A Right Guy

It sounds awful to say it, but I’m glad Gary Cooper is dead.  And I’m glad he died before the 60’s, and never had to survive modern Hollywood.  How could a Man like Gary Cooper live in the same universe as apes like Kevin Federline or the aptly named Spencer Pratt?  Coop was the epitome of class and masculine grace; humble, laconic, private, he did his job better than anyone in his league but never made a fuss about it, and was well liked by everybody.  He kept his personal life as close to his chest as he could, and was a great and loving father despite the many bumps in his marriage.  He was the top box office draw for 18 years straight, but never bragged, and 50 years after his death still has the power to seduce any woman with a single, coy glance.

You can see traces of his good looks in many stars who came later – young Elvis, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Richard Gere, and even Alec Baldwin in his thinner days – and this just proves his enduring imprint on what we like in men, as idols and as lovers.  Charm, confidence, mischievousness, shyness, morality, desire and real honest love all played across his face at once, and you never thought for a second any of it was insincere.  Gary Cooper is the archetype – the original tall, dark and handsome – and we fall for everyone who reminds us a little of him, even as the original fades from memory.  To paraphrase: it’s the wrong time and the wrong place, it’s not his face but such a charming face, that it’s alright by us. 

Unfortunately, what doesn’t come with the new faces is the Man; one with humility and class and high morals, intent on being “a fella who answered the description of a right guy,” to quote Coop himself.  What died with him was a calibre of Hollywood, and a calibre of manhood, replaced with reality TV stars, guys who wear trainers to formal events, people who think any press is good press even if it’s humiliating, whose pathetic private lives are the feature show.  In Coop’s day, men didn’t walk around dressed like overgrown toddlers, saying more than their little brains could comprehend to anyone who’d listen, just for a few minutes of fame. Back then, when you got dressed, you really got dressed: French cuffs, tailored suits, shoes shined, hair flawless, and you spoke with an awareness of social politesse, or you kept your trap shut.

Hollywood has always functioned on good typecasting – taking the natural, innate qualities of an actor and putting him in roles where those qualities seem real and honest.  And if Cooper was typecast to play the lone hero, the last man standing in the face of insurmountable odds, there must have been at least a little of that real hero in him or he wouldn’t be so completely believable in everything he did.  As he said, “the general consensus seems to be that I don’t act at all.”  Most of his directors and costars have said that he was the most natural actor they’d ever worked with, and that, according to Ingrid Bergman, "you never noticed that he was working."  On screen, he makes other immensely talented, iconic actors look like vaudeville slapstick, their elbows up in the air, their affected accents announcing all the time, “I am an Actor!” As the great Charles Laughton said of Cooper: "We act, he is."

Thus, Coop the Lone Hero in his films was also Coop the Lone Hero in life.  Not perfect, not always an obvious good guy, but more loveable for his flaws; his shy, unaffected manner drawing people to him, and drawing honest admiration and love from anyone who met him.  Sincere, unabashedly bashful, goofy and awkward I'm sure, with a genuine 'aw shucks' kind of friendliness, and probably the least complicated ideals of right and wrong of anyone in Hollywood.  Frank Capra says of him, "integrity was etched in his face... honest he looked, and honest he was."  And as writer / director John Mulholland said of him, “No other actor in the history of film so personified the ideal of the American male as Gary Cooper. For 35 years and 92 films, Gary Cooper was America's Everyman.”  With him died that ideal, that everyman, and even that America.

I think it would have broken his heart to see what Hollywood, and indeed the world, has become since the Golden Era.  In hindsight, his life is a tragedy: the bad guys won.  All those shiftless, drunken slobs he tried to whip into shape, all the lousy, rotten mean-hearted scoundrels, they've overrun the town and there’s no cool, handsome sheriff on the way to set things right.  Mulholland says of him, “he could spot a phony across a country mile.”  Well, now those country miles that gave Coop his weathered face, his comfortable Montana drawl and his honest-to-goodness desire to be "a right guy" have been bulldozed and built up into something he probably wouldn't even recognise anymore.  I’m glad Gary Cooper died with at least a little of his ideal world still intact, and that he never lived to see how all the phonies finally stole the show.

Be Here Now

When I was 24, I read a book that changed my life.  It was called Nothing Special: Living Zen, by Charlotte Joko Beck, an American who became a Zen teacher in her 40's.  It taught me that we put all kinds of desperate importance on things that are ultimately meaningless, we perpetuate our own turmoil by clinging self-righteously to our emotions, and that we are equally responsible for any bad relationship we're in, with partners, siblings, parents, bosses or strangers.  

The book helped me transform many relationships, and to evolve from a child mind to an adult mind, from naivety to mindfulness.  It completely changed the way I see people, for better or for worse.  There is a line in the book about how Zen is like a melting ice cube - once you start living mindfully, you can't go back.  This is true, and it's kind of annoying.  I feel like I live in the real world, while everyone around me lives in a carefully constructed illusion - one that's designed to keep out fear and pain but in reality only brings it in truckloads. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm no Bodhisattva.  I just know that I alone am responsible for me.  I try to approach every day with wonder and humility, and be thankful, because it's a rare and totally random gift to be alive.  I also know that, as a highly charged, hot blooded, feisty, opinionated woman who feels everything right down to my core, it's not always easy to step back from my emotions, but I've at least learned to own them, instead of foisting onto others the blame and responsibility for how I feel.


Joko Beck says "when nothing is special, everything can be", and I append that with a line from Albert Camus' essay on Sisyphus: "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn".  Joko Beck says that we miss the true beauty of life when we try to control it or blame others for things not turning out the way we wanted them to.  When we realise that absolutely everything is meaningless - including our own feelings - we begin to see the real miracles.  As for Camus, the outcome of any situation depends on how you look at it.  


Ultimately, you are the master of your own happiness.  If you lay about all miserable and angry because of other people's decisions, wage psychological battles for the upper hand with people close to you, always have an excuse for not achieving your potential, or constantly tell yourself "it's someone else's fault" - then you will reap what you sow.  On the other hand, taking responsibility for your own emotional well being reaps much more than it sows - it cultivates happiness in others, smoothes the road ahead, and draws positive energy into your life.  Strange how simple it is, and even stranger how many people choose the harder path...

Prozac vs. Heroin

Last night I saw one of my all-time favourite bands - Brian Jonestown Massacre - play live for the first time, and they truly blew my mind from top to bottom.  Not only did they play a super long set, ending well after most bands would have hustled back to the green room, they played a non-stop barrage of all my favourite songs, starting with the first song that got me hooked, Super Sonic.  Dancing all around me were members of the Hoa Hoas and Optical Sounds, and when the entire audience sang joyously along to Who? at the top of their lungs, it was transcendent.

Anton Newcombe has been accused of many things, including being a talentless drunk, he's been the object of derision, and a constant outsider in the music industry, but he's one of those guys that just never compromises, even when he knows he's being a dick, and I love that about him.  He barely said a word last night, and yet his charisma held us all in thrall, and I woke up this morning wishing I could go to their next show, wherever it is, and maybe just pack it all in and follow them till they all drop dead.

BJM come from a different era - one when music was sincere and genuine, and the people making it were actually talented artists, not "co-writing with a well known producer".  They don't get radio play, it's true, but they have a fanatic world-wide following anyway, and the joy on the faces around me at last night's show attests to the power of truly good music - Toronto the Stoic was actually dancing!  To me, they are one of the very few nearly perfect bands out there, and I will buy everything they produce, including The Committee to Keep Music Evil label mates Asteroid #4, et al.

I always like it when art has subtext, or represents many things all at once, and BJM is that for me.  They're not just a great band, fronted by a guy whose character I admire and who will clearly continue to make great music for the rest of his life.  They are a time, a feeling, the way sunlight tilts in the fall, dew on a hedge, brass buttons on a wool coat.  They are Autumn to me, when things are simultaneously at their most beautiful, and about to die.  Maybe it's Anton's smack habit, self-destructive behaviour, or his obsession with the dark side of the 60's that inflects the music with that slight waft of death, but whatever it is, it speaks to my Autumn soul.

I was, last night, quite willing to throw myself to the mercy of the band, climb into their camper van and sail away with them forever.  Anton is my only "friend" on You Tube, and if my boyfriend will let me, I'd name all our future children Alfred, Anton's middle name.  To put it simply, last night was well worth the months I've waited with ticket in hand, and my only question now is, when are they coming back?

New favourite artist...

Lisbeth Zwerger inspired me today... equal parts Arthur Rackham and Marc Chagall...

Resolutions

I put my back out at a trade show in Germany last week. It was an enlightening experience, being constantly preoccupied with the state of my physical being in a place I couldn’t retreat from, to recover privately. The pain removed me from the here and now, while plunking me firmly in it, like a Zen koan. I was so focused on interactions with the present, aware of every movement, every step, every twist and breath that I was unable to put up my usual defenses. I babbled at strangers, couldn’t conceal my nervous stutter, and worst of all, was bombarded with the psychic energy I’m normally quite good at blocking out.

The most blissful moments were spent walking slowly outside in the cold, alone and away from the anxious buzz of social pecking order and industry gossip. Away from the chattering birds, where I could just open my mind and let the cool silence in. I accepted every coffee or soup run I could just to get outside. And I know it sounds unlikely, but I was lucky enough to meet a yogi in the midst of all this, who said to me: we think ourselves into being.

I’ve been thinking for a while now about my new year’s resolution and how to put it into words. At first it was going to be something like “be more honest” – not because I tell lies, but because I’m not always true to myself. I become what I think is wanted, instead of standing firmly in my nature. Then I thought it should be something more like “be meaner”, because I’m too nice, too forgiving, too accepting, at my own emotional and physical expense, but I was kind of angry when I thought of that one. Now I’m thinking, simply, “be”.

It takes a lot to be yourself honestly. It takes a lot to let things pass, but ultimately it takes more energy to try to hang on. The yogi told me that the pain in my back was not physical but emotional, and he’s right. We think ourselves into being: my thoughts hold onto painful things so tightly that they break holes in me trying to escape. My spine gives out, my discs prolapse, I can hardly lift my feet; all the negative energy of the world comes pouring in through the cracks, and I literally hear alarm bells ringing in my ears. It’s time to open my being and let the breath out in one big Om right from the gut. The yogi told me, and my spine agrees, that it’s time to let go.

So here is my new year’s resolution: I am going to be. I’m going to try to let go of the things that are out of my control. I’m going to try to be true to my nature, even if that nature is kind of a socially inept loner most of the time. I’m going to do what I do, which is make art, and hope that people dig it. I know, it’s kind of underwhelming – not as flashy as quitting smoking or losing weight, but it works for me.