And I was standing on a ladder today, thinking of Woody Allen and George Bernard Shaw, both warped, awful human beings in their own ways, but also gifted with a talent for wit, and psychological insight. We speak of Shavian Wit. Allen has been a steady feature of our cultural landscape for, what, 40 years? Both are intelligent. Both understand people.
But both have (had) something deep inside of them that drives them, that is unnamed, unacknowledged, hidden. When we see Woody Allen being neurotic, what we need to see is someone who goes through the motions of caring about others, who goes through the motions of emotions, but who in my view is really quite cold and calculating at the core of his being. So, too, was Shaw, who called for the invention of a poison gas to kill undesirables, all while smiling genteelly.
Constant abstraction, perhaps, is often a smoke concealing a fire.
I will add, actually, that I had a dream some time ago, in which I climbed down a ladder, into an underground area, where Noam Chomsky was cajoling people to jump off a cliff into a pool far below, saying “the water’s fine”. Many jumped.
My interpretation then was that he was convincing people to lower qualitative levels, to lower, less desirable emotional and intellectual states, which I certainly believe he did and does. But now, when I apply the idea that ALL parts of every dream contain an element of me, I see that he symbolized for me the state of concealing abstraction. He symbolized for me the power to avoid emoting through thinking, and in so doing reducing myself, lowering myself.
This is interesting to me, at least. If your existence is the thorn which pricks you, what do you become when it disappears?