ripples in the pond
beware. this is a story of curmudgeonliness turning into beatitude.
let’s start with the first.
it’s the merry month of may. time for college graduations. i never go.
never went to my own, never will. you know the routine: 1969… the me generation, protest, stick it to the man. my parents made me go to the college i never wanted to go to, just to save the dough. i certainly wasn’t gonna go to make them happy. i was socially inept, volcanic, and generally, i had a hard time making it out of adolescence. i didn’t need a diploma, recognition from an institution i didn’t respect. i needed to skip graduation, run off from buffalo to toronto with a college buddy’s ex-girlfriend and lose my virginity (another story altogether).
but now it’s 2013 and there’s yet another USC college graduation. i’m a full-time faculty member of the esteemed institution that just received another 70 million dollars from gazillionaires, jimmy iovine and compton rapper, dr. dre, to create a new high-tech music institute within our california ivy walls, and we, the esteemed faculty, are all required to go it. graduation, not the dr. dre music institute. that happened by proclamation about 5 years ago, a long ways into my 27-year run at the school of theater. because after more than 2 decades of skipping the formalities of cap and gown, our strong-minded dean declared that it was part of our full-time job description: attendance at graduation required.
so…. about those same 5 years ago…. not having run off to another world-wide destination on the 1st of may (as soon as the semester ends)…. nor having the need for another hip replacement, nor… having any other possible excuse to defy the good dean’s rigid proclamation… i went. to my first college graduation. i donned the restrictive cap and gown, stood in line with the rest of my esteemed, be-robed colleagues, marched into the auditorium full of proud parents and their glowing graduates who had saddled them with $250,000 of cash payments, 2nd mortgage debts, and/or student loans, and i sat through the well-worn ceremonies. as my students would say, “they sucked”. the only thing i enjoyed was the piped-in march song, “gaudeamus igitur”.
i remember it from high school. slow. pompous in a royal way.
“gau-dee-ah-moos eee-gee-toor. oo-veh-nay soooooooo-moooos.”
i always loved the tune, one of the few i can carry. i can still sing all the latin words, even though i have no idea what they mean. other than that, it was a bust. a mediocre graduation speech by joey mantegna, who i used to act with in chicago. hard seats. a tedious hour of passing out the well-earned degrees. long. boring. hey, i’m never doing that again.
but now it’s may, 2013. and i’m here in LA again. time for another college graduation. with no good excuse not to go. just guilt and obligation. hey, i know these kids don’t need me there. nor do they expect me. i’m “trules”, the iconoclast, “trules”, the bad ass. i gave them my best in the classroom and in the rehearsal rooms; i don’t do graduations. but… there’s… the dean’s proclamation, and…
….i sign up. no cap and gown, but i ok, i sign up. i’ve been wiggling back and forth ever since, about whether i’m actually going to go, but now it’s friday morning, the day of. my faculty parking permit, for which i pay $92/month, is useless. all the parking lots today are first come, first serve, and i’m not going to the 8:30 a.m. university-wide, all school ceremony with 100,000 people crammed around doheny library – just to park.
luckily, big rico’s son, matt, “the breeze”, is staying with us for a couple of months, taking his stab at the hollywood meat market, while my wife is back in indonesia for a funeral. her 28-year-old, younger brother, bakti, the black sheep of the family, just passed away two days ago. he probably just didn’t get good enough care in the 3rd world hospital for his intestinal infection, and he… died. a terrible blow to the whole manalu clan, a very tight-knit family of 6 kids, brought up by a stronger-than-life matriarch who raised them all single-handedly after her husband died in a motorbike accident when my wife was 14.
bakti’s death has thrown the whole scattered family into grief and chaos; i could hardly get my wife onto the plane to meet them all; she was so fractured, hysterical, and torn apart. 27 hours later, after refueling in tokyo, changing planes in singapore, and finally arriving in her home town of medan, sumatra, she’d have to go directly to a cemetery and see her little brother’s corpse buried in the ground.
this, added to the loss of our beloved, 14-year-old husky, clay, just a month before, and i’ve been soaking up a lot of eugene o’neill and philip roth, my own tribe’s mordant and humorous chronicler of life.. and death. the house has been so mournfully empty without clay’s wagging tale and unconditional love greeting us at the gate, and i keep having second thoughts about my decision to put him out of his pain. i’m feeling in touch with the deepest, emptiest parts of myself; i’m in no mood for a graduation celebration.
but hey, maybe “the breeze” can drive me to USC and back. i ask. he agrees. then… the night before… he gets an interview with some low-rent casting director. he can’t drive me back. i’m pissed. i don’t like being at the mercy of an out-of-work actor, i thought i gave that up decades ago; and i certainly don’t want to park a mile away from campus and walk for half an hour… to a ceremony i don’t really want to attend. ok… i’m not going.
no… wait. i’ll… park my car near union station and… take the train back. LA’s new “light rail”, the above-ground “expo” line. right across the street from USC. it’ll be fun. like new yawk. ok, i’ll go…
“the breeze” drops me off, right on figueroa, in his big mountain, green idaho truck. it’s 10:30 a.m. there are thousands of people still walking to campus, and many more thousands already on campus. i hear the booming voices from the microphones at doheny as soon as i enter the gate, as i snake my way through the packed-in crowds to our school of dramatic arts’ bing theater.
“i never been to no college graduation befo’”.
the voice booms over the microphone. it’s… dr. dre, nee mr. andre young, at the USC-wide doheny podium.
“an’ usually at these kinda things, you gonna hear something like robert frost or… walt whitman. but hey, i got somethin’ special for you today, right from the streets of compton.”
the entire campus explodes in a roar. the students are standing on they feet, cheering.
“take the evil out the people, they’ll be acting right.”
tupac! or NWA. what do i know? all i know is that dre is getting’ his 70 million dollar, 15 minutes of USC academic fame. it’s… cool.
i’m finally at the bing, just before the unruly, pumped-up doheny crowd breaks out and scatters en masse to the 16 individual school ceremonies. arts & letters, engineering, education, architecture, social work, cinema, 9 more, and us, the school of dramatic arts. my colleagues are already there. maybe 30 of us. most are in cap and gowns, a few besides myself, are in our “individual attire”.
i’ve decided to wear my all, black, nehru-collared, made-in-bangkok chinese silk suit. luis, the macarthur “genius” award winner, a generous-spirited, poet-playwright right from the adjacent pico-union latino barrio, is wowed.
“trules, dude, where’d you get that suit? it’s so… cool.”
“thanks, luis. actually i had it custom made for $27 in thailand.”
“you’re still such a hipster.”
“c’mon, luis, have you ever known me over these last 30 years, not to be hip?’
“well, there was a time, trules….”
“cmon, luis!”
i’m having a good time amongst my collegial colleagues. andy, the one-time young actor in clint eastwood’s 1st “dirty harry” movie who gets asked “you feelin’ lucky, punk?” – and i – are reminiscing about the time when i took his weird acting class at la mama in the east village in 1970’s new yawk. and about the time in the early 80s at the mark taper forum here in LA when we collided head on in the dark, running up the aisle in opposite directions, during a set change in the middle of an overly intellectual, forgettable show called “the genius.” we almost knocked both of ourselves out cold. maybe that’s where i got the reputation for having “the hardest head in hollywood”. my playwriting colleagues, oliver and velina, are laughing along and chiming in with stories of their own. sam shepard. billy, the kid.
we’re a bunch of old dinosaurs, ancient theater codger-artistes, lucky to still be employed at something we still love, long past the age of no return.
ok, we’ve marched into the auditorium – to my well-loved gaudeamus igitur – and now i’m stuck in the back row amongst my colleagues, at the very back of the stage, while 200 plus students, BA’s, BFAs, MAs, and MFAs, are all sitting in front of me, awaiting their momentous …moments.
the dean, our boss, welcomes all of us, parents, students, faculty, and guests; then she introduces the first speaker, young jordan, who’s taken 2 of my classes, and who represents all the graduating BAs (bachelors of arts), about 85% of the graduating student body. the last time i saw jordan, at the beginning of last semester, he was thin as a rail and sickly. he had to drop class because of appendicitis, or something like it, and i was worried about him pulling through. but today he looks radiant – fully recovered – and obviously well-loved by everyone in attendance. he begins,
“well, if there’s one person i’d like to thank after my 4 years at the school of theater – i mean the school of ‘dramatic arts’ – thank you, dean puzo…”
some student laughter.
“it’s keanu reeves.”
the entire audience, on stage and off , looks around at each other in bemused consternation.
“mr. reeves has been a true inspiration to me and my classmates, i’m sure – by proving to us – that absolutely anyone can make it in this town.”
we crack up. all of us. the erudite professors. the theater kids. the frat boys and girls. the parents from orange county, beijing, and jakarta. all in the bing theater in los angeles, california. jordan’s carrying on like a professional stand-up comedian. he’s funnier than i’ve ever seen or heard him. he has the entire crowd in the palm of his hands. then he says.
“i’m gonna take a chance now and talk about trules’ class. i know that’s gonna piss him off, but hey, you have to get trules mad at you at least one time before you graduate.”
the entire audience is laughing. whether they know who trules is or not. whether jordan’s claim is true or not… they’re all laughing.
“so anyway,” he takes a beat, “i took his awesome solo performance class. and so did tommy fleming. tommy, are you here?”
tommy waves his hand out of the BA crowd crammed onto stage.
“and tommy did this amazing autobiographical monologue to close the show. it was about losing his high school friend to suicide. she was sort of an offbeat, funny-looking girl who felt like she didn’t fit in anywhere, and she took her own life by dropping herself off a bridge. of course, tommy, who also felt like an outcast and misfit, like a lot of theater kids do, was profoundly upset and saddened by his friend’s suicide, and at one point, he even considered offing himself. but at that very moment, he remembered frank capra’s movie, ‘it’s a wonderful life’, the name of tommy’s monologue and the name of our whole solo performance show, and he remembered clarence, the angel, talking to jimmy stewart, as he stared down at the water from another bridge in the fictional town of bedford falls.
“strange, isn’t it?” jordan continues, doing his best imitation of tommy doing his best imitation of clarence, the angel, “’each man’s life touches so many other lives. when he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?’ sorry, i’m paraphrasing here… ‘but how many peoples’ lives will you effect if you throw yourself off that bridge, george? how many people’s lives will be without the love or joy or sadness or beauty if you throw yourself off that bridge? you see, george, you’ve really had a wonderful life. don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?’ and then he goes on to show george what a terrible life all his friends in beford falls would have had – without him, george bailey.
“of course, tommy doesn’t kill himself, and that’s good, because i wouldn’t be here telling you this story if he had.
the audience lets go an explosive laugh of relief. they’ve been mesmerized by jordan’s speech.
“but that’s not the point of my story. because after the show, one of my good USC, non-theater friends comes up to me to congratulate me and all of us on the show. ‘that was so great. you were so good, jordan, and i really loved tommy’s story, the one about his friend… it was so powerful.’… and we all laugh and cry and hug the way you’re supposed to do after a good night of theater. and that was that…
“… until about two months ago, about a year after the show. i see my same friend again, and she comes up to me again. ‘you know, jordan, the night of the solo show, when i told you how much i loved the show and especially tommy fleming’s piece? well, i was going through a very bad time at that moment. my mother had just had a stroke. i had just broken up with my high school boyfriend, and i really didn’t know what i was doing in school. in fact, i didn’t really have anything to live for… and i was seriously considering… well, you know. but then i heard tommy’s story that night in the mcclintock theater. what do you call it, a monologue? whatever. all i can say is that it really… touched me. it called me back from my own bridge. and… things are so much better now, you know? i don’t even know tommy fleming, but will you thank him for me?
“and of course i did. just the other day. tommy never knew what his monologue did that night. and i guess trules never heard that story until today. but.. that’s the power of theater.”
silence.
———-
jordan goes on to some more brilliant and comic remarks. he wraps up, looks at me through the crowd, and i give him a pedagogical and heart-felt “thumbs up”.
and i’m sitting there for the rest of the ceremony – in the back row – amongst all my collegial colleagues – as all the 200 graduates each get their individual diplomas – and i can’t help but think,
“i almost didn’t come today.”
and then……. about a year later……. after 1st posting this story…….. my doctor…. my real, doctor-internist from USC… josh sapkin…. sends me an email that he has shown my blog post to ALL his residents at the USC school of medicine.
more… ripples…..
…that one single story can make from a stage. from frank capra to clarence, the angel, from jimmy stewart to tommy fleming, from jordan merimee to the girl in the audience whose name i don’t even know, from me to all the folks in the graduation audience, from all the people reading this story on a screen to all doc sapkin’s medical residents –
-that’s the deep pond of art that ripples with connection throughout the history of our human being-ness. one concentric circle after another. one generation after the other. one soul after another.
thank you, jordan. thank you, tommy fleming. thank you short story writer, philip van doren stern, who wrote the original “the greatest gift”.
los angeles, california, may 22, 2013
for bakti manalu
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