Taking a few excerpts from the last quarter of the film "My Dinner with Andre", I wanted to explore and/or expose some very profound thoughts and ideas from the actual experience of Andre Gregory. If you haven't seen or experienced the film, I obviously hold it in high regard, and thus recommend it.
It has been an interesting film experience for me, because I first saw it just after getting married in 2001, again during our time in Boston (actually left a copy at Kerouac's grave site), and have seen it two or three times this year since it was released from the Criterion Collection. Each time is much more profound than the next. Almost ten years into marriage with my wife, four kids under age 7, a BA in Communication, a MS in Marriage & Family Therapy (now licensed in Ohio), and pushing into my mid-thirties, I just now am beginning to wrap my mind around Andre's commentary on relationships (especially in the context of Marriage) - which I think it foundational, and of great challenge. Maybe you will empathize...
We come in just after Wally expresses frustration (inconceivable!) at the idea of a human "being" not "doing" anything, but just being.
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"That's interesting, Wally. I mean, you know, you know, when I went to Ladakh in western Tibet and stayed on a farm for a month, well, there, you know, when people come over in the evening for tea, nobody says anything, unless there's something to say, but there almost never is, so they just sit there and drink their tea, and it doesn't seem to bother them. I mean, you see: the trouble, Wally, with always being active and doing things, is that I think it's quite possible to do all sorts of things and at the same time be completely dead inside. I mean, you're doing all these things, but are you doing them because you really feel an impulse to do them, or are you doing them mechanically, as we were saying before? Because I really do believe that if you're just living mechanically, then you have to change your life.
I mean, you know, when you're young, you go out on dates all the time, you go dancing or something, you're floating free, and then one day you suddenly find yourself in a relationship, and suddenly everything freezes. And this can be true in your work as well. I mean, of course if you're really alive inside, then of course there's no problem! I mean, if you're living with somebody in one little room and there's a life going on between you and the person you're living with, well then a whole adventure can be going on, right in that room. But there's always the danger that things can go dead; then I really do think you have to kind of become a hobo or something, you know, like Kerouac, and go out on the road. I really believe that. I mean, you know, it's not that wonderful to spend your life on the road, and my own overwhelming preference is to stay in that room if you can."
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So I obviously spent many months this year in real turmoil over watching many relationships suffer, die, and be buried, with little hope of resurrection or reconciliation. Andre's commentary here begins to describe the post-modern criticism of modern mechanical life, where we can "earn a living". As a post-modern, I can see that most of us who have intellectually rejected the mechanical modern idea of human "doing" in our twenties, have been too immature and selfish to really embrace the meaning of "being" in the world, and certainly too immature to understand or conceive what is actually needed to "be" with another person, as a friend, as a lover, as a parent. Our impulsiveness has become an excuse for freedom when the "going gets tough" (experiencing negative emotions), and it has de-spiritualized our way of being with one another in family and community.
We are too often willing to embrace the impulsivity and madness of Kerouac or Supertramp, but not their hard lessons learned. Do we know how to create a "whole adventure" right there in our living rooms? If happiness is only real when shared, are we willing to create real happiness and joy for others to share with us, daily? Can we be so vulnerable?
Is the door open, unlocked...so that we might invite another inside?
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Ever seen "Old Joy"?
to be continued...
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