The Art of Living

I had a teacher in high school who told me that I had the mind of a writer despite my penchant for performing. At the time I was pissed off that this old man would have the audacity to tell me what I could or couldn't be. Now I'm old enough to see that he was being complimentary because he held a great admiration for the people that had that gift; and he might be right on both accounts.

More and more I'm drawn to the written word. I'll never stop performing - I don't think I have anywhere else to put those demons - but I find myself working harder on the ideas of poetic articulation. Of finding phrases and stories that are layered and dense, yet cut straight to something meaningful and resonant. Maybe it's something you acquire with age. Maybe it's something I've always done and have only recently gained consciousness of it. Or maybe I'm just as crazy and as confusing as I've always been. I digress.

I have the good fortune to currently be in a play by a Pulitzer prize winning writer. And he - like all great artists - was a student of life and living. There's a quote in the play (The Time of Your Life) where a man - with a real knack for tall tales - searching for his place in the world says, "Now, son, don't tell me you don't believe me either?" And the response is:

"Of course I believe you. Living is an art. It's not bookkeeping. It takes a lot of rehearsing for a man to get to be himself."

I LOVE that line. The generosity of it. The comfort in it. The honesty of it. That life is beautiful and messy and painful and requires years of stumbling, fumbling and fucking up to put it all together. I was in a dark place when I read this play and it helped lift me out if it. I posted this next passage back in September when I first read it, but I'll put it here again because its meaning has changed for me and it's one of the most gorgeous passages of literature that I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Maybe its meaning will change a little more each time I run my eyes over the words. Maybe that's the point.


In the time of your life, live - so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away.

Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.

Be the inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.

In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

-William Saroyan, 1939