Sept. 2: That's brilliant

 

“I am brilliant,” said the old man in the dirty raincoat. “And at least one English professor at the University of Calgary agrees with that statement.”

The conversation took place on Stephen Avenue one winter afternoon in the early 1990s. The old man was a poverty advocate – which is to say he believed he was the official voice of Calgary’s faceless low income earners. He was trying to get me to purchase a self-published collection of poems and essays he had put together. The collection consisted of some photocopied pieces of paper fastened together by a stapler.

“Listen to this,” he said, and read me an essay whose point was that Calgary’s public skating rink, located just south of the C-train track downtown, was NOT a public skating rink, but a private one.

The reason: “Poor people can’t afford ice skates.”

Then he smiled at me, as if he had just made an unassailable point. “Isn’t that brilliant?” he asked.

“No, it’s not,” I said. I did not give him the donation of $5 he was suggesting for his self-published view of the world.

I ran into that man a few months later, but he did not recognize me.

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The old man had heard about the writers’ group – a ragtag collection of Calgary writers who met for an open mic reading night on the last Saturday of the month at Words Books and Cappuccino Bar at the corner of 17^th and 17^th in the southwest quadrant of the city. He read a piece about how he was organizing something called The Festival of Poverty, something he said would “piss off almost everyone in the city.” He did not say how he’d encourage people to come to the festival but he invited us all to go.

The Calgary Herald ran a piece about him. After that, he simply faded away.

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Pardon me, but the skating rink just south of the C-train track was a public skating rink. It qualified under the definition of public – it was free for everyone, no one would get charged with trespassing there unless they were being drunk and/or disorderly. I don’t think wearing ice skates was a requirement for being on the ice either.

I was annoyed at the man’s attempt to highjack the English language in order to make a point, which I found silly. It was like saying there’s no such thing as a public library because poor people can’t afford to go to school so they can learn to read. There’s no such thing as a public trail because poor people can’t afford shoes to walk on it. There’s no such thing as a public bathroom because poor people can’t afford to eat, which would necessitate using the public bathroom.

So I still don’t think that old man in the dirty raincoat was brilliant.

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I don’t think I’m brilliant.

I thought I was brilliant in the early 90s, when I was the star of the monthly public readings at Words. The other day, while cleaning out my storage room, I discovered some of the essays I wrote back then. I was not brilliant. I was a twerp. When I first moved away from home in 1998 to forge my life as a writer, I got into the habit of sending weekly “newsletters” to everyone on my contact list. I read some of those old newsletters the other day. I was ashamed of them, embarrassed at my own solipsism. One of those essays so offended a friend of mine that she cut off contact with me. Years later, I tried to reconnect with her but she blocked me. I still miss her. She was a good friend.

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I used to like being told that I was brilliant. I don’t like it anymore. Now, it annoys me.  In Eric Bogosian’s play, Talk Radio, disc jockey Barry Champlain is talking to someone who thinks he’s a genius. He lets him go immediately, saying he doesn’t have anything he can learn from someone who thinks he’s wonderful.

And so it strikes me that ego-stroking is useless if you want to grow as an artist.

Proverbs says that a fool has more hope than someone who is wise is in his own eyes.

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Sometime in the year 2000, my friend, Richard Cole, invited me to a stage show put on by a magician friend of his named Chris Pilsworth. I went to the show and Richard invited me backstage afterwards to meet Chris.

“A fellow magician,” Richard said.

“I enjoyed your show,” I told Chris Pilsworth.

“I’m happy to hear that,” said Chris. “But I am much more interested in what you didn’t like about it.”

Chris knew nothing about me. He had no idea how long I had been in magic, I could have just started a week ago, but he was still interested in any constructive criticism that I had. I was so bewildered at this – this complete lack of ego – that I was speechless for a long time.

I made a rudimentary suggestion about changing the colour of one his props because it blended in too much with his shirt and he thanked me for it and I don’t know if he did anything with my suggestion or not. But I went home electrified, knowing that in showbiz, it is possible for all of us to belong to one big happy family and that we can all help each other be the best that we can be.

And that, my friends, is brilliant.

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Forrest Gump and Stuart Saves His Family are, essentially, the same movie; the takeaway from both of them is that intelligence is not as important as compassion. Al Franken, the ex-SNL actor who created Stuart Smalley said he wanted people to know that you can learn something from someone who is not as smart as you.

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One of my earliest encounters with brilliance was in the spring of 1989, when I was a Grade 10 student at Bishop Grandin High School. I had scored the title role in the school play, Sally and Sam, which was a saccharine-sweet play about two perfectly good kids who go on a date. What made the play so novel is that Sally and Sam both had psyches, played by other actors onstage, who broadcast the thought life of these two characters to the audience. Sally and Sam were unsure of themselves, believing the person they were out with was too good for them. Sam was described as a total jock, one of the best athletes in school, and this was as far removed from the real life Shteevie as a person could get.

The play opens with Sally and Sam in bed just before the school day opens. Sally’s psyche does a monologue about Sally; Sam’s monologue does a psyche about Sam. There are sound cues, cues that are necessary to advance the story. On one particular night, the sound person missed their cue, leaving Vanessa, the name of the actress playing Sally’s psyche, alone in the spotlight.

A lot of teenaged actresses would have panicked or just stood there and wait for the sound person to get their proverbial turds together. Not this gal. She improvised, going on a riff about how she expected Miss Sally to fall in love, and the audience was none the wiser. Lying in my prop bed, pretending to sleep, I silently congratulated that girl and knew that I was in the presence of genius.

Here is the plot summary for Sally and Sam, which was written by Jack Frakes. “From morning to late the same night Sally and Sam are seen at home with parents, in class, after school with fellow students, and finally with each other at the football game and in Sam's car. Inner thoughts, hopes, fears and rebellions are humorously expressed by their Psyches. Realism is blended with theatrical devices such as area lighting and staging, choral chants and optional use of projected slide images. “

As of this writing, 11:10 p.m. EST on September 2, 2023, it is playing nowhere in the world.

This may or may not be a travesty.

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Charles Schulz was brilliant. Bil Keane was not. Thomas Aquinas was brilliant. He said one of my favourite quotes, which is this: “If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.”

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I am writing this in a Tim Horton’s restaurant near Belleville. It is 11:15 at night; I have 45 minutes to publish this so I don’t default on note-a-day. Earlier, I did a magic show at a campground. They enjoyed me so much that they asked me to stay later so I could emcee their lip sync contest. I agreed to do so, even said I would throw in a couple extra magic tricks while the judges were deliberating.

I’d been working on a new trick, one that I thought was nearly stage ready. And so I decided to just do it. Ready or not, here I come. Not gonna keep that ship in my practice room. Gonna sail it out into the ocean of the live audience.

And wouldn’t you know it, my audience loved it. It even teared a few people up and a couple of them told me it’s a keeper.

So thank you, Chris. Thank you, Richard. Thank you Vanessa. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas, whom I hope to meet in heaven one day.

Sometimes, even simpletons like me are touched by brilliance.