City of Legends

There’s a scene in my favourite movie, "All That Jazz", where Joe Gideon’s ex-wife challenges him to give the name of "that girl in Philadelphia" to illustrate how anonymous and meaningless his philandering has been.  Joe steps up to the challenge and brashly declares that he remembers her name because she meant something to him…her name was "Sweetheart".

"No," his ex ruefully points out to him.  He repeatedly guesses, but all his guesses are just pet names like "baby".

He then goes out, muttering to himself, and choreographs arguably his most brilliant and self-revealing work, ever, "Air-rotica", for his upcoming Broadway show.  Even his ex has to admit that, while it won’t go over well with critics, it’s his best work ever.

Genius, it seems, is fueled by our flaws, not our perfections.  God made woman because, with man, he didn’t get it right on the rough draft.  My best work comes out of the flaws and imperfections of my own life.  I have been accused of being an optimist and one who tries to make the best of things.  Wow, that’s a pretty nasty thing to say about someone, isn’t it?

This in no way excuses us our arrogances, flaws, weaknesses and vices.  I will put my list of vices (actual ones, not rumoured) against most and I am not a monster.  Flawed, yes.  Perhaps the victim of my own sense of romanticism, certainly.  But I am not a drug smuggler, child-molester, drunk driver, killer, thief or torturer of animals.  Not saying this pridefully, because my flaws and sins run deep enough to make sure I am acutely aware of my own failings.  As I said in one writing "An honest man cannot be the hero of his own memoir".  I penned those words after beginning on my memoir and suffering an epiphany that no one is a hero, except in moments rare and focused by our own perceptions and those of others.

Early today an old female friend (okay, she’s not THAT old, but I have known her for nearly a decade) dared me to write something in a poetic sense that was truly erotic and mind-shattering.  I obliged.  She is not someone who has any romantic interest in me, although I rather fancy her, but rather keeps me around for the same reason a cat keeps a catnip mouse…there are times when I am fun to play with, even if I am not the real thing.

Last I heard from her after she read the poem, entitled "sexorcism", was a short note that read:

"w o w

(speechless)"

I hope that’s a good speechless.  I hope.  I am not above a certain level of glee knowing how many people have had fantasies built upon or within my works.  There is enough of the rogue I am reputed to be by some that I do take subtle delight in knowing there are women who think of my words when they kiss (or otherwise engage) their boyfriends and husbands.  And, I know, there are enough husbands and boyfriends who would like to get a rope, get a tree and hang a poet for National Poetry Month ("modern love was invented by the minstrels in dark ages when they used to hunt them down from town to town" said Tom Cochrane) for this notion.

I almost laughed the other day when someone gave their analysis of the plotline of "Dr. Zhivago" as "a Russian doctor who can’t keep it zipped runs off and leaves his wife".  We focus on what is key to us, what drives us.  I see the same novel and film as a story of a poet trapped by circumstance and the fates and finding his small comfort in the arms of a woman who is also battered by forces beyond her power to control.  We see what we wish to see. 

Anyway, I do not know if there is a point to be made beyond that I am not asking everyone look at the world through my eyes, as it would be a damn dull world without forces against me.  If I was truly free to speak the truths I know, earnestly and without harm to the reputations and fortunes of others, and would be believed in the telling of these things, I think I would be a different figure in some people’s eyes and hearts.  Flawed, certainly, but not as malicious as you might imagine.

Maybe I need to include that poem in the new book…