You know, if he had any, nobody heard Orson Welles‘ last words. He died alone of a heart attack at age 70.
What struck me this morning is that in his first film–Citizen Kane, generally considered his greatest, which he directed at age 25, and in which I read he more or less invented the “noir” genre–Welles may well have anticipated his own death.
I look at myself, and see all the unresolved conflicts in me. He had them too, but in vastly larger quantities. They can easily cross a lifetime.
Welles was married to Rita Hayworth, one of the most beautiful women of her time, so beautiful that she is one of the few women of that era remembered even now.
And yet, in his later years, when he was down and out and living with Peter Bogdanovich and Cybill Shepherd, she reported he would often come down in the middle of the night to the refrigerator and eat fudge popsicles endlessly. You want to know how he got so prodigiously fat? That was one way. Fudgecicles. Fudgecicles. Just ponder that.
He was like an overgrown child, living in an adult world. I can relate to that. I sometimes feel that way myself. I wonder how the hell I got here. I feel many of us are like that. Call that an inner child if you want. I suppose it’s as good as anything. Don Henley likely has one too.
And Welles life was filled with hustle and bustle, and more than his share of drama. I suppose someone must have remarked on it, but in many respects he anticipated his life and death at age 25.
And yet, does it not make sense? No one disputes he was a genius. He is at the top of most polls for Best Director of all Time. Certainly he was at the top in the most recent BFI polls of both Directors and Critics.
A becomes B. Mathematical logic works this way, but so too does emotional logic. Welles’ had a very unpleasant childhood in many ways (I suggest you read it, in the link at top), and perhaps knew even while still quite young he would never fully surmount it.
This, to me, is an interesting hypothesis.
While holding off on my theodicy post (I have a few I think interesting posts I’m more or less putting on the coffee table in the living room of my mind for the moment, but will share before long), what I will suggest is that Life, writ large–which includes both this life and what comes after–is a Big Swirl. By this I mean a large movement that we participate in, that we adapt to, and which to a lesser extent adapts to us. Felicity is finding a home in this Big Swirl.
But pains and traumas of various sorts create within us Little Swirls, which interfere with the free flowing of the Big Swirl. They are hooks that hold us. They are Rosebud’s, in a term I’ve used periodically for some time. They are rocks in a river, eddies, incompletions, “cut-off’s”. They are being left behind.
This, ultimately, is what I think the ego is that should be left behind. If I might riff on U2, the ego is precisely what can’t be left behind, because you are stuck in it. You are, in another riff, stuck in a moment.
I would argue that in some respects–and I have not studied his life in detail, merely at a high level–Welles was stuck in a moment across a lifetime. It’s easy to do.
To get unstuck you have to move sideways, onto another pathway. It’s hard. It’s really hard.
My average night without booze is much like I imagine psychedelic experiences must be (and I will comment I am not the sort of drinker who gets DT’s and withdrawals; I don’t drink more nights than I do, by about 5 to 1; I am simply referencing that I am not using booze to suppress PTSD symptoms which will continue indefinitely with or without booze until I get this thing licked). I will do psychedelics at some point, but I don’t feel that point is yet. I am moving without them.
But I feel ripping and tearing and molding. I am slowly getting used to it. It is a sort of emotional Rolfing, I suppose, and needed. The aim is greater freedom, and I do in fact feel that sometimes. I actually had a brief glimpse yesterday listening to this song of what it might feel like to love with no agenda, no possibility of judgement, with literally nothing but hearing and kindness.
That song made me cry. I have a very, very powerful imagination, and it was like I was there. You know this song is true in so many ways. There is so much pain to our left and our right; so much silent suffering, covered with fake smiles, and fed at night with booze and drugs. I see all this. It hurts me. But I was born for this. I can take it.
This is the game. And winning for me means winning for all.
And having read that, you might suppose I am nicer than I am. I still yell at people, and get impatient with stupidity. I hurt, and pain always tends to share. I stop myself better than I used to–MUCH better than I used to–but it still gets out. One of my kids got me Grumpy Old Man socks, and I wear them.