenes, proving that free will IS predestined (because it happened). One is the other – thus putting the two Reformation “heroes” finally to bed (with each other) – another conundrum to fill the moment.

Is the Third Act now? Are we in it now? Another riddle? Faulkner said the past “isn’t even past.” Well, is the future mine to create (a la Luther) at this moment? Are we missing it as we speak? Or does it begin the instant we give up ‘now” and relegate it to the dead and gone? — Somehow this intermission is losing its purpose. Remember the stretch and fresh air? But how can we not reflect and respond to the scenes already behind us? We need each other now.

And who is my neighbor? With whom do we witness history? And do we actually agree to this seating arrangement? Who arranged it in the first place? To the left and right of me stand shadowy forms in this very large dark room. Overhead lighting is strangely absent. We stumble between seats, coats, and our own awkwardness afoot. Best to stand still and not try for an exit. I seem to be midway in my own row, equidistant from the isles. Doors marked “Exit” are so far away that they look like starry beacons in the smokey air.

I look in front of me, then behind me, and the only things greeting me are tall, cold shoulders. No one looks at me. Conversation is a low drone of muddled sound interspersed with laughter and the flint from cigarette lighters igniting constellations of light. With whom do I choose to share my critique? Who wishes to share with me? At this moment my eyes find those of a woman seven rows in front of me. We’re both locked in silence, forcefully muted by ambient noise, as well as being tied to the seats which were apparently preassigned to us. It seems we will never know if what we share is actually “shared.”

Just then a man to my left taps me on the shoulder. We engage in conversation and we discover a common interest in the play. But somehow it feels saccharin and empty compared to what seems “predetermined” between myself and the woman in front of me – seven dimensions, seven worlds, seven fathoms, seven floors, and seven hundred lifetimes away. Her visage might as well be one of those a thousand miles away floating towards the exit signs.

I manage to turn and face the man. He inquires about the auditorium. “What are four walls anyway, he asks? “They are what they contain.” I respond, “How true that is.” And the room presently enveloping us is being defined not as a place per se, but as a moment in time. It has no geography, no compass bearing, no fixed architecture or form. It simply floats in darkness in an ebbing drone of human sound. The announcement is made that the Third Act will begin shortly. We are to once again take our seats.

But before I do I look upwards at the ceiling. Filigreed tin plates, and Gothic Revival themes align faintly recognizable corners that have been there forever. Somehow I wax nostalgic and feel at home with a firmament, a vault of heaven never appreciated enough. In those designs I lodge the cracks and crevasses of my consciousness, places where memory hides and sometimes gets crushed by the noise of mass- existence below. Just then the house lights turn on, just long enough for people to reclaim their seats. And briefly, just before sitting down, I see before me the woman seven leagues ahead of me. She’s transfixed as well by the Gothic designs above. She looks back at me and delivers a faint smile. Instantly she’s consumed by the darkness and disappears.

The lights go dim and everyone sits. The room is swallowed in complete silence. Act Three begins. And what is Act Three to become? Is the intermission over? Are we still here? And where is here? Does the curtain open to an audience somehow looking back at itself? What is this proscenium arch between us, and where is the stage? Which of us are the actors? A moment of great discomfort fills the room, one audience waiting for the other to initiate a sound, a movement, to indicate a semblance of direction. Everyone looks downward at their programs as if to query who it is directing this play. Does anyone know? They scroll down the credits with the names of all contributing personnel. When they get to “Directed By,” the space is blank. Are we looking for (anti-)heroes again? Those we wish to deify and demonize?

The room remains dark. There is no sound. In fact the room itself disappears along with everyone in it. There’s just myself in a seat looking straight ahead at this Three Act play. Is the fantasy I see on the stage facing me, or is it about myself watching myself watching a play? Suddenly I look down and see my name next to “Directed By.” Act Three, Scene One is a curtain now rising. Act Two is quickly moving into the backdrop of my consciousness. It is now three dimensional. It has color and texture. Eureka! I can now “recall” Act Two with some clarity – an undeniable prelude to Act Three.

Will there be another intermission when Act Three is over? Is that a question one asks while in the middle of an Act? I’m watching myself as I move along this labyrinth of corridors and rooms preparing their own scenes. There are no heroes here, no anti-heroes or cowards. There is just the play, the players, the narrative, and plot-line. I’m given no lines, no script, and it feels like Act Three is being written in real time, free-formed, while the surrounding props are ready-made, but also intangible. I feel empty and light, as if floating in space.

This is the darkness of the “future-perfect” Act. The discomfort is a prelude and warning of approaching unknowns. Am I still who I am, who I was a minute ago? Or am I someone in the making, a becoming, but someone already well known to the audience? My chair now rests center stage in front of thousands. I peer out into the night and begin imagining worlds of my own creation. Worlds to be shared with eyes looking straight at me. Act Three has begun. I look down one last time at the program notes. I finally discover the title of this play: SAPERE AUDE – “Dare to Know.”

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