"Look about you."

Along with a handful of other things, I have been reading Tracy and Hepburn by Garson Kanin. I picked it up a few months ago from the local used book store for a buck or two and started it, had it sitting untouched in the restroom a while, and finally sat through another good chunk of it tonight. I marked this passage in the book and decided to blog about it. It touches on a typical notion you'd expect to find blogged about in an art/design blog, but makes an important and good point at the end (and did so when it was published in 1970, almost 40 years ago) about the notion of "conforming to nonconformity" - something I feel more and more is at the heart of so many "artistic" tendencies in many areas today in 2009 as our generation and the up-and-coming generation seems to believe with such conviction that EVERY off-the-wall notion should be not only entertained and paid attention to, but that we should "TOTALLY" add it to the unending list of "NEW" and "COOL" USELESSSSSS TV shows. We have such a long long way to go to enter the space that was occupied by the likes of true originals like Tracy and Hepburn and SO MANY other GREAT true creatives of the "old days." And to get there it takes more than just being "RANDOM" (This generation's FAVORITE word of praise often followed by other jewels like "SICK" and "DOPE.")

Kanin writes...

"Here is another own-way thing. Jules Dassin submits a play to Kate. It is an English adaptation of a French success, Days in the Trees, by Marguerite Duras. Dassin hopes to interest Kate in a Broadway production. She reads it at once, goes to her desk, sits down, begins to write. "My dear Mr. Dassin: Thank you so much for sending me this fascinating play. I found it most interesting, but unfortunately..."

She stops. Her false tone offends her. She picks up a new sheet of paper and begins again. "Dear Jules Dassin: Try as I will I cannot make head or tail of this confusing manuscript, and therefore..."

She stops again. Once more, "Mr. Dassin: This is surely the most idiotic and depressing piece of claptrap I have ever in all my life..."

No. She has gone too far, she thinks.

Finally, "Dear Mr. Dassin: I am grateful to you for thinking of me in connection with your play. I am returning it to you unread, as, alas, I am not available at this time, and have no idea as to when I might..."

No, again. Why lie?

Later, she tells us of her struggle to find the proper response, and quotes these four beginnings.

"And what did you decide in the end?" asks Ruth.

"Oh, I just put all four of them into an envelope and sent it off to him!"

These days actresses (and actors too!) strip to the buff at the drop of a direction and think nothing of it, but how many of them would be willing to remove their protective facade of their minds or spirits or opinions?

It has been said that we owe the greatest part of our social and scientific progress to the eccentrics. Those who firmly follow the rules of the game, the status quo, the that's-how-things-are-done we've-always-done-it-this-way school of thinking, are not likely to break out and contribute much that is new. It is the original, the nonconformist, the iconoclast, the I-don't-give-a-damn type who audaciously leads us to take a new step, or an old one in a new direction.

The danger is that unconventional people are likely to be ridiculed, and sometimes ostracized. The strong among them persist. The young today understand this principle well as they rally around their trenchantly coined dictum of "doing your own thing." Unfortunately, there is a trap here, too, since it is possible to conform with nonconformity. Look about you...

...We are all related-by ink, if not by blood-to Walter Mitty. We all have dreams of glory; aspirations, plans, schemes, and designs. Why then are so few of them executed and why do only a small number come to fruition? It is because too many lack the nerve it takes to step out of line, and it is this brand of courage in Kate and her eccentric compatriots to which we respond."