by alex vorse
TOO MANY QUESTIONS
Have you ever wondered - like those late-night watchmen or bathtub grandmas addicted to the Truman Show - "How's it going to end?" Out of the six "w" question words (including the one that starts with an h), "when?" is probably the most boring, and "how?" is most intriguing.
"Who?" forks over the names of the guilty, innocent, or lied about. "What?" brings on the gory details, stories, lies and responses like "yeah man, a kazoo, he used a ten-foot kazoo; isn't that sick?" "Where?" takes you backstage and on the kitchen table and to a mountaintop. "Why?" always catches them off guard, soliciting thin explanations, panicked justifications, and disdained silences because "it doesn't matter." But "why?" is the most important question, especially when it remains unanswered.
"How?" makes you draw a map, call your friends, stop and ask for directions, go to the lab, read the manual, or cuss and say "I don't know!" But "when?" is boring. "When?" spells out some narrow description of time - which, as my old freund Albert says, "ist totally relative, jah."
So who cares about when it's all gonna end? I want to see an exit wound, spray pattern, autopsy report and based-on-a-true-story dramatization showing me how we're getting to where we're going and how I can help, hinder or better understand the process.
SHINY, HAPPY PEOPLE
A twist of irony comes with the perspective by persons of faith on the matter. Turn on any televangelist, and you'll hear how true belief (evidenced by a "love offering") is rewarded with deliverance in prosperity, success, security and health. Or talk to any sincerely concerned person of faith about a personal struggle or hardship, and see if you don't get a response like, "everything happens for a good reason," or, "this will pass; things will get better."
The funny thing about those common affirmations is that the church used to have a radically different outlook. Christians in Europe's Catholic Church during what some call the Dark Ages were taught that humanity fell from perfection at its dawn in the Garden of Eden. Since utopia had been lost, man and womankind's future looked like a slow but inevitable decline in a giant handbasket headed straight for hell. So the only affirmation people in trouble got back then was, "it's only getting worse, but don't worry; if this keeps up, you're bound to die soon."
MAKE IT INTERESTING
The way to sing or play a really loud note is not to scream with bombast until one's lungs bleed or to turn an amplifier all the way up to eleven. The way to sing or play a really loud note is to make all the other notes softer. Because music is all about relationships - those between pitches, dynamics, performers and audiences. So the high note at the end of an emotional crescendo sounds huge not on its own but in context - in proportion to the quiet, low notes that precede and follow it.
The same goes for a successful story. A great ending doesn't come from moral overkill or hours of epic footage with symphonic soundtracks to boot. A great ending is the last chapter in a story that begins with failure - an insurmountable challenge and characters that possess only naïve bravery where they need experience and skill. And the tension builds as the players grow in gains and losses. They enjoy extreme satisfaction one minute and desperate grief another. And all those emotions play relative to the situation of the story. Loss accompanies the death of a friend in one narrative and a check in the "no" box on a third-grade note looking for love in another. But to each character, that moment stops time and watches a little piece of the world turn gray. So a thimble of spilled milk can earn just as many tears as the apocalypse as long as everything prior to tastes like a piece of cake.
So I guess I'm saying that I hope our story plays like a well-written movie. I'm not asking for pure progress here (or for real regress for that matter). I don't want to hear from the optimistic about how every single thing is going to get better or from the cynical about how everyone's going to hell. Instead, I want to watch tension, release and extremity grow in relation to the present situation. And maybe, if I'm lucky, I could check out a few good endings too.
