“Who Am I?”
By Marvin Payne
“Jane Eyre” closed after a thunder-and-lightning run,
and I came home and that very night buzzed off all the
“chocolate cascade” hair (didn’t take long) that had
me looking yea, verily, shall we say, sixteen months
younger than I really am, on account of my character,
Rochester, now instantly a couple of centuries deceased,
was about sixteen years younger than I really
am. The next morning I got up for church looking all
gray-haired and exactly like me and got to be my own
age for about three days, because then the white goatee
began to show, because I’m now on my way to being sixteen
years older than I really am, this time as Don
Quixote. (I’m glad it’s mostly just age I have to put
on – my insanity level and his are probably about equal.)
(Next age jump is even twelve years older than Quixote,
being the age of J. Golden Kimball in his final year
of jabbing, tormenting, and tickling the Saints. ((The
promotional line is, “The most talked-about General
Authority since Jonah was regurgitated onto the beach.”))
)
It’s easy to wonder, “How old am I, anyway?”
I mean, it’s written down somewhere, but if it’s this
fluid maybe it doesn’t really matter much. Really, a
more fundamental question would be “Who am I
anyway?” Don Quixote didn’t ask that question, because
he was quite certain who he was – an invincible white
knight bringing hope and rescue to the downtrodden and
oppressed. Of course he was wrong, but hey, maybe that’s
the crux of the story. I mean, whether or not he was
wrong. Really.
This can be a challenging thing for an actor, this “Who
am I?” thing. Peter Sellers, for example, is said to
have been kind of lost when he had to be, say, Peter
Sellers instead of Inspector Clouseau.
(Should that have an “x” at the end of it? Would it
be more quintessentially French if it were “Cleusieux”?
Ieux well...)
In
his last film role (excluding The Fiendish Plot of
Dr. Fu Manchu, which most everybody does – exclude,
I mean), he played a guy who sort of had no identity,
and he did it frightfully well. When Mr. Sellers guest-starred
on "The Muppet Show," he refused to appear
as himself. People have asked if he knew who he was.
I, for example, as one of the people, have asked if
he knew who he was. Maybe that’s because I ask myself
the same thing, even if “people,” generally, aren’t
exactly aflame with curiosity over the matter.
Nor, I suggest, are they exactly aflame with curiosity
over who they are, because of our curious habit
of defining ourselves in terms of what we do.
It’s easy for me to imagine, for example, a tractormonger
reading this column and saying, “Hey, I get paid pretty
good money for pushing John Deeres
off the showroom floor. Am I then not allowed to think
that who I am is a tractormonger?”
Well, sure. But if I were to get paid for being Don
Quixote, couldn’t I retort, “Hey, I get paid pretty
good money” (this is hypothetical, remember) “for assaulting
windmills. Shouldn’t I then think that who I am is a
sixteenth-century Spaniard borrowing a white goatee
from a twenty-first-century Meridian columnist?”
This is the old harangue, of course, about the tension
between “who” you are and “what” you are. You might
think you could torpedo the tension simply by observing
that you really are a tractormonger, whereas I am a mere actor pretending
to be this goateed Spaniard. But what happens when John
Deere determines that you have lost your ability to
answer the recommend questions right, and you are excluded
from the showroom? Or you’ve started showing up for
work in a fedora, and they fire you on the basis of
“incongruent image.” Or maybe they “downsize,” which
requires no logic or justification whatever. Which brings
me to where we started: “‘Jane Eyre’ closed ...”
Getting fired is almost always a surprise. Your house
burning down is generally a surprise. Getting divorced
is, in most cases I think, at least a delayed surprise.
You’d think that closing a show wouldn’t in any way
be a surprise – I mean, you are sufficiently literate
to read a calendar. But on Saturday night you have a
job (in Rochester’s case, “gentleman”), a house (in
Rochester’s case, Thornfield
Manor, which, I suddenly remember with some embarrassment,
does actually burn down during the show – this would
be eighteen times, but then, it’s always back up again,
de-burned, for the next performance), and (finally!
after nearly three hours of “Will they? Won’t they?
How could they possibly? What are they thinking?),
a marriage. Then on Monday morning you wake up (skipping
Sunday here, day of rest from all forms of pretense,
both onstage and in the John Deere showroom) and you’re
without a job, without a manor, and without the girl
(Wait! Who’s gonna raise our son?! Oh yeah, plastic doll that entered ninety
seconds before the final curtain and didn’t even get
a bow. ((In “Saturday’s Warrior” on the road we usually
kidnapped a real baby from the lobby for that scene
– my grown son David’s theatrical debut was as Emily
Flinders.)) ) I won’t even remind you that I am also
without the chocolate cascade hair.
But you’re not Edward Fairfax Rochester, you’re Conrad
Columnreader, lately of John
Deere, and maybe your absence from the showroom isn’t
a matter of worthiness, but a matter of conflagration
of said showroom, so your sudden unemployment is even
less deserved and less logical than it would have been
as a result of downsizing (if you can imagine that),
and you’re suddenly divorced from all your friends at
whom you never even threw saucepans, much less on whom
you ever threatened to walk out. It gives one pause.
In this case, it gives two pause – you and me.
(Four days after “Jane Eyre” closed, it felt so good
to be, for fourteen hours straight, a fiend of the infernal
pit. I knew who I was again – somebody was actually
paying me to be scruffy and coarse and to yank
on the chains of Joseph and the brethren lying cramped
on the floor of Richmond Jail trying to sleep. Peter
Sellers would have loved it – might not entirely have
understood it, but loved it. And if I were to forget
my identity for even a moment, Joseph would rise to
his feet and remind me ((this happened about thirty-eight
times, not because the Joseph actor wasn’t getting it
right, it’s just because he had to chastise us fiends
from several different angles)) ).
But now both the show and the showroom are closed and
you and I ask, “Who are we?” (Maybe you don’t ask. I’ll
wait for your column about this – or hey, you can e-mail
me! This is always welcome.)
The Asking: Am I the elders quorum president? About
one day in seven, I act like one, but I’ll get released
soon (it’s confusing to my elders to be led by all these
brooding Gothic enigmas and nutty Spaniards and cussing
cowboy General Authorities). Am I the Meridian Columnist?
Only until somebody in Editorial wakes up and asks,
“How long are we gonna let
this guy get away with this, anyhow?” Am I the tractormonger?
No, this would require the possession of marketable
skills. Am I the Provider, Protector, and Presider
over my family? Hit and miss – and even when it’s “hit,”
some little voice inside me is admitting that the Lord
(the real Provider, Protector, and Presider)
is just letting me pretend to be those things, for what
I might learn about Him while I’m pretending. (Hmm ...
acting!)
Then am I Casey Terry and Leah Ledbetter’s home teacher?
That somehow starts to feel closer to the truth, like
I’m getting “warm.” The flag out front of the cabin
is flapping out northward right now. I think four-year-old
John Riley and I will take down the kite this afternoon.
“Warmer.” On the table in the stairwell is my seven-year-old
Caitlin Willow’s handmade Valentine to me: “Hickle-dee foo, I love you.” “Way
warmer.” I rewind to last night and I suddenly see my
wife Laurie’s face across the kitchen table that is
strewn with bills and penciled calculations. In the
non-sequitur of the century, her eyes soften and she
says the words that are always a surprise and an amazement,
“I love you.”
Hey, I know who I am. Pray for Inspector Clouseau.
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"...come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from the last page of the Book of Mormon)
