Stuff That I’ve Noticed #34 Dancing Lessons?
Since I read my first two or three Kurt Vonnegut books he has been one of the authors on my “desert island” list along with Twain, Dickens, Jenkins, Follett and a few others. I almost ran into him in a supermarket one day and, although there are a lot of well known folks in my neighborhood many of whom I’ve chatted with on the street or in Riverside Park, I was struck dumb by this encounter with a literary hero. I have kicked myself numerous times for that missed opportunity. But I digress…
In Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle each chapter begins with an aphorism and (even though I’m not at all religious) one of them instantly welded itself to my brain:
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
This has become one of the guiding principles of my life. As a freelance film production guy and video shooter/editor I’ve been offered many strange gigs. Some were obvious no-way-Joses but many were borderline. Those were the ones to which I usually applied Kurt’s advice. And more often than not they proved to be of value, some even great.
I saved that single quotation in a document I titled. “A Teaching to Live By”. This was at least thirty-five (maybe more) years ago and from time to time I’d pick up another bit of advice or insight and the list title was pluralized to “Teachings to Live By”.
For a while I was immersed in the books of Robert Anton Wilson (The Illuminatus! Trilogy) and from one of those volumes I saved this book title “written” by one of his characters:
Never whistle while you’re pissing. – Hagbard Celine (Robert Anton Wilson)
I took this to be counsel against what has become known as multi-tasking. I’m an advocate of doing one thing at a time although I sometimes do go against my own (and Hagbards’s) advice.
This next one I use occasionally with colleagues. Even though nowadays when I’m working on a production I’m usually the director and the producer I surround myself with the best people I can get and value their opinions. Whenever one of them suggests a different way of approaching a challenge and sort of apologizes for disagreeing with me I quote a man who knows more about making movies than I ever will, John Frankenheimer, who said:
When two people agree about everything one of them is unnecessary.
As we all know our best laid plans and strategies run into unexpected barriers and snags and go afoul of reality. Calder Willingham (in his Little Big Man screenplay) provided a comment for that eventuality. When the old Indian decides that, “Today is a good day to die”, wraps himself in his blanket and lies down on a mountain … then wakes the next morning very much alive he says:
Sometimes the Magic works and sometimes it doesn’t.
Wisdom seems to run in the Vonnegut family since Kurt’s uncle Alex Vonnegut has said that:
When things are going really well we should be sure to notice it.
As you might have expected I have added some observations of my own to this list.
My old friend Jeff Siggins and I while on a car trip, stopped at a roadside spot to get some coffee. The lad who served us had at least a dozen metal studs and dangling doo-dads stuck in his face (nose, eyebrows, lips even his tongue) and one of us quipped, “You must have a rough time in a lightening storm.” To this the boy replied, “Huh?” This experience prompted me to create the “Siggins/Bryant Postulate”:
The intelligence of a human is observed to be inversely proportional to the number of metal objects imbedded in his/her face and tongue.
Three more bits of advice from my personal experience which are self-explanatory:
Never freeze your mayonnaise. (It gets lumpy.)
Never put your glasses in a place where someone may sit.
And this most recent one (which prompted this essay) and nearly ended in grievous bodily injury:
Never try to remove your shorts while wearing flip-flops.
Then there are these others that require no stories.
If you follow the herd you’ll end up stepping in shit.
– Wayne Dyer
Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance. – Ric Masten
It’s never crowded along the extra mile. – Fortune Cookie
Training a gorilla to spit is not worth the trouble.
– Jodi Carrigan, (Lead keeper of primates at Zoo Atlanta)
Most of this world’s misery is the fruit not, as priests tell us, of wickedness but of stupidity.
– Raphael Sabatini Scaramouche
I am too old to be ruled by fear of the dumb people.
– Aaron Sorkin/“Charlie” on Newsroom
Of all the things I’ve ever lost I miss my mind the most.
– Steven Tyler
And finally: Assumption is the Mother of all Fuckups. – Anonymous
If you have any bits of wisdom that you think may deserve being added to my list, please share.
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