Best of ONE World

My world specifically.

Perhaps, not the "best," but that's a pretty subjective statement I suppose. I'm just going to use this area to unleash little bits and pieces of my life that I currently don't have a place for. The idea behind this blog was initially a way to hone my writing skills while being able to keep in touch with my good friend from Norman, but I suppose one out of two isn't so terrible. So here's a terribly revealing vignette about my life and the kind of things that can send my poor heart reeling in ways that even the sappiest of love songs never do.

I love the Marx Brothers. And it's the worst kind of love. Remember Heidi from grade school? You would rub sand in her hair and steal her shoes and be completely obvious to anyone who wasn't in 3rd grade? Eventually she moves away and you go on with life and then finally one day you look back to analyze the many inane decisions that led you to where you are and you piece together those crazy emotions that your heart had no room for when you were 8. I suppose it's not really love, but it was still as intense as love could be at that age. That's how I feel about the Marx Brothers in a way. I don't misunderstand my emotions for them, but I do love them long after they are gone and it pains me in a profound way. Just like you will never connect with that girl from grade school again in the only way that matters, I know that I will never see a new Marx Brothers movie. Sure I have a few left that I have purposely avoided watching, but I know they aren't the best ones and I will watch them a foreboding presence over me, knowing that I have precious few jokes left to laugh at with the sound of surprise in my voice. The fact that they are all dead looms over me with every viewing too. It gets my sense of humor all tangled up with the awareness of how short a time we have here and makes for a really unique state of mind. Sometimes I end up enjoying the viewing even more because of this and then sometimes I can't bear to wait for the screen to fade to "The End" before I get up and turn off the TV.

There is far too much that I love about the movies for me to espouse in this one entry, but I will hit on a couple, and I'll make them the small moments so you know just how important the big ones are to me as well.

I could point out the musical segments of Harpo, the slapstick mute of the group, playing his harp and be perfectly happy writing a couple pages about that, but I'll go even smaller here and hone in on his eyes. For the uninitiated, several of the movies include musical segments and generally feature either Chico on the piano or Harpo on his harp. Chico playing piano is the same Chico you see the entire movie, brash and loud, haphazardly slapping the keys in unexpected ways and playing to entertain the crowd more than to satisfy himself. Harpo, though, is transformed every time he sits down to pluck. He goes from having that inane smile permanently plastered on his face to a look of complete serenity. As a kid I used to mistake his demeanor at the harp as boredom. I figured he just wanted to get on with the movie so he could pull another blowtorch from his jacket and get in bed with a horse, but as I've grown older I can see the love of music in his eyes. A word I've gotten hung up on for awhile now is "earnest." I want to be earnest in my words, my actions and my life so badly that it sometimes keeps me from being anything at all. But Harpo, my god, the word was invented for that man and you see it in his eyes. You can see him pouring his soul into a filler number squeezed into a anarchist comedy. Who else would care so much about something that means so little in the big picture? The same energy that he attacks his madcap character with is right there on the stool with him, but its focused so purely on one thing, making the music matter to the 10 people who didn't go off to buy popcorn during the number. And then of course as soon as the song is over you see his eyes roll back in his head and the character returns, the true self is pushed deep inside to reveal the facade that we have come to accept as fact. And its all in the eyes, I could watch those scenes without sound (but why would I?) and still feel moved in the silence.

Another thing I love about the movies is something I would never have predicted me one day admitting as a child. I love Zeppo, the 4th Marx Brother, the straight man, the absolute most boring part of any film he has ever been in. Eventually he left the troupe to go on and form one of the most successful Hollywood agencies, but during the first few films you could always depend on him to play the male romantic lead and perform at least one cheesy musical number, usually performed with the help of the female romantic lead. My love for him has grown out of familiarity more than anything else. There is a certain predictive nature to all the films that is comforting for the viewer, and Zeppo is anything but surprising. My love for him increased even more recently though when I was reading up on the history of the brothers and discovered that most considered him to be the funniest brother off camera. He could also impersonate Groucho so well that even stood in for him during the black out scene in Animal Crackers. So the most boring brother is also the most versatile and completely content with standing in the shadows of comedic giants. Perhaps he thought being more legitimate in the films would lead to solo roles in big budget pictures, but I like to think that he was just happy to see his other brothers shine and did his best to keep the spotlight on them.

So yes, I love you now too Zeppo, and I get sad when I think that you died 15 years before I was born.

Flash back to this evening now....

I was watching At the Circus tonight because it's Monday and I felt like fucking with my brain chemistry without the help of illicit drugs and a mid-late Marx Brothers movie that I've only seen a couple times will usually do that. Especially if it isn't their strongest showing. It's good enough to get me laughing but not absurd enough for me to completely shut off the nagging parts of my self that like to remind me that they ARE ALL DEAD AND YOU WILL BE TOO. I know, fucked up, right?

I finished it and was feeling not too terrible so I started getting ready for my shower because it's Monday and I like to be clean on Tuesday. I was thinking about my dad because he is so close to my love of these movies, it gets a little mixed up in my mind sometimes because of that. You see, he first exposed me to the movies. I can't recall the first one I ever saw, but I do remember being in Y-Indians and having him show us A Day at the Races, truly one of the classics, at one of our meetings, I think it was a sleepover at the YMCA. I really enjoyed it and so did the other kids. The movies are great because even if you are too young to get all the quick turn of phrases from Groucho, you can still sit back and enjoy Harpo antics and the funny mustache. You have to imagine our neat rows of sleepings bags, TMNT if you were lucky and a plain red one if not, and the eager little faces being illumated by the whites and disappearing behind the blacks. You have to imagine our faces lighting up when we finally adjusted to the machine gun pace of the jokes. You have to imagine being a kid again and how every little thing in the world could be THE world for you in that moment and then you start to understand how these movies grabbed such a strong footing in my being. Looking back, it must have made my dad so happy that one of his childhood loves was being accepted by a new generation, he could see himself in us, which is always what kills people when it comes to kids. A kid can do the cutest things and some asshole might not be moved, but when he sees the kid pick at his ear the way he used to or show him a truck that looks like his old one, even the hardest of hearts melts. And now, years later, it gives me such immense happiness to know that my dad was happy that night, and it means SO much to me that he was, there were certainly other times I saw him happy, but I guess I can finally relate to what he must have felt. Nowadays I strive to expose someone to these films and I have to keep myself from watching their faces with nervous expectation, praying that they "get it," that it clicks for them like it did for me and in that moment I have to make room for another person in my heart. I think of my dad sitting at the back of the darkened gym, looking at the kids, maybe focusing on me even, and feeling that elation in the moment when the connection is made and his love is finally shared, with his own child no less. I'm so happy I could give him that.
Hindsight for me is not 20/20 though, especially when it comes to the younger years, but I never want to know if I remembered this wrong because it means too much to me now.

So I thought about that when I was getting ready for my shower and of course the spectre of Marx Brothers death crept in there too and I cried for the first time in a long time because my dad is going to die someday and I finally understand what that means at 24 for the first time.