Talking a Good Game
Today I’m writing in defence of talking a good game. Lately we’re learning a lot about ourselves and others. Do you pandemic well, for example? I think I’m actually quite okay at the art of pandemic, thanks to a life where I have cultivated solitude, developed quiet and mainly solitary hobbies, never get my hair cut, rarely eat out, and enjoy the computer screen.
That said, I talk a pretty good game about the joys of the pandemic life. But of course it ain’t all that.
The thing is though, I could tell you all the ways it has sucked for me, but you probably already know because it also sucks for you in all the same ways give or take. Which is why I’m just going to continue to talk a good game. I’m getting through; I’m fine. Generally the expression means that while you talk a good game, your actual game is completely rubbish. But I’m sort of of the fake it until you make it school, too.
I think I’m able to do this, maintain some equilibrium, because I came into this current situation with an okay “resilience bank account.” I suppose that my longtime practice of finding things to love also fills up my bank account. I really enjoyed this article titled “You Can Find Your Voice by Loving Things” about the movie critic Jim Ridley who wrote a book titled People Only Die of Love in Movies, and who was known for his “good-hearted reviews.”
When you love things, and get passionate about something, you are doing good things for your brain, and good things for your resilience bank account, I imagine.
Lately, a friend shared an article with me written by Leonard Cohen’s friend and Rabbi. It seems to me that whatever has always been true is still true and that the human condition is still worthy of consideration and contemplation. The Rabbi says that they “often came back to one issue of dispute. By temperament, but maybe more as a professional obligation, I offered a path of repairing the broken vessels. I think Leonard could not accept that suture. Spiritually, I am somewhat equipoised between Neoplatonism and Gnosticism — topics about which we spoke often. Leonard often took the Gnostic turn. He said to me that the human condition is mangled into a box into which the broken soul does not fit. We all chafe, terribly.”
Of course, I’m not a religious person, but I’m interested in Leonard Cohen. I’m interested in our broken souls. Can they be sutured or do we just hold our mangled pieces in a vessel that resists? Don’t know myself, could be either. We all chafe though.
I keep coming back to these words:
“Everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows it's moving fast”
From Everybody Knows. And these:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
So yes, everybody knows. We’ve all got this broken feeling. Might as well talk a good game about how life is, might as well hand out chocolates. I have to believe the world can and will be a better place eventually. We know the dog bites. But as Dorothea Lasky says in her book Animal, “What did my dog teach me about being human? To be gentle. To be gentle and wild and to be able to, but not to, bite everyone.”
