Calls come in. People need to talk, now. Calls finish.
Follow-ups beckon, now. New
emails, while you were taking care of that quick email. Let me just bang this thing out. One hour turns to two. Everything seems to have a certain predictable
flow and rhythm when you wake up early and tick the must-do boxes methodically.
Once you’re up late, even an hour later, it never works the same. Even the calm, feels like catch-up calm.
The culprit? The
Olympics. A misdemeanor for sure. But I was up there, continuing on the cathode
overload mode that seems to be a New Year’s theme to contemplate the half pipe
snowboarders, and the exquisite couples figure skaters and woman speed skaters
who move like some rarified jungle cats.
Invariably my girls wanted to comment that this guy looks like a dork,
or that guy is definitely not handsome.
“Who is then?” “No one!” But the Olympics, fortunately is not a dating
game or talent show. Any of these
people, even the ones who toss and brush the hot water kettle down the ice
(what is that sport’s name?) are in peak
physical shape. Its more like watching
a nature program where a cheetah chases down a gazelle and you marvel at the
sheer physicality.
I’ll grant you, that guy does look like a dork. But look at him move! It no longer matters. Dorkiness is redeemed and elevated through
training. Inarticulateness is excused,
transcended by the majesty of movement.
I found myself unwittingly repeating over and over, “don’t they look
beautiful?”
And it is interesting because every corporeal body has
physical limits. You’re getting pretty
close to the known physical limits of the body when you leap up and twirl four
times and land without falling. You can
conceptualize doing it six times. But
the body can not, yet, sustain. And I,
myself, can conceptualize everything being honkey dory after four and half
hours sleep just as it would be with six.
But it doesn’t work that way. The
kids are off school and I don’t have
to get up. So you roll and you flop for a
bit longer and the sun doesn’t stop rising.
Last night I was kidding around with my younger one. She had a Beijing Opera mask I gave her for
Christmas and we decided to film a few comedic vignettes. What makes a scene funny? We had no script, just the mask. A simple premise: “where is that guy? If I get my hands on him I’ll, I’ll, agghgghgh “
“who are you?” “none of your
business.” We did it over about a dozen
times and I found myself coaching her on, timing. “Take two breaths before you say
“business.” “Pause at the bottom of the
stairs and let the tension build.” I
think of comedy as somehow innate, but I realized, working with her, that it
was also something one could teach.
And, better by far to learn from real cinematographic masters. So this morning I added a few more minutes of
delay to my sleep deprived, delayed everything morning to show her some Charlie
Chaplin. I labored, frankly to find a
good clip. It’s so hard to get contemporary, iPhone youth to slow down enough
to take in a black and white clip. One
or two from “The Kid” didn’t cut it. But
I found this absolutely apt clip about sleep deprivation, called “A Beautiful
Sunday Morning” where in our man Charlie is woken up by a kick in back side by
a mean looking farmer. Once, twice and
then three times he keeps falling back to sleep. I tried to show my daughter how the farmer’s
frustration built each time and how this added to the humor. But no explanation was necessary, I
think. She was giggling. From here to Buster Keaton and on to Bugs
Bunny and Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Bill Hicks, to Margaret Cho and before
long we’ll have it all sorted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbBDO_nsuqs I hope.
What is it about an audience? You do music alone, you state things aloud
alone or do most things solo and it is manageable and only ever so
electric. But an audience, even a
potential audience and there is potential risk and reward. I was late to the gym so there were
people. Usually it is deserted. Two other gents on the running machine. The classic Santana “Abraxas” version of “Oye
Como Va” came on the mix. All of a
sudden I’m sashaying over to the water cooler and, yes, doing air guitar. Fortunately I don’t think the caught me do
the air-bending. But if they had, they
would have known immediately that I truly
knew and understood that lead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas_(album)
Beijing is now, talking to Taipei, officially, after 65
years. Truly, 好事多磨[1].
That’s one chengyu I didn’t even have to look up. We’ve come a long way from missiles over the Straits
and aircraft carriers in response. This
is, rhetorically at least, a “family” feud and perhaps we shouldn’t draw too
much from this. But I hope it augers for
a similar rapprochement one day between China and Japan. We need positive examples to see our way out
of this current drudgery. Back in 1997,
Cross Straits relations looked all but certain to be heading towards open
conflict. Next thing you know Beijing
may even be able to kiss and make up with that other long-view Olympiad, the
Vatican.
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