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"When
Clichés Go Wrong"
by
Marvin Payne
“My dear brothers
and sisters, when the bishop called Thursday night asking me to
write this column, I went straight to the dictionary and it said
this. ‘kah’-lum: a large pillar, most often of stone, the part
of the portico which supports the frieze.’ So I thought that instead
I would write by the Spirit. Let me begin by quoting the entire
current Ensign, and these few pages of funny jokes I found in my
e-mail...”
Don’t stop reading.
The foregoing is a cliché. Just like the observation that springs
to mind right now that “if all the people who had ever fallen asleep
during a high council member’s talk were laid out end to end, they’d
probably be a lot more comfortable.” If I had truly for real begun
a Backstage Graffiti column like I pretend-began this one, it would
be charitable of you not to condemn me, because most clichés (wow
I wish I knew how to type those little accent marks that make words
like “cliché” look so much more impressive) are only clichés because
they’ve been said overly often, over oftenly, on account of they’re
quite often true, and often quite true. “Raining cats and dogs”
is not of that sort. Anything affirming that the Pope is Catholic
or that bears behave with a certain abandon in the woods is of that
sort.
(Another reason
not to condemn is that sometimes very nice people are caught in
webs of cliché. I once wrote a song for a musical play in which
the entire lyric was constructed of clichés my mother used.)
But writers
avoid clichés like, well, the plague. I remember that the most distressing
thing about my midlife crisis was that it was such a cliché. I mean,
would anybody accept it as mere coincidence that in that period
I acquired a red pickup with mag wheels? Honest, my nephew needed
to get rid of it. It was a favor to him. But who will believe that?
And one of the reasons I am obsessively careful when driving on
Labor Day is that to get in a crash would be so embarrassingly cliché.
Any other day, it’s tragic--but even the most moving and dramatic
tragedy can be depreciated by any taint of cliché.
Writers are
more afraid of cliché than is good for them. But still I think it’s
worth dedicating a column to the warning that clichés can go terribly
wrong.
Once I sat in
the temple chapel and had some serious worries in my life because,
well, where else would you have them? I remembered the story (often
a cliché) about someone letting the scriptures fall open in their
lap and closing their eyes and letting their finger fall on a verse,
then doing whatever that verse said to do. So I tried it. I was
astounded. My finger fell on the one verse in the whole Book of
Mormon that went like an arrow to the heart of my concern. I thought,
“Wow,
this is great!
I’ll try it again!” So I did, and my finger fell on a verse about
Nephite measuring vessels or cureloms or something, and I could
almost hear the Lord chuckling. A cliché gone wrong. (I suddenly
suspect that I told this story in a column about a year ago. If
I did, it’s not a cliché until I tell it in a couple more columns,
and then Richard and Linda Eyre tell it in theirs. But don’t look
for it in Anne Perry’s column, she’ll avoid it sure as the Pope
is Catholic.) I’m just glad the verse didn’t say “Go, and take of
the uncircumscribed of the Canaanites, and...” well, need I press
the point that a cliché of this sort is endowed with a measure of
danger?
My experience
in the temple was actually quite pleasant, helped me to know the
Lord better. But a little disconcerting anyway, because we all tend
to rely emotionally on our clichés a bit.
For example,
doesn’t some part of us feel suddenly hollow when the bride and
groom are standing at the wedding cake and she doesn’t smush it
all over his face? Wouldn’t we feel a little lost if suddenly the
answer to BYU’s defeat was not that “we didn’t execute well”? And
I’m confident that we would all feel confused to the point of losing
faith in the economy if we were to walk into Wal-Mart and see price
tags that read “$4” instead of “$3.99.” Imagine how disorienting
it would be to find any retail concern selling nothing at all that
ended in “.99” or “.95.” Really, imagine it right now. Hard, isn’t
it? Sort of makes you shudder.
Sometimes our
lives are driven by cliché. I had the great pleasure of acting in
the filmed version of the play “Saturday’s Warrior” (which, incidentally,
turned our clichés into several million bucks and a gold record)
with the lovely Cori Jacobsen, who played my daughter Julie. This
is the character who we find at the airport, saying a tearful farewell
to her missionary and morphing it into a lollapalooza production
number. We had a great time together. The next time I saw her after
our work on the soundstage was maybe a year later, at six in the
morning at Salt Lake International saying goodbye to a missionary.
The next time I saw her was maybe a year later than that, at six
in the morning at Salt Lake International saying goodbye to a missionary.
I stopped going to the airport. It was just too painful for a writer’s
sensitive feelings.
Here’s the journal
entry that precipitated this outpouring about cliché. I’d been in
Chile for several weeks as part of a cultural exchange of professionals
in various fields.
23 September
1984
“On a warm day
in Chile we sat on the bank of the Bio-Bio [please, how do you type
those accents?] River with our gracious hosts. In a nearby bowery,
a family of poor peasants labored over a hot fire preparing our
dinner. As we waited, our hosts asked me for a song. I was well-dressed
for a country excursion, the visiting dignitary, trained and experienced
as a performer. I took my fine instrument from its tweed case and
performed. Then they served us, and called an old woman out of the
smoky bowery. She wiped her rough hands on her skirt and picked
up a battered old guitar that I’m sure never saw the inside of a
case. She shook back her greying hair, smiled gently, showing that
many teeth were gone, strummed a few chords and, standing there
in simple elegance, began to sing. I’ve never heard singing like
that. It sounded like a chicken being mechanically de-boned while
still alive.”
Well, what’s
wrong with THAT picture?
It’s not always
tragic when clichés go wrong. I remember the first time the little
Long boy in our ward (that’s not a play on words--we also have a
long Little boy in our ward) got up to bear his testimony in church.
I was so expecting the warm, familiar, numbing words, “I want to
bear my testimony and I know this church is true I know President
Gordon B. Kimball is a prophet and I’m thank you for my parents
and my dog and my primary teacher.” Instead he said something startling
about how much the Savior loves him and how he hears the Savior’s
voice in the scriptures.
I recklessly
asserted earlier that clichés are quite often true. But now I have
to add the ammendment “but way not the heck always.” In my life
the only truth that doesn’t feel as slippery as if I were running
in my socks on a freshly waxed floor ‘round and ‘round the kitchen
table with a hungry wolf right behind me (clinically, “luposlipophobia,”
according to Gary Larson) is truth that’s spoken in the Spirit’s
voice. And news from the Spirit is almost always a surprise. And
clichés are, by definition, short on surprise.
“And so in closing,
brothers and sisters, I’d like to go on for another thirty minutes.”
Nope. Leaving cliché, now. But really, in closing, one more journal
example of a cliché gone horribly wrong.
14 October
1982
During my first
year at BYU (fifteen years ago) I fell in love with Ann. It began
by being taken in by a couple of her roommates. They asked me to
a football game, and over for popcorn. Lots of evenings like that
followed, and I started taking my guitar over. It was a really social
bunch, and the place was always full of boyfriends. One by one,
they would tire of listening to me sing and watching me eat popcorn,
and leave. Then the girls began to file off to bed. Ann was always
last, and we had a sweet friendship going long before the momentous
night when a certain arm-wrestling match ended in a kiss.
This lady was
funny, faithful, and fair to the core. Any list of “celestial wifely
qualities” drawn up by any returned missionary in any institute
class would comprehend only a portion of her virtues...
At the end of
that school year I went to California and she went to Colorado.
Many nights found me on my knees in the woods. My logical self told
me I might never find a finer wife, and I hadn’t the slightest hope
of finding her single after my mission, unless I had her promise
first. So I prayed and prayed, and in the spirit of “no news is
good news,” I flew her out over the Fourth of July weekend and proposed.
It was on my parents’ front porch, and I had to leave her periodically
to put the needle back at the beginning of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio
For Strings.” Her response will remain one of the brightest spots
in my life. She laughed and jumped up and down and her mouth and
her whole body said, “Oh, yes!”
We’d talked
often about the beauty of marriage and children. It was one of our
main delights, but they were faceless dreams. Now we dreamed out
loud and saw each other’s smiles and eyes and rejoiced. Three very
rich days.
On Monday evening,
on the way to the airport, I thought a perfect conclusion to our
time together would be to stop at the Temple and walk some... I
expected lots of sweet feelings and a sense of approval. We had
taken care to be worthy of it.
We stood before
the Fairbanks bronze, “Eternal Family,” and tried to see our faces
in it. We couldn’t. Can there be an “intense” numbness? Whatever
it was, it became darkness as we turned the corner of the building--colder
and darker in such sharp contrast with our expectations...
We walked around
to the better-lit back of the building. Ann knew something was dreadfully
wrong. I had to say something, anything to ease the pain. The only
thing to occur to me seemed the least likely to help. Grasping for
courage, I said, “Ann, it’s not right.” She knew what I meant, and
burst into tears. I reached out to comfort her, but something only
figuratively like electric shock prevented me... We stood in darkness
millions of miles apart...
[These ellipses
are not dramatic pauses. They’re censorship.]
Quite suddenly
(the image I have remembered is “a blanket of light descending on
us”), it all turned utterly around, and bitter tears gave place
to gratitude, and then wet laughter. We loved each other better
that we ever had... To hear the Lord say anything at all joyfully
eclipsed the sorrow in whatever He may have said.
I wrote her
I think two or three letters after that, had a brief confusing visit
with her on the eve of my mission, and have never seen her again.
End of journal
entry. End of cliché.
In the spring
of 1820, the notion of religious truth emitting from only highly
educated sober men with stiff collars and thinning hair was nearly
prevalent enough to qualify as a cliché. Aren’t we glad that sometimes
clichés go horribly, happily wrong?
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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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