So That's Over, and What's Next?
By Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
29 March 19
Finally its coming to an end, two years of speculation, more than whats
been written about the future of American higher education, the American
novel, and the planet Earth combined, thanks to that long angular face with
the sharp Puritan nose and the stone jaw, a man famous for his silence, and
why is the name pronounced MULL-er and not MYOO-ler like all the Muellers I
know whats going on here? Why the secrecy?
Russian subversion is not high on my list of problems. Winter was. Im 76
and my wife worries about me slipping on an icy sidewalk and banging my head
and losing some crucial memory capacity such as my encyclopedic knowledge of
the great girl groups of the Fifties, the Chiffons, the Chenilles, the
Chinchillas, Chandeliers, and Chardonnays, or my memory of her name, which
begins with a J and rhymes with antennae. But now April is at the door and
the ice, as George Harrison said, is slowly melting and the Miller Report is
finished and Russian confusion is their problem, not ours.
My computer has driven me to the brink several times with senseless icons
and pop-ups (You have been selected to take part in a survey) and then
the other day the screen went to black for no reason and it was unresponsive
and I contemplated Applecide by ball-peen hammer.
I am not an angry man. I have sometimes, when driving, spoken sharply to
other drivers about their incredible stupidity, but mostly Im a pleasant
and mannerly passive-aggressive Midwesterner. I am tender and loving to my
wife, Penny. I am 76 did I already say that? and I believe the cure for
anger is euphoria. I dont drink anymore and I never got high from reefer or
cocaine and due to physical cowardice I never skied or dove from planes and
so for euphoria I turn to the arts, mainly music.
I was in New York last week and got to hear Renée Fleming sing Richard
Strauss at Carnegie Hall and see Rigoletto at the Met and attend a Rodgers
& Hart revival, I Married An Angel, and all three had moments that threw
me out of the plane and opened my parachute.
I was transported by Miss Flemings golden soprano, a passage in which she
decrescendos to a whisper and the audience stops breathing and the hall is
filled with a whisper, and the next night by the father-daughter duet of
Rigoletto and Gilda and then, Friday night, live on stage, a fabulous tap
dance number, twenty hoofers, ten dudes and their sweet patooties, tapping
their hearts out, step step step shuffle scuffle slap and slide jump click
clunk paradiddle paddle turn pullback and roll.
The audience went to pieces, it was so astonishing. Twenty dancers, in a
line of work with 92 percent unemployment, had worked two weeks to create
five minutes of anonymous synchronized perfection such as I, at 76, had
never seen done onstage before and how can a man not be changed by that? I
was.
Three transcendent moments in one week. To me, an old man, this is more
meaningful than having a common crook in power. Hes not even the most
interesting crook Nixon was, by far meanwhile the golden soprano
whispers to us, and the Gilda (Nadine Sierra of Fort Lauderdale) and her dad
(Roberto Frontali of Rome) sing their hearts out about their love for each
other he sings, You are my life! Without you, I have nothing (Mia vita
sei! Senza te in terra qual bene avrei?) and we fathers of daughters get
choked up, and the twenty hoofers lavish on us the happy rhythms of 1938
when the world was about to fall apart. And then there was Saturday night
with Leni, but wild horses couldnt, etcetera and so forth. Never mind.
Anger is justified when you see an utter fraud in the White House, a dull,
dishonest, indifferent man with the manner of a Mafia don, but anger is
toxic and in the political arena it so often takes a bad bounce. Spring is
here, or almost here, and Mary Olivers poetry and Mahlers Fourth Symphony
are probably somewhere in your computer and you will learn things from them
that the Special Counsel cant tell you. Let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves, said Mary Oliver. A day without euphoria is a wasted
day, so find it and love it. A man is tweeting on his phone and primping his
hairdo while at the wheel of our national government careening down the
highway. Lets get off at the next exit.
Miriam's response: Probably good advice to his raging Democratic
compatriots. It's always good to let go of anger. But he's lucky enough to
have enough money for the wonderful diversions in which he engaged in
Manhattan last week.
