The Dangling Conversation
The time around the holidays expands and contracts based on two vectors: family and hope. Family is the more immutable of the two, bound tightly to laws of the universe like but not only the transition from being a child to becoming our parents, and the push for achieving dreams and their more traditional counterparts goals.
Hope seems to be more ephemeral, a condition of yearning for an interior logic to life, a meaning that would magically encompass learning, working, finding love. Along the way, we see signs of these characteristics, suggestions of data to support the possibility of a biochemical rhythm coursing through existence, God if you will.
Somewhere in the middle lurks meditation, where the illusions of career and big answers collide with the simple act of breathing. We breathe in and out, expanding the calm at the center until it soothes our fear in its delicious life force.
In the dawn of many dawns, the quiet of the early hours as the woods begin to twitter, the President sits in his gold room and tweets out the morning gambit. Everything we think we know about this man, is challenged by the likelihood what he tweets will change things in some unpredictable way. Even if he is in the middle of a run of seemingly improvised statements on whatever subject he finds interesting, what comes next will change things. For the better? Many say no without knowing what they are talking about. Many others equally expect yes. What everybody agrees is that we don’t know what comes next.
This is the most extraordinary part of the President’s insight. Some in the media say this is irresponsible, unscripted, as though anything could possibly be anything but. As a father I feel so intimidated by the likely futility of making things better for my children, and so surprised each time I see a glimmer of magic coming from them to save the moment and (momentarily) quell my fear. In turn, they chuckle at my stupidity and occasional blind luck. Together we’re lucky to breathe that rare air.
We need a new approach to comedy. It’s not that there are no funny people anymore, although it’s possible. That’s not sarcastic; it’s a touch ironical, potentially fatalistic. Hope tempered by hedged capitulation. We long for the days of the gasping crying laughter, but not so much. We weep at the simple humanity of our musicians beneath the greasepaint and the shapeshifting of the cards they were dealt. The dangling conversation. All gone to look for America.
