There is something seriously, terribly wrong with a person if they manage to get to a certain age--cross a lot of bridges; bury a lot of friends and enemies and dreams and grudges; look back at the progress of pages that led to this big, fucking book that is your life--and they do not cry readily and fulsomely. Often. You begin to see--I now see--where the dots were or were not connected. I see what made and unmade me. I see what Tennessee [Williams] described to you as the time knot, and, dear God, how much time and oxygen and courage do I have to get things said and done and acknowledged before it all comes to an end? So cry. Cry a lot. You are expressing that your life meant something to you, and you hate to see it drift away.
--Mike Nichols interviewed by James Grissom.
In the car I ask about the old name Violet and Blake tells me that it’s their dead name.
My dead name, they say.
This startles me but I catch myself. Being startled by something your own teenager tells you requires a moment of reflection if you don’t want to sabotage your whole life. This is not debatable. There is no gray area here. Open your mouth and jam your own unique experiences up against the words of your kid and watch what happens. You will go down in legendary flames. I know because I have crashed and burned entire farms and villages on behalf of my own impetuous ignorance many times in the past.
The truth is, and I would ask you to just trust me on this one, but the truth is: we are all wrong. About almost everything. And by almost I really mean absolutely.
“Dead name?,” I ask them. “Is that what you call Violet now?”
They respond matter-of-factly. Yes, they tell me.
“I call it that because that’s what it is to me now.”
Blake speaks in direct reflective tones unlike many people I know. They rarely ever try on angry tones or pissy ones. They do say things that will drop the jaw of people pleasers, bullshit artists, phony Patagonia bleeding hearts, and socially expectant right wing dumb-dumbs (which all told, accounts for just about everyone out there on modern America these days). The reason for this is simple. Blake has no actual yearning to get one over on you/ no desire to take advantage of you/ and no authentic need for you to like them based on any one of the myriad of reasons people suffer everyday/ standing there in the blast of their internal voice hammering their skull with insecurity.
Blake, you see, is some kind of strange honest pure.
This means that when me or you allow my oldest kid’s words or actions to run through the fifty tons of psychological infrastructure that we have built up around ourselves like impenetrable castle walls since we were toddlers, we end up running an ostensibly free-born human being through all the paint and shellac spitting off our lips as we hold court/ extrapolate/ and sandblast the planet with our total and complete bullshit opinions based on nothing other than… what?
Our parents? The way we were raised? Religious faith and our education and all the times we learned about things the hard way?
The truth is harrowing and liberating all at once. If you tell me your name is fucking Jesus Christ Ramone what the hell can I say about it? Nothing. That’s what. Nobody can tell you you’re not a Jesus Christ. And no one should be going around telling people they’re not a real Ramone. That’s a good way to get your goddamn nose broken, if we are being honest.
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