THE SQUARE BLACK HAT
The graduate wears black At his graduation.
Why?
The graduate’s hat is flat And black
And keeps the sun away.
Why?
The graduate sits and listens To other men in black Tell him truths he knows Aren’t true, but he listens In black, under his flat hat.
Why?
THE GRADUATE WEARS BLACK BECAUSE HE’S IN MOURNING.
WHIM ADMITS HE’S A MESS
‘You’re a walking, talking disease, Whim,’ said an ambitious disciple.
‘I am?’ asked Whim.
‘You don’t take yourself seriously. People coming from all over the world to hear your words of wisdom and all you do is make fun of everything.’
‘I know. I’m a mess.’
‘How do you expect other people to take themselves seriously if you don’t take yourself seriously?’
‘Exactly,’ replied Whim.
After Whim had discovered old U.T. (Ultimate Truth) some of his disciples reproached him for too much frivolity and others for too much seriousness. But Whim saw that it’s impossible for us to live fully without both. When Whim once spent two years working to create a new society with more flexible rules and more openness to inconsistency and variety, some of his followers claimed that he had fallen victim to Purpose, to grasping at the future. At that time Whim devoted himself to creating an alternative way of life for others. So focused was he that at times the whimsical Whim seemed to have disappeared. He was challenged about his seriousness dozens of times. Although most of his answers were in his normal style – brief, paradoxical and amusing – once he answered seriously:
‘To create a game you must have a goal, rules for reaching it and players. When I have seemed frivolous and goal-less, it’s because I have been refusing to play some of the games which you or society try to thrust upon me. My frivolity is simply a ploy in the game I play to break down the boring limitations of my culture. In such cases my frivolity is playing my own game hard and seriously to win against the dominant society.
‘To have any game you have to have players who are trying as best they can to reach a goal. As soon as a player stops trying hard to reach the goal, for him the game has ceased to exist.
‘It is a paradox that when I am a lion trying to destroy old games I often play the role of child or fool or clown. Now that I am trying to create new values I have to play the role of master, leader, hero. Since the role of master or leader has been polluted by a thousand serious adults playing at them, you see my new roles as a regression, a falling from the path. But both when I appear frivolous and when I appear to be a serious leader I am playing, playing hard but not expecting to win anything, able to take up a new game at any moment.’
Whim abandoned his game of trying to ‘change the world’ exactly two years after he began. His comment at the time was: ‘The world got lucky: I failed to change it. I got lucky: I failed to change it.’
The shortest path between two points is the long way through life.
You can’t force humour. Nothing kills it faster than saying: be funny.
Humour is a letting go of something that one takes seriously and is often personal. One woman takes her cooking seriously, another is always making fun of her own cooking. One man is proud of his job and can’t joke about it, another is proud of it but mocks it publicly. One might argue that anything you can’t joke about is a personal hang-up, something you are taking too seriously and thus is, whether you know it or not, causing you unhappiness. Can you make fun of your own children? Of your spouse? Of your parents? Of your religion? Of your presidential candidate? Of your country? Of capitalism? Of socialism? Of love? Of your figure? Of the way you dress? Of your athletic ability?
Whenever you make fun of something you are detaching yourself from that thing. To laugh at a man slipping on a banana peel and taking a pratfall is nothing; we have no attachment to that man’s dignity. But to laugh at our own falling flat on our arse is a sign of our detachment from our own dignity.
I was once with two other young teenage boys at a small dinner party hosted by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, famous a few years later for losing the American presidency when the Chigaco Tribune declared him a winner. The governor was telling an anecdote about being at a carnival and evaluating how strongmen were able to swing the hammer just right to ring the bell at the top of the pole. He brought his fist down to illustrate the swing and sent a fork spiralling back over his shoulder and on to the floor.
No one said a word. A cadaverous waiter appeared, stooped to pick up the fork and soon replaced it with another. No one commented. Governor Dewey at one level maintained his dignity. But on another level he was missing life.
How much nicer if he had immediately turned to his two sons and me and said with a smile: ‘Now let’s see if you can do that.’ And he then might take the fork from his adult neighbour and try to send it flying as he had accidentally sent the first. What joy it would have been for us boys and the adults if all were soon banging away on the formal tablecloth to send silverware flying every which way.
WHIM TRIES TO BE SERIOUS
‘Come on, Whim, you can do it. Say something positive and definitive which isn’t mocking either me or itself or yourself or anything.’
‘Do I have to?’ Whim said grimly.
‘Yes, just this once you have to say something positive and unmocking.’
Whim thought for a moment.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘I got it: I love myselves.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘I would have said “I love God” but you might have thought I was being religious.’
‘I see.’
‘“God loves Whim” says it too, but I didn’t want to give God a bad reputation.’
DICE HOUSE, A PLAY IN TWO ACTS, BY PAUL LUCAS
Act One
Scene 1. Dr Drabble’s Practice
[Drabble pacing about, swigging from a half-empty whiskey bottle. Mathew listening politely.]
| DRABBLE: | The anti-depressants seemed to work at first but soon I found I was taking more and more of them and feeling worse and worse … |
| MATHEW: | What do you mean when you say you started feeling worse? |
| DRABBLE: | Well, no sleep, haven’t slept in days, and these sudden sweats, sudden panic attacks, my heart’ll just go bo-bo-bo-boom like it’s going to pop out of my mouth on to the floor and get covered in all the hairs and the vile things that are down there, the dust. |
| MATHEW: | And does anything seem to trigger these attacks? |
| DRABBLE: |
Nothing, they just come out of the blue. And I’ve started to hear voices now. Little voices, my God, I really think I’m going to end up doing something stupid
|