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Remembering
the Things I Forget
by Marvin
Payne
I think I may
have written here a little of what it felt like to close the play
Hancock County last March. (That was the one about the trial
of the murderers of the prophet Joseph--the one where all the bad
guys enjoy happy endings, which may have been a rude shock to the
folklorists and legend-keepers, but there you go, truth is stranger
than fiction.)
It was hard
to close that play. I mean, do you remember the expression on the
face of the Canadian lady in the Olympic pair’s skating at about
that same time in history? Multiply that grief by about twelve and
you’ll know how I felt a week later, when our play closed. I don’t
know what the skater did to cope with her distress, but I went on
medication and was commanded to read a very long book about depression,
the kind of book I find depressing.
Closing a play
is like undergoing a divorce that nobody wants. And nobody gets
custody of the children--they all just vanish. Along with the house.
(Actually, if it’s a nonunion gig, what you do to the house after
the performance on closing night is destroy it. Ouch.)
Well, five months
later (this would be last week) we all gathered (the same family!)
on the north sound stage of LDS Motion Pictures and high-definition-videotaped
the socks off Hancock County! Close-ups! Two-shots! Cameras
flying around on cranes like hungry mosquitoes! They’ll broadcast
it, and the hope is that it’ll appear as a product people can actually
have in their homes! (I’m liking these exclamation points! Here’s
a bouquet of them, to arrange as you like: !!!!!!!!!!!! --a dozen,
long-stemmed.)
It was a marvelous
gift, putting on that costume again and becoming the lost and wearing
prosecuting attorney. (I felt a little odd, though, when a couple
of days afterward I put on the same costume and strutted around
before fifteen thousand seminary and institute teachers as Sydney
Rigdon. Those clothes had gotten used
to hanging on a character not nearly so pious. Feeling particularly
abandoned was the special coat pocket that had been sewn in to cradle
a whiskey flask.)
Weeks earlier,
when I heard about the Hancock County taping plans, I felt
a certain irresistible euphoria. After the euphoria wore off,
I felt a certain irresistible panic. Suddenly I had to remember
the zillions of lines my character has. My head was feeling a little
crowded already. I was on a film in northern Idaho, with lines to
learn and per diem to spend, and was also staring a three-player
musical in the face, not to mention Sidney Rigdon,
who was not taciturn. Lots and lots of words, from four different
characters.
I learn and
live a lot of roles--and have a history of forgetting them utterly
after about a week. Some guys can still do “Trouble” from The
Music Man for years afterward, and are annoyingly happy to do
so at the slightest provocation. Not me. It’s gone. I still have
the straw hat, but not “Trouble.” (Something about billiards, as
I recall. I admit it’s hard to forget as funny a word as “billiards.”
I think I may cultivate it as a safe swear word. “Oh, Billiards!”
You hit your thumb with a hammer, swear, then crack up. That’s fairly
constructive, I think.) Anyway, I was worried about mentally reviving
Hancock County.
Except for two
things. In my heart I still held a lot of passion for the story
and the way Tim Slover told it. And in my hand I still held the dog-eared
script. (That’s “dog-eared,” not “doggoned.” I didn’t want you to
think this subject of swearing was taking over.)
Okay, here’s
the journal part: Isn’t a journal a little like a script? But “Hey!”
you say. “Doesn’t a script come before you say stuff, whereas a
journal comes after you say stuff?” (If you really do say “whereas”
in normal conversation, however, I’m going to have some trouble
taking you seriously. Sorry. “However,” however, is kind of an interesting
word, though--underused, I think. If all those valleygirls who are always saying “Whatever!” with a heavy
stress on the “ev” and a glottal stop
in place of
the “t,” said instead, with the same inflection if they wish, “However,”
their brains wouldn’t jam up on them, because after “However” you
have to say more words, WHEREAS after “Whatever” you don’t.)
Well, I see
your point. But WHEREAS the Hancock County script once came
before I said the words written in it, suddenly I needed it as a
record of what I’d said in the past. Because I needed to say it
again. Several times a day. For three cameras.
I got a challenging
e-mail from Kathy Columnreader (who HEREWITH
brings me one alliteration closer to writing like Elder Neal A.
Maxwell, whom I admire--avidly). Challenging because she asked me
for some good sources on prayer. I was pretty humbled by that gift
of trust. I even felt trusted enough to presume to be a source myself.
Here’s a little bit of my response:
“One of the blessings your asking brings to me is that I (suddenly)
need to think about how I feel, as well as get serious about what
I do.
“As I was reading
your e-mail, the thought that first came to me was to suggest sometimes
praying only thanks. Then I scrolled down just a little bit and
there you were, doing that already.”
(Out of the
e-mail. Okay, I only had that “praying thanks” idea still in my
head because of an experience about fifteen years ago, that I would
surely have forgotten if I hadn’t written it down in my journal.
It was an early morning jog through scrub oak, when I tried to ask
for all the stuff I felt I urgently needed, but it was so beautiful
out there that I never got past the thanks part. Wrote it down.
Kept doing it. On with the e-mail:)
“We sometimes
think it's virtuous to ask only for what we need, rather than what
we want. I think the Savior gave us a good example when, in the
Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed for what He wanted, which was to
have the bitter cup removed from Him, and then said, ‘Thy will,
not mine, be done.’ I've asked for lots of things I probably didn't
need but wanted, and felt good about it when I kept in mind that
the Lord knows what will make me happy and useful, and wants very
much for me to have whatever it really takes to make it so. I have
a good friend who was told in a blessing, by another good friend
of mine, that he was asking too little of the Lord.”
(Why I wrote
that story in my journal: The friends were my erstwhile creative
partners, Roger Hoffman and Greg Hansen, who, when they aren’t giving
each other blessings, compete with each other for gigs. Never shy
about dipping into the blessing-jugs of others, I wrote it down,
just a few years ago. I hope they don’t mind my sharing. It’s the
kind of answer any of us might get. More e-mail:)
“You wrote about
looking for things to be grateful for, and about discerning answers
to prayer. Sometimes I have been given the answer ‘no’ and felt
the most amazing peace simply because the Lord had spoken to me,
and His love was undeniable.”
(Again from history: The strange story of my first attempt as a
young man at becoming a fiancé, not written down at the time, was
written down with great care when I was old enough and just wise
enough to realize that one of the Lord’s most glorious direct interventions
in my life might otherwise be forgotten. Here endeth the lesson. Here resumeth
the e-mail:)
“Something that
hit me with some force when I took the sacrament far from home two
Sundays ago was the simple reminder of the reality of Christ's gifts
to us. I realized that I probably didn't understand the ordinance
very well, but suddenly realized that if I could make it small enough
to understand, maybe it would be small enough to overlook. I think
prayer can be like that.”
(The sacrament
meeting was during the recent filming in Idaho, and the feeling
is still fresh--but I wrote it down because freshness fades.)
“I think prayer
will change our lives when we don't think of prayer as something
to do when we get out of bed, but as something we get out of bed
to do. There's the old adage ‘Some people live to eat. I eat to
live.’ Well, imagine someone saying ‘Some people pray to live. I
live to pray.’ Do we pray in such a manner as to make our lives
better, or do we live in such a manner as to make our prayers better?”
(I’m going to
write this down in my journal, because even though the thought came
while trying to help Kathy Columnreader, I get to keep it, too.)
“An artist,
whose prayers are displayed for the whole world to see, had better
be focused on the latter of those two ideas.”
(See previous
parenthetical harangue. And add the following:)
Early in the
city of Alpine’s sesquicentennial year (2000) there was a “non-denominational”
fireside (which I thought was a pretty generous exercise in Political
Correctness, seeing as how all the members of other faiths who live
in Alpine could be fed happily with two large pizzas and sing in
their ward choirs anyway). A Protestant (who was a very good sport,
I thought) gave the invocation. He preceded his thoughtful prayer
with the observation that growing up as a New Testament Protestant,
he’d always been taught that prayer was something you did in your
closet, rather than on street corners, and he hoped we’d forgive
him for feeling a bit awkward at praying in public. Of course, we
did.
But then I e-mailed
Kathy C. that artists’ “prayers are displayed for the whole world
to see.” That’s because believing artists are always praising the
Lord (a definition of “prayer”), or thanking Him in song, or calling
for His help through a character or painting or poem. Even merely
having conversations (like this one) over which He is invited to
eavesdrop, and which He is welcome to interrupt, may be one way
of letting our “hearts be drawn out in prayer continually.”
Once, in a season
of deep need and deep thanks, I recorded my ninth album of homemade
songs. When it was done and I was searching for a title, I noticed
that every song--dancy, dreamy, up-tempo
or down--was a calling out to Him or an invitation to Him, or a
metaphor for my relationship to Him, or a reflection of His light.
I called the album “Prayers,” and I’ve always felt good about it
(except the drums are a little too loud). He seems to ask me to
get that light onto a hill, or declare it from rooftops. It looks
like I’m out of the closet. Like my Protestant friend.
Well, here’s
a discovery: Having sort of cherished what the Lord gave me from
time to time by writing it down, He gave me some more right now
when I needed it. What a radical concept! And now, if I merely say
“Thanks,” it’s a prayer. Or even just feel it, because He’s listening.
Always.
(Oh yeah, the
“Hancock County” shoot went pretty well. There are a lot of projects
I’m in that I never bother to see afterward. This one I want to
see. The surprise bonus was that, having attended faithfully to
our scripts, here was the playwright, Tim Slover,
hovering near and kindly visiting each of us between rehearsals
and takes (not at all unlike the Holy Ghost) and, in a still small
voice, “bringing all things to our remembrance.”)
So, in the spirit
of conclusion (at least, in the imagery of conclusion): had I not
kept a journal, I could easily wind up with an epitaph that reads
“Here lies mould’ring
Marvin Payne.
He had a kind
of Swiss cheese brain.
He learned
a lot, forgot it all,
And passed on, hopelessly inane.”
But I kept one, so maybe they’ll carve instead
“Here lies Marvin,
howl and quack!
Poet, actor, online hack,
He learned a lot, forgot it all,
But WROTE IT DOWN and got it back!”
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Visit
marvinpayne.com!
"...come
unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from
the last page of the Book of Mormon)
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