you see, birdie, it's never really about the fleeting comments (the barb, the one-liner), or even about the particular character in whose mouth the words are placed. it's about the 'bigger picture,' if you will. this is why i keep returning to the idea of context - where do the characters, their lines, their attitudes, fit into the jig-sawed picture? what do we do with the pieces we find around us as we make our way down our own sentimental avenues? where will we find ourselves when we fit the next piece into place? and who's going to hand us some jagged gee-gaw we'll have to carry around until its colors match those of some unfamiliar horizon?
a while back i found myself taking Oscar in hand (poor guy, we call him Tweak), because he was lost and upset, trying to understand how his parents could have allowed him to leave home at 14 to live with a sexual predator. we were in Lyon (the birthplace of grand guignol), and had to seek the assistance of the Rhone Maidens to make our escape to Avignon...
it doesn't matter, though where we started out, where I found him. he'll always carry the tattoo on his forearm, the thick black letters spelling out the word, "SLAVE." both of us, birdie, Tweak and I, are beyond redemption, beyond the cycle of life, death, rebirth. our only hope is transcendance... and i often despair of attaining it. oh, i have glimpses of it now and then, and if i'm going to help Tweak compose a conclusion to the dark drama circumstances have written for him i need to appear cheerful about it for his sake... but it's so difficult sometimes not to feel that i'm doomed to play cassandra in this awful, tattered drag... (he stubs out the cigarette in the remains of his cupcake.)
Updated On: 7/18/07 at 03:37 AM
