When have you been convinced to change your mind? How did it happen? By negotiation? By beauty? By lament? By shock or threat? By what?
The question and poem prompt by the Irish poet Padraig O Tuama from Poetry Unbound intrigued me. But nothing came to mind. Certainly not any dramatic on-the-road-to-Damascus, ‘see the light,’ kind of thinking. Until last night.
But first let me set the stage.
Nov. 6
I was in Memphis with my daughter to attend my godson’s wedding and visit old friends. Outside the Peabody Hotel the sky was overcast, low clouds hung over the Mississippi River. Not far away, a few blocks from Beale Street, stands the Civil Rights Museum and the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. A large white wreath hangs from the balcony outside his room.
I’m trying to hold myself from the edge of despair. I could barely watch as the returns came in. My daughter was sitting on the hotel bed talking animatedly with her two friends, an American friend teaching in Paris and her Dutch friend, a textile artist.
What are your friends in Europe saying?
My daughter said that one of her friends told her she saw a woman interviewed in California and this woman said she wasn’t going to vote. My daughter’s friend was shocked that someone she felt she could relate to, someone who could have been a friend, had decided not to vote.
I called my son in L.A. as I knew he and his wife were watching every second of the returns and desperately clinging to hope. I tried to tell them to keep a perspective. An historical one. I said things like this country survived a Civil War.
I said things like there will be some unexpected irony that will come out of this. I wanted to protect my son from his recurring panic attacks. I latched onto the irony idea. Said it several times.
I rode the elevator down to the lobby bar and ordered a gin martini with a twist of lime. The mallard ducks that swam all day in the lobby’s marble fountain have paraded on the red carpet back to their nests on the hotel rooftop. I’m trying to hold on to the small details of life.
On our trip back to Virginia, my daughter and I struggled to understand. How could this have happened? We listened to the pundits. I said things like Trump brought forth this country’s id. The dark, unbounded, ugly shadow-soul of our country’s psyche.
Outside Knoxville, we spot a gargantuan Trump superstore. We pulled off the expressway. My daughter wanted to film it. People were pulling up and waiting for the store to open. I began to hate these Americans. “The American people.” But I don’t hate my nurse cousin; I don’t hate my MAGA electrician or my down river neighbor.
Inside, I noticed that the TV on the wall behind the check-out counter was broadcasting CNN, not Fox. I laughed, really? Is this irony?
I tell my son and daughter to listen to writers and thinkers who have a perspective. Listen to Doris Kearns Goodwin and her faith in the country’s ability to withstand attacks on its constitutional foundation. Listen to Fareed Zakaria and his immigrant’s perspective on American history and our current time. Or Thomas Friedman on the Future of America and the World. Post-Election Dissection. My son called and told me that my ‘historical irony’ has helped him and his freaked-out friends, a little.
Then last night, when I read Joel Grey’s op-ed in the New York Times, “I Starred in ‘Cabaret’ and We Need to Heed Its Warning,” suddenly, I was convinced to change my mind.I imagine it must be like the moment when a Zen master whacks his student over the head with a stick and the student, at last gets it, comprehends the incomprehensible.
Grey writes: “’Cabaret,’ with its portrayal of a decadent society willfully ignorant of its own demise . . . was a warning against the seductive power of distraction, the dangers of apathy and the perils of looking away when history demands that we look closer.
” . . . The recent election of Donald Trump to a second term has left many Americans, particularly those who fought so hard against the forces of authoritarianism and hate, feeling drained and disillusioned. There’s a sense that we have seen this show before, that we know how it ends, and that we’re powerless to stop it. Or worse, a sense that even though we are facing dark times they won’t really affect our own day-to-day lives—echoing the tragically shortsighted assessment of so many European Jews in the 1920s and ’30s.”
Grey asks, “Are these the hollow, uneasy laughs of an audience that has retreated into the comfort of irony and detachment?”
The ‘comfort of irony’!
What? I couldn’t believe my eyes. I reread Grey’s words: the comfort of irony.
To cope with this election, I had recommended a retreat into irony. A detachment. Maybe my ‘historical irony’ is not as damning as Cabaret’s irony of which Grey speaks, but still, close enough. Or maybe I am misinterpreting his interpretation.
Dear poet Padraig O Tuama, last night at around 10:38 p.m. I changed my mind and it was pretty much a shock. But before I write you a poem, I will pour a glass of wine, click on Amazon Prime and revisit Cabaret.
Share this post with your friends.
