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“Who Am I?”
By Marvin Payne
“Jane Eyre” closed after a thunder-and-lightning run,
and I came home and that very night buzzed off all the
“chocolate cascade” hair (didn’t take long) that had me
looking yea, verily, shall we say, sixteen months younger
than I really am, on account of my character, Rochester,
now instantly a couple of centuries deceased, was about
sixteen years younger than I really am. The next
morning I got up for church looking all gray-haired and
exactly like me and got to be my own age for about three
days, because then the white goatee began to show, because
I’m now on my way to being sixteen years older
than I really am, this time as Don Quixote. (I’m glad
it’s mostly just age I have to put on – my insanity level
and his are probably about equal.)
(Next age jump is even twelve years older than Quixote,
being the age of J. Golden Kimball in his final year of
jabbing, tormenting, and tickling the Saints. ((The promotional
line is, “The most talked-about General Authority since
Jonah was regurgitated onto the beach.”)) )
It’s easy to wonder, “How old am I, anyway?” I
mean, it’s written down somewhere, but if it’s this fluid
maybe it doesn’t really matter much. Really, a more fundamental
question would be “Who am I anyway?” Don Quixote
didn’t ask that question, because he was quite certain
who he was – an invincible white knight bringing hope
and rescue to the downtrodden and oppressed. Of course
he was wrong, but hey, maybe that’s the crux of the story.
I mean, whether or not he was wrong. Really.
This can be a challenging thing for an actor, this “Who
am I?” thing. Peter Sellers, for example, is said to have
been kind of lost when he had to be, say, Peter Sellers
instead of Inspector Clouseau.
(Should that have an “x” at the end of it? Would it be
more quintessentially French if it were “Cleusieux”?
Ieux well...)
In
his last film role (excluding The Fiendish Plot of
Dr. Fu Manchu, which most everybody does – exclude,
I mean), he played a guy who sort of had no identity,
and he did it frightfully well. When Mr. Sellers guest-starred
on "The Muppet Show," he refused to appear as
himself. People have asked if he knew who he was. I, for
example, as one of the people, have asked if he knew who
he was. Maybe that’s because I ask myself the same thing,
even if “people,” generally, aren’t exactly aflame with
curiosity over the matter.
Nor, I suggest, are they exactly aflame with curiosity
over who they are, because of our curious habit
of defining ourselves in terms of what we do. It’s
easy for me to imagine, for example, a tractormonger
reading this column and saying, “Hey, I get paid pretty
good money for pushing John Deeres
off the showroom floor. Am I then not allowed to think
that who I am is a tractormonger?”
Well, sure. But if I were to get paid for being Don Quixote,
couldn’t I retort, “Hey, I get paid pretty good money”
(this is hypothetical, remember) “for assaulting windmills.
Shouldn’t I then think that who I am is a sixteenth-century
Spaniard borrowing a white goatee from a twenty-first-century
Meridian columnist?”
This is the old harangue, of course, about the tension
between “who” you are and “what” you are. You might think
you could torpedo the tension simply by observing that
you really are a tractormonger, whereas I am a mere actor pretending
to be this goateed Spaniard. But what happens when John
Deere determines that you have lost your ability to answer
the recommend questions right, and you are excluded from
the showroom? Or you’ve started showing up for work in
a fedora, and they fire you on the basis of “incongruent
image.” Or maybe they “downsize,” which requires no logic
or justification whatever. Which brings me to where we
started: “‘Jane Eyre’ closed ...”
Getting fired is almost always a surprise. Your house
burning down is generally a surprise. Getting divorced
is, in most cases I think, at least a delayed surprise.
You’d think that closing a show wouldn’t in any way be
a surprise – I mean, you are sufficiently literate to
read a calendar. But on Saturday night you have a job
(in Rochester’s case, “gentleman”), a house (in Rochester’s
case, Thornfield Manor, which,
I suddenly remember with some embarrassment, does actually
burn down during the show – this would be eighteen times,
but then, it’s always back up again, de-burned, for the
next performance), and (finally! after nearly three hours
of “Will they? Won’t they? How could they possibly? What
are they thinking?), a marriage. Then on Monday
morning you wake up (skipping Sunday here, day of rest
from all forms of pretense, both onstage and in the John
Deere showroom) and you’re without a job, without a manor,
and without the girl (Wait! Who’s gonna raise our son?! Oh yeah, plastic doll that entered ninety
seconds before the final curtain and didn’t even get a
bow. ((In “Saturday’s Warrior” on the road we usually
kidnapped a real baby from the lobby for that scene –
my grown son David’s theatrical debut was as Emily Flinders.))
) I won’t even remind you that I am also without the chocolate
cascade hair.
But you’re not Edward Fairfax Rochester, you’re Conrad
Columnreader, lately of John
Deere, and maybe your absence from the showroom isn’t
a matter of worthiness, but a matter of conflagration
of said showroom, so your sudden unemployment is even
less deserved and less logical than it would have been
as a result of downsizing (if you can imagine that), and
you’re suddenly divorced from all your friends at whom
you never even threw saucepans, much less on whom you
ever threatened to walk out. It gives one pause. In this
case, it gives two pause – you and me.
(Four days after “Jane Eyre” closed, it felt so good
to be, for fourteen hours straight, a fiend of the infernal
pit. I knew who I was again – somebody was actually
paying me to be scruffy and coarse and to yank
on the chains of Joseph and the brethren lying cramped
on the floor of Richmond Jail trying to sleep. Peter Sellers
would have loved it – might not entirely have understood
it, but loved it. And if I were to forget my identity
for even a moment, Joseph would rise to his feet and remind
me ((this happened about thirty-eight times, not because
the Joseph actor wasn’t getting it right, it’s just because
he had to chastise us fiends from several different angles))
).
But now both the show and the showroom are closed and
you and I ask, “Who are we?” (Maybe you don’t ask. I’ll
wait for your column about this – or hey, you can e-mail
me! This is always welcome.)
The Asking: Am I the elders quorum president? About one
day in seven, I act like one, but I’ll get released soon
(it’s confusing to my elders to be led by all these brooding
Gothic enigmas and nutty Spaniards and cussing cowboy
General Authorities). Am I the Meridian Columnist? Only
until somebody in Editorial wakes up and asks, “How long
are we gonna let this guy get
away with this, anyhow?” Am I the tractormonger?
No, this would require the possession of marketable skills.
Am I the Provider, Protector, and Presider
over my family? Hit and miss – and even when it’s “hit,”
some little voice inside me is admitting that the Lord
(the real Provider, Protector, and Presider)
is just letting me pretend to be those things, for what
I might learn about Him while I’m pretending. (Hmm ...
acting!)
Then am I Casey Terry and Leah Ledbetter’s home teacher?
That somehow starts to feel closer to the truth, like
I’m getting “warm.” The flag out front of the cabin is
flapping out northward right now. I think four-year-old
John Riley and I will take down the kite this afternoon.
“Warmer.” On the table in the stairwell is my seven-year-old
Caitlin Willow’s handmade Valentine to me: “Hickle-dee foo, I love you.” “Way
warmer.” I rewind to last night and I suddenly see my
wife Laurie’s face across the kitchen table that is strewn
with bills and penciled calculations. In the non-sequitur
of the century, her eyes soften and she says the words
that are always a surprise and an amazement, “I love you.”
Hey, I know who I am. Pray for Inspector Clouseau.
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marvinpayne.com!
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unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from
the last page of the Book of Mormon)
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