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Comments from the week of 11.13.22
Hi, Garrison.
I have experienced your mental absence at one too many plays drama, comedy, musicals or otherwise. As a resident of NYC growing up, I had plenty of opportunity to attend such and find that — with one or two exceptions — I am most consistently disappointed about this genre compared with movies, books, etc. I’d like to like them better, but except for a few moments of Beckett or (heaven forbid, Shakespeare) and some rollicking production of Rhinoceros I’ve seen put on by an enthusiastic group of young people in a storefront in the old East Village, I am mostly elsewhere. For diversion, I’ll also imagine the actors getting hit with cream pies. I have a suspicion that they’re a lot more engaging for those putting them on than for those in the audience.
Based on your experience on both sides of the footlights, what’s your take?
PM
Toledo, Ohio
It’s odd, isn’t it — what captivates, what disappoints. I’ve been to numerous plays that I sort of appreciated but they didn’t shake me up as one wants great art to do, and yet I went to hear that Mozart violin concerto the other night and it blew me away. It’s a great work but I do think that the bold confidence of the violinist, Noah Bendix-Balgley. He looked joyous up there, a big tall guy who owned that music and knew it. He didn’t just play it, he performed it. Same with La Traviata at the Met. I don’t know — maybe our attention span has been affected by overstimulation, all we hear and see and read in a day. A stage drama begins in a deep hole and the cast has to lift itself out of that ditch in order to reach the audience. And the first fifteen minutes are crucial. But when it hits you, it’s so worth it. GK
Hi, Mr. Keillor.
Enjoyed your memoir. Many passages were very moving, even profound, despite your best attempt to stay light. Have read many of your books and listened to PHC from the Upper Peninsula since the late ’70s when it was only on MPR. I’m a Finn-American, captain and owner of the ferry to Isle Royale in Superior. Fifty-two years at it. Sixty-seven now. Always wanted to be a writer and had several jobs as a hack writer. But just didn’t have it. Too lazy. Ideas too weird. I didn’t aspire to be a comic writer, but I did end up writing a comic novel called the Skunk Island Ferry. Set on Lake Michigan. Self-published. It was good fun. Sold a couple hundred. Looking forward to Boom Town.
Ben Kilpela
Sixty-seven is young. Give yourself time. You got the first novel out of the way, a big hump, and now you’re free to write the second. There’s an irresistible story waiting to capture you. GK
Dear Mr. Keillor,
With regard to forgiveness, I’m no expert. I once learned that to forgive one must “will the well-being of one’s perpetrator.” It’s no easy thing, but the lack of forgiveness can sit inside of one with the poison going into various parts of the body, like the heart. I served as chaplain of the cardiology unit and was a witness …
All the best to you! I’m blessed by your sharings!
Pastor Denise Sager
Denise, I think that to “will the well-being” of one who has done you an injustice is too heroic and likely to fall short, but I do think one can put aside anger, malice, bitterness, and replace it with gratitude. Cheerfulness is a beautiful thing, along with good manners, generosity, and kindness in all its forms. Goodness is meant to be practiced and it has a cleansing effect. I experience this living in New York where people walk fast but they pay attention. And if someone falls, five people are there in seconds to make sure the fallen is okay. I remember the traffic jams of Minneapolis, the furious commuters trying to edge each other out. Every day should begin with a prayer for a cheerful heart. GK
GK,
With Nancy Pelosi stepping down as leader of the Democratic Party, I wonder who will be able to fill her shoes for the next several years. I am a strong female who believes that our world would be more peaceful and secure with more women in leadership positions. Nancy is fiercely determined and tenacious, and I sense that she loves our country in much the same way a woman loves her children — with an overwhelming desire to protect them and with hope for their prosperity and happiness. As a woman, she gets things done instead of focusing on power, money, and greed. We don’t have time to sit around and focus on the past and plot our revenge. Of course, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake are exceptions to this. It makes me wonder about their upbringing.
Sandra Beckner
I wish we’d get another serious woman candidate for president. It’ll take a courageous person who’s willing to give up a year or two of her life and who has a gift for cutting through the noise and getting to the heart of the public. Barack Obama had that gift in 2008 and it astonished people. It can happen again. GK
Mr. K.,
How are things going in the Lake Wobegon School District? Are any of those teachers indoctrinating their students toward an LBGTQ+ lifestyle? How did this year’s school board election turn out?
D.D.M.
Hastings, Minnesota
The incumbents got re-elected to the school board. We’re suspicious of ideologues though we do have a few and we get tired of them quickly. Teachers are respected, some are highly admired, and we believe that it may take only two or three good teachers to turn a student in the right direction. As for LGBTQ+, we share a general belief in the wisdom of kindness. Humans are complex, and adolescence is even more so, and there is not much to be done to change that. GK
You’re 80 now and I imagine that with your new pig valve, you might live to 100. I recently read that pain, uncertainty, and constant work are part of every human life, and that by accepting this, we can realize that it’s part of a fully lived life. Do you agree? And do you have any specific goals in mind related to your own work for the next 20 years?
Jean D.
I’ve been working hard lately and I mean to go on working for another year and then stop. I like my work, sometimes love it, but it’s too sedentary and cancel culture has been painful, and I want to adopt my wife’s way of life and spend my time seeing the world and being blown away by great art. Seeing Verdi and Mozart the other week hit me. I need to get back to reading poetry and history and leave journalism to the young. GK
Did you manage to get tickets for the Taylor Swift tour? If you did, can I buy them from you?
Breanna Z.
Mendota Heights, Minnesota
Breanna, nobody has sent me tickets to see her but if anyone does, I’ll give them to you for free. GK
Every year, I’m bothered by the fact that the tacky Christmas decorations are already for sale at every store and that Christmas music is played nonstop before it’s even Thanksgiving. Two things should happen in Congress: get rid of the time change that makes our lives dark and dreary right after Halloween and outlaw Christmas music before Thanksgiving. And maybe they should tackle gun control and climate change, but let’s keep our priorities straight. Am I just being a Scrooge?
Melanie P.
Detroit, Michigan
I’m with you, Melanie, but it’s up to us to steer clear of Christmas as best we can so as to preserve the sweetness of the day itself, in its old simplified form, and the sheer wonder of Christmas Eve, when the lights dim and the congregation stands holding lighted tapers and singing “Silent Night.” It still makes me cry. That’s the beauty of Christmas, God sending his Son to earth to lie in a manger. The stuff in the drugstores is for someone else, not me. GK
Mr. Keillor,
I just wanted to write you and tell you how much I miss A Prairie Home Companion. My own great-grandparents were Czech and settled in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1884 after coming to America. While I couldn’t relate easily to the Norwegian culture references on the show, I still appreciated the celebration of the cultural basis for Lake Wobegon. My wife and I always listened, even if we were on the road and we always enjoyed your stories and the musical guests. I once hosted Robin and Linda Williams when they performed at the community college in Virginia where I worked, and I always enjoyed their appearances on the show. I hope you are well, but mostly I wanted you to know that you are appreciated for all of your contributions to writing and radio entertainment.
Best,
Bill Veselik
Marion, Virginia
I did a show in Michigan with Robin and Linda on Saturday night and we sang some gospel songs and Iris DeMent’s gorgeous “Our Town” and the Tennyson poem “Crossing The Bar.” The kids are in fine shape. It was a good singing crowd. I don’t miss PHC so much, though I’ll do a reunion show at The Town Hall on Saturday. I worked too hard those years. I kick myself for not finding writers to help out. I do miss singing duets with women and I miss the great staff. I never had a clue how the show was run, they did the whole thing. GK
Hi, Garrison.
As I read your description of your wife’s Asian trip, it made me reminisce … I took two trips there, one to Japan and one to Hong Kong/Bangkok/Singapore/Bali. I too love to walk and was on my feet for about 12 hours most days exploring temples, taking boat rides, searching for little foodie joints (Tony Bourdain was my hero), and wearing out a pair of Crocs flats in the process. The biggest highlight was visiting a studio where they dress you up as a geisha (complete with makeup, wig, kimono, and accessories) and take a portfolio of photos; I was the only gaijin there, and even my skeptical tour guide changed her tune when she saw the proofs. Getting out there and exploring is the adult version of going out to play as a kid!
Happy Thanksgiving to you both!
Pat McC.
You are a brave soul, Pat, and I am awestruck. Honestly. I am lost when I’m away from English. My world gets smaller and smaller. What can I do? I’m 80. But New York is good to walk around in and observe life. I saw two big burly guys running a day-care group of tiny kids running around on a playground on 90th Street. I stopped to watch. Grown men being gentle and authoritative with four-year-olds. A sight to behold. GK
GK,
In your book Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80, you mentioned five stages of aging: nameless dread, the crisis of bad news, self-pity and disgust, a revelatory experience, and then contentment and maybe even happiness. At 65, I’m in the nameless dread stage. What stage are you in right now? Do these happen in a predicted order much like the stages of grief?
Dreading old age,
Belinda
I think you can skip the self-pity and disgust and I hope you skip the bad news and get to the revelatory experience. For me, the revelation is the freedom from long-term planning and ambition and the love of daily life. I wake up happy in the morning when, back in my working days, I used to awaken in alarm at deadlines and other difficulties. Of course I’m lucky: I married a great woman and I am in pretty good health. Modern medicine has saved my life more than once. And I have a pretty good show I like to go around and do for people. GK
Garrison,
How often do you spy on people and listen to random conversations to get ideas for your books and stories? Is every conversation you have with people a way to gather story lines? I’m just wondering how a creative mind like yours works. Do you keep a notebook filled with ideas, or do things just flow when you start to write something?
Bradley M.
My hearing is not as good as it used to be and my eavesdropping is very limited. My wife comes home from her walks with snatches of interesting conversation, it being New York and all, but none of that is transferable to a Lake Wobegon story. So I sit down to my novel in progress and I let the characters guide me. They’re more restless than they used to be and they have wayward children and spiritual anxiety. These things can all be turned to comical ends. I’m committed to comedy. GK
This is for Belinda with Nameless Dread. I believe this is the same Beast as that Existential Angst so beloved of the younger writers. Not really an age thing.
At our age, I believe it comes from hoarding & counting seconds instead of spending them. You have at least 12 days left, right? And that's over one million seconds. Imagine if you had to count to a million - what a task! Now imagine the utter vastness of, say, a year, or twenty. So.much.time! And nearly a curse if you treat it wrong.
Lastly, firstly, I think it's like any other depression, in which its perniciousness lies in tricking us into endless thinking about ourselves, which seems real sensible, when the way out of it - counterintuitive as most puzzle solutions are - is to spend some of our limited time in trying to take care of others. (Random is fine here.) That, and a brisk walk for the brain oxygen.
Which is why, this note. I feel better now and thank you for it. You and Garrison.
To PM from Toledo: There can be a lot more to live theater than the written script. When I lived in Southern California, I was lucky enough to see a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll have noticed the enchanting way in which they incorporate the stand of tall Eucalyptus trees with the sets on stage. For Lady Macbeth’s “Mad Scene”, they constructed a backdrop of twenty-foot high tree trunks. They tacked a winding staircase to stage front, and had the actress enter from high above us! It was deeply memorable! On another occasion, for King Lear’s entry, they laid a ramp behind the stage and had him and his daughters enter in a full-sized, horse-drawn sleigh! Seeing performances in natural settings, with imaginative “staging” can make a play that you thought you knew amazingly interesting!