[…] Faith surrounded me, inspiring my poetry. But I wanted to participate: I wanted to believe in belief, the religious kind, the God kind, and find my own way into this sacred landscape. Mostly, though, I remained a stalker of other people’s devotion. The Bhutanese monks with whom I sat practicing lotus mudra 108 times, the Tamil pilgrims I followed who put skewers through their cheeks as an act of devotion to Lord Murugan. I was a religious voyeur, trying to feel a charge from other people’s worshiping currents. But faith? I didn’t have it. Faith requires no evidence, and I was still seeking. […]
I haven’t stopped believing… that the world’s sacred, nodal sites offer us flashes of transcendence. A moment for our souls to be attentive and still. But I know now that an encounter with the sublime can happen in the most ordinary of places.
I’ve come to understand as well why poets so frequently address the invisible in their poems, something or someone they do not know and cannot see. Call it God, fog, the future. It is our need for connection that makes us speak into the void. Not so much for a reply, but simply as an expression of belief that someone is there, and is listening, and may even stretch out a hand.
“I celebrate myself,” the American Walt Whitman wrote in his late edition of that famous poem, “and sing myself.” That had really struck me when I’d finally read it, in my early twenties by then. Imagine believing in a self, any self, yourself that much.
If we take style to mean a manner of doing something, could you articulate the John Malkovich style? Not really, because it’s not something I think about much — what I am or what I do. But I’ve always felt style is the only constant in life. By style I mean, simply, the way you move through life. If you get sad news, how do you respond? What do you do if you’re angry, if you’re amused, if you’re moved? That’s what style is. It’s not really up to me to say what mine is.
The book has a long interview with you where you say: “I’m capable of belief, at least inside the theater. Outside of the theater, not so much.” Why? Because that’s what my life has taught me. It took me seven years of analysis to learn that when people said something, it isn’t necessarily what they meant. I’m not very clever. I remember once meeting the head of a country — I won’t say which one — at a dinner one night after a performance in a faraway land. He kept telling me about how uncorrupt the country was because he was running it. I think he’s still in prison. That’s what I mean. Theater, it’s a perfect world. Life is more like making a movie: push a boulder up a hill every day and hope it doesn’t flatten you. So I’ve always felt most at home in the theater — at home with myself, my emotions, my colleagues, their emotions, with how we express them. That’s harder to find in life.about:blank
Aside from work, what do you believe in? I believe in people, generally. I believe in humanity, somewhat. I have a great mistrust of ideology. Maybe even more than I do religion. I’m not a believer, but I don’t make some big show of it. I’m wary of all the things that people believe that make them think they’re them.
Aside from Charlie Sheen’s work, what might you turn to when you’re trying to combat existential malaise? I’m not very existential because I’m not profound. So many people think a lot about this or that. I don’t think about this or that. I just do this or that.
Hard to say. That’s my problem.
That makes me think of your being able to find belief in the theater more easily than outside. So many things in life are kind of unsolvable and therefore, at a certain point, incredibly tiresome. People feel that and then absolutely know the opposite is true. As they say in New Jersey, “g’head.” I don’t know.
I want to go back to the line that you quoted from “Death of a Salesman”: “Life is a casting off.” You’re 70 now. What are you casting off? You have to let go of the past, of connections. At this age, there are people who are dead now that were very close to me. There are people I love to have a conversation with — who I sometimes dream of and have the conversation in dreams — that I’ll never see again. That’s a natural part of life. You have to let it go. It’s cast off in the sense that it’s allowed to float away. It’s also not weighing you down. It’s gone.about:blank
And what are you holding on to? Family, work, friends. Not as many as I used to because some people close to me didn’t choose to maintain that relationship, and sometimes I didn’t choose to, which, of course, is everyone’s choice. I just, as Joan Didion said, play it as it lays.
— John Malkovich, excerpts from “John Malkovich on (Really) Being John Malkovich” interview by David Marchese (NY Times, January 28, 2024)
5:05 am. I peek at the weather app: 27° F, feels like 15° F, wind gusts up to 32 mph.
Camus: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
Hmmmmmm, not feelin’ it.
Everyone in the house sleeps, snuggled under their comforters. Wally snores peacefully. I slide my hand onto his belly, and it moves up and down with his inhale and exhale. What joy this creature has brought, this little ball of life.
I get out of bed. Sigh. Thick wool socks. Smart Wool, long underwear. Hoodie. Snow pants. Lined Boots. Come on Arctic blast, hit me, give me your best shot.
I walk.
Not a soul in the park. No runners. No walkers. No dredgers, who are off for the long weekend. And here I am, 985 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.
Surprised, I am, at the ebbs and flows. 12 years here at this blogging thing, and it’s ebbing, a low tide that ebbs 1 day, and ebbs 2 days and ebbs 3 days, followed by a shoulder shrug. Time with Wally. Time with book. Time with Netflix. Continue reading “Walking. In place inaccessible to unbelief.”→
He swallowed. Her eyes fixed on his Adam’s apple. It slid up his throat and back down as if propelling his answer out; Not really. Not for most of his life. I think he became good, though. Eventually…
So what changed? she asked.
On my eleventh birthday, he came into my room trembling.
Why?
He said he’d seen something, felt something. An experience.
Of what? Lia asked.
God.
Lia held her breath…
Have you had one? he asked. She wondered why this seemed suddenly like the most intimate question anyone had ever asked her. Why something was squirming and flipping and tangling within her like a silver fish caught slyly in the coarse nylon of a net. For she had hoped very privately all her life for a dazzling numinous moment – because how easy it would be to believe, she thought, when given a sign like that.
I don’t know, she said, honestly. Either I’ve had thousands or none…
Photo by DK @ Daybreak. 6:00 a.m. 68° F. September 11, 2022. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. See more photos from this morning where I’ve either had thousands or none… here.
