This week I was planning to talk about the difference between charm and flirting and how important they can be in every day living and that are both becoming somewhat of a lost art-- but I'll be saving that conversation for next week...
When I started writing here last year I said I would not discuss politics and religion as I only rarely discuss these subjects privately... the two issues that I am most sensitive about are McCarthyism relating to the Red Menace witch hunt trials and Hollywood blacklist and The Holocaust of WWII in Europe and typically will not discuss either issue in depth with anyone unless they had direct or indirect experience or have done extensive research or writing on either subject... but I'm breaking that rule today.
I sometimes for dramatic auditions use dialogue from the play by Elizabeth Swados "Runaways" about a group of children who run away from home and live on the street... part of which includes...
'To boys and girls who now weep because you wish you'd met your mother's or father's shadow on a dark talk porch in dream rockers... I say make laws against regrets... other wise you'd have to start with Adam and Eve.'
The first time I used the entire soliloquy as an audition I pulled up every emotion I had relating to fear, shame, guilt and rage and got the highest praise I've ever been given from a director for an audition... the majority emotions at the time were drawn from my feelings about Senator McCarthy and the Hitler regime... and a certain family member who reminded me of both.
Perhaps one of the earliest memories I have of ease dropping on adult conversations was about the atrocities of war torn Europe in the 1940's and the lost lives of family members and friends I never met but subsequently have not forgotten. I grew up with an irrational fear of Germans that as a child I only shared with one person who encouraged me to confront my fear in order to conquer it but I did not have a clue of where to begin and so I carried the emotional baggage of it well into young adulthood... the turning point was becoming friends with someone from Munich and learning about their families lives during the war and how their world was devastated and ruined as a result of not supporting Hitler. I learned for the first time that the sum total of where we have been and what we have seen or studied are the major building blocks of who we become... that's one of the reasons I feel it's important to travel and know the issues of the world for what they are and be willing to look at them from all sides and from different peoples perspectives... and so began my journey of conquering my fear and anxiety.
The reason I decided to bring all of this up here is I saw a screening of a brilliant documentary film last week called Germans & Jews (Click on link for more information) ... I can't recommend it highly enough. It's only in limited distribution right now but it deserves to win prizes and awards and I hope will go on to be seen by a wider audience because it is a story that needs to be told and heard and understood from all sides... The Hollywood Reporter review summed it up by saying "Thoughtful and illuminating examination of a provocative subject".
Watching this documentary in taped interviews and accounts discussed over a dinner table I have for the first time been able to see one of the most important and emotional issues of my life through the eyes and experiences of several people both Germans and Jews living in Berlin; subsequently from these new viewpoints and a more finely tuned understanding of others lives and emotions some of my early feelings and anxieties about Germans and Germany are finally beginning to subside and others are taking on a new tone and texture.
Certain segments of conversation in the film reminded me of other images and and brought back memories and emotions from other books, films and conversations... but mostly I remember looking at a copy of Life Magazine in the early 60's that showed the aerial photos of war torn Germany after the war and the emancipation of Nazi prison camp survivors...
I later read a memoir by Margaret Bourke-White who had taken some of the photos in the magazine and included some photos not published but it was her words and the more graphic images of the event that still live with me...
"There was an air of unreality about that April day in Weimar, a feeling to which I found myself stubbornly clinging. I kept telling myself that I would believe the indescribably horrible sight in the courtyard before me only when I had a chance to look at my own photographs. Using the camera was almost a relief; it interposed a slight barrier between myself and the white horror in front of me.
This whiteness had the fragile translucence of snow, and I wished that under the bright April sun which shone from a clean blue sky it would all simply melt away. I longed for it to disappear, because while it was there I was reminded that men actually had done this thing—men with arms and legs and eyes and hearts not so very unlike our own. And it made me ashamed to be a member of the human race.
The several hundred other spectators who filed through the Buchenwald courtyard on that sunny April afternoon were equally unwilling to admit association with the human beings who had perpetrated these horrors. But their reluctance had a certain tinge of self-interest; for these were the citizens of Weimar, eager to plead their ignorance of the outrages."
Several years later I read a book by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer titled 'Anya' that I could not believe was a work of fiction or a composite of experiences and only fairly recently found out it was in fact based on the life of an actual survivor named Anya Savikin Brodman and was published again after her death... In 1978 there was a four part miniseries on television with an outstanding cast and story called Holocaust...
Part I The Gathering Darkness
Part II The Road To Babi Yar
Part III The Final Solution
Part IV The Saving Remnant
The final episode aired on a Thursday night and I was so moved and distraught by the story and images that I could not go to work on Friday and it took the entire weekend for me to gather my thoughts and compose myself... I've had similar reactions to other films and works that I have read but nothing really prepared me for my feelings and emotions visiting Germany and Poland and the meltdown I had at The Holocaust Museum... I'm sharing all of this because of something in the film documentary reminded me of something that someone else said to me... about not discussing this anymore and moving on... Well I can't and I don't think we should because it's something that should not be forgotten... it should be understood for what is was and what it means.
I was reading something in The New York Times recently listing the fines, taxes, confiscations and punishments under the Islamic State for Shiites and non-Muslims and drew the obvious parallels to the past and I can't help but feel that another generation of political and military leaders are going to have to confront their own complicity in this modern barbarous atrocity... with all of this I am reminded of some conversations with friends in Munich and Frankfurt recently that boil down to a new generation of German people who are a repairing, healing generation.
Around the time I first used the material from 'Runaways' for an audition I learned something else that was amazing and is such an important part of my life today... and that is the importance of seeing yourself in someone else's eyes... by that I mean you have the physical and emotional closeness to actually see your own reflection in someone's eyes... Only the most important people in my life have I had this experience with. It's not something that is easy to do or you can force... it just has to happen by chance and it's magical. With my other half it happened the night we met the second time and with my then best friend it happened sitting next to each other on a flight. With both and the few others who preceded them it represents the importance of our friendship and/or love and that we were meant to play an important part in each others lives. I sometimes think about a few people that this never happened with and I have no regrets... I was just supposed to know them and we were there to share something for the moment and move on. So in terms of making laws against regret ... with important issues and people regret has earned it's place... with other things and people it's important to take the lessons they were there to provide and move on... and each person has to make their own choices with each based on their individual and collective experiences...
See you next week think about the people you know who are flirty and charming and if you don't know the meaning of ebullience... look it up!
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