Lies

What did Joseph Conrad say?  "There is a taint of death in lies."

On the other hand, Graham Greene wrote, "The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being—it's a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths."

We all lie.  Most of the time it's for expediency.  You just don't want to do something, go somewhere, see someone.  Or you don't want to express your true opinion of something--the food you've just eaten at a friend's house, the gift you've been given.

There are bigger and more significant lies, of course.  Some quite malicious and harmful, some inexcusable.  Some that cause permanent damage, betray great trusts, lead you to do things harmful to yourself.  Some lies must be called out.  Some lies stink.  And the more powerful you are, the easier it is to get away with your lies.  We all know that.  And sometimes it is hard to tell the truth, but necessary.  I don't always live up to that.  In fact, most often I don't.

I'm with Graham Greene, though.  The idea that you should never lie, that you're a horrible person if you do, tells me that the speaker does not understand the human heart or human relations, as Greene put it.

Tennessee Williams understood this very well.  A brave and uncompromising artist, he knew that often morality depends on circumstance.  That it can be nuanced.  In A Streetcar Named Desire, Mitch confronts Blanche when he learns about her sordid past in Mississippi:

MITCH: You lied to me, Blanche.
BLANCHE: Don't say I lied to you...
MITCH: Lies! Lies, inside and out, all lies.
BLANCHE: Never inside, I didn't lie in my heart.

How can you not lie in your heart and lie with your words?  You can.  If he believed Blanche, would Mitch have lived happily ever after with her?  I don't know. Tennessee never makes these things easy for you.  He never lies artistically.

People can use the truth to hurt others.  They can hide behind the maxim, "Telling the truth is always better than lying."  Then they take that "truth" and stab the person in the gut with it, humiliate them, make them feel small.  Add alcohol, and you have emotional razor blades across the face.

I do know that when I lie, I always feel a wave of guilt.  If I think my lying will save a person some shame, some humiliation, some pain, I get over that guilt almost immediately.  But if the reason for the lie is more to prevent me from facing something I don't want to face, then that wave doesn't go away.

The problem, for me, can be admitting the difference.

The oblique morality of Tennessee Williams

Last Friday, I saw three one act plays by Tennessee Williams. They were performed at an old mansion in the French Quarter here in New Orleans as part of the Tennessee Williams Festival. Each play, set in a hotel, was performed in a different room of the house. The rooms were small, and so there were times when the actors—never more than four and usually two—were moving about right next to you. It was an enlightening evening.

The plays are Green Eyes, The Traveling Companion and Mr. Paradise. It's not easy to find out much about them. They were published in 2005 and 2008 respectively by the estimable house, New Directions, in volumes of TW's one-acts.  It appears these plays were written much earlier, but, as I say, it's not easy, even on the Internet, to determine that.
                                                                        

In any case, Williams' themes abound in these short plays. As does the characteristic florid, pained way his characters speak, using words that often deflect the truth but that, in the end, do not deny it. You can see that most readily in Mr. Paradise, where the landlady of a rooming house in the French Quarter demands the rent from two washed-up residents. The first is an alcoholic woman who goes on about a rich man she knows who owns a rubber plantation in Brazil. The second is a seedy-looking, dirty-robe-wearing, gut-hanging older man named Anthony Paradise who, we later learn, is—or was— a poet. When the landlady starts attacking the woman, who is obviously lying about the rubber plantation and probably about everything else, Mr. Paradise rises to defend her. In a long speech, he says to the relentless landlady, suppose it's true that there is no rubber plantation, and suppose I don't have any novel I'm working on as I claim I am—suppose all of it's a lie—why must you crush this fabrication? What difference does it make what kind of subterfuge we choose to hide ourselves behind?

One of the things I admire most about Tennessee Williams and for what I'm most grateful, is his understanding of the obliqueness of morality. Yes, there is black and white sometimes. The greatest sin is deliberate cruelty, he said, and at times, there is a plain line between yes and no. But there is also the kind of lie that has nothing to do with cruelty and which only serves to help that person through the day, the hour, the minute. It's a scenario that protects him or her from the glare of that harsh uncovered light bulb and which preserves that most delicate thing—dignity—that should never be stripped from us.                                                                     

In A Streetcar Named Desire, when Mitch calls out Blanche for all the lies she told him about her past, she says, "Never inside! I never lied in my heart!"

Tennessee, let me have the courage to protect those who never lie in their heart.

Stars taking up collections, final curtain

I played A Young Collector in A Streetcar Named Desire forty-five years ago. When I did, I stepped into a complete world. In this short scene, I have come to collect for the newspaper, and Blanche Dubois, alone in the house, has not wanted me to leave. She's used several slim excuses for me to stay, but now, finally, I am about to leave.  I think.        

            Young Man:
Well, I'd better be going--
             Blanche [stopping him]:
Young man!
     [He turns. She takes a large gossamer scarf from the trunk and drapes it about 
     her shoulders.]
     [The young man clears his throat and looks yearningly at the door.]
 Young man! Young man! Young, young, young man! Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights?
    [The Young Man laughs uncomfortably and stands like a bashful kid. Blanche speaks 
    softly to him.]
Well, you do, honey lamb! Come here. I want to kiss you, just once, softly and sweetly on your mouth!
    [Without waiting for him to accept, she crosses to him and presses her lips to his.]
Now run along, now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good--and keep my hands off children.
    [He stares as her for a moment. She opens the door for him and blows a kiss at him as 
    he goes down the steps with a dazed look.]

She kissed me. This older woman who was everything that was forbidden to me. Those lips!  Now, in a few minutes, everything in my life was changed. I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay and I wanted her to kiss me again. I wanted to touch her dress and her face and I wanted her to teach me everything she knew and to talk to me while she did about how I looked like a young Prince. I was a Prince. I was not a Collector. Her kiss remained on my lips. I walked slowly away and then off the stage. But that mean nothing, the exit. Tennessee Williams' world stayed with me. I walked within it for for hours and hours. (And still do, in a way.) Blanche DuBois had commandeered my heart. I had to see her again. And, as luck would have it, I would, the next night, at eight o'clock.
                                                                         

Stars taking up collections

I played the role of A Young Collector in A Streetcar Named Desire forty-five years ago.  In this brief scene, I have come to collect for the New Orleans Evening Star, and Blanche DuBois, alone in the house at the time, does not want me to leave. I am no longer who I was. I am in this world, and I am a young man. Everything that happens is as it happens.

            Blanche:

Hey! [He turns back shyly.  She puts a cigarette in a long holder.]  Could you give me a light? [She crosses toward him. They meet at the door between the two rooms.]

            Young Man:

Sure. [He takes out a lighter.] This doesn’t always work.

            Blanche:

It’s temperamental?  [It flares.]  Ah!—thank you. [He starts away again.]  Hey! [He turns away again, still more uncertainly. She goes close to him.]  Uh—what time is it?

            Young Man:

Fifteen of seven, ma’am.

            Blanche:

So late?  Don’t you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour—but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands—and who knows what to do with it? [She touches his shoulders.]  You—uh—didn’t get wet in the rain?

            Young Man:

No, ma’am.  I stepped inside.
            Blanche:

In a drugstore?  And had a soda?

            Young Man:

Un-huh.

            Blanche:

Chocolate?

            Young Man:

No, ma’am. Cherry.

            Blanche [laughing]:

Cherry!

            Young Man:

A cherry soda.

            Blanche:

You make my mouth water. [She touches his cheek lightly, and smiles.]

I said that I was in another world then, a world as real, even more real than my everyday world. I was, and absolutely. It was all unfolding before me. The feeling of being with someone feral, who could have her way, but what was it? What did she want from me? She touched me once, on the shoulder. I could see her face so clearly, her smile. I could smell her perfume. Then she touched me on the cheek. I was at a complete loss. Was I supposed to stay? Could I?  And then....
                                                             

The Courage of Thomas Lanier

I'm living in New Orleans, not far from where Tennessee Williams once lived.

He lived in several places in the French Quarter, and my current apartment is close to where he sets A Streetcar Named Desire.

I have always looked to him for courage, and now that I am growing old in his favorite city, even more so.

Every so often I pick up the marvelous biography of his early life, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams.  It's a highly under-appreciated book.  I like to to read about those early struggles of his, many of which took place just a few blocks away.

You get the impression in letter after letter, journal entry after journal entry, that, no matter how bleak the situation was for him, it never came close to dissuading him.  He hocked his typewriter, he hocked his only suit, he hocked his bicycle to pay the rent, to pay for food.  He wrote.  He never stopped writing.  He was a courageous writer, a courageous man.

                                                                 

     

                                                    

Brave and funny.  I remember seeing him on a Chicago talk show once with three or four other people.  One of them was a Catholic priest.  Tennessee had recently converted to Catholicism.  The priest, knowing this, said, "I shall pray for you."

Without missing a beat, Tennessee said, "I don't require your prayers."

Years ago, I read something he wrote in a preface to one of his plays: "...time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition."

I can hear it, the ticking. 

Give me courage, Tennessee.