Birthday Thoughts And An Homage To My Captain
I talk about the future and pay tribute to Carl Reiner
Today is my twentieth birthday. What I am feeling is the naive optimism of incoming adulthood and a bit of angst. I feel as though I’ve been sitting on my ass for too long.
There’s a song I used to sing constantly from the movie White Christmas that sometimes made me cry. It goes like this:
If you’re worried and you can’t sleep
Count your blessings instead of sheep
And you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings
Four months of quarantine prompts MUCH time for introspection. Perhaps that is the reason why a lot of us are so fed up with the world, we have been forced away from it for so long that we have to look at it from the inside; we yearn to be out and participate in its reshaping now more than ever. This is certainly what I’ve been feeling, anyhow. At the same time, I’ve paid more mind to my own future and the thumbnail of what it may look like.
A good place to start is by counting my blessings. I’m not too young to reflect. No one is too young to reflect. I am a believer in God and am thankful for the gifts: warm and challenging friends, warm and challenging family, warm and challenging country, and warm and challenging career choice. I am an artist, but I am a human first and foremost. This comes with responsibilities endowed to me by all inhabitants of this earth before me. I must be a participant. For the first time, I truly know what that means.
We are all participants, inspiring change in many ways. We enable thought through our work, especially my fellow artists. As Paul Robeson said, artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We mustn’t forget that we are a part of a greater whole.
Part of my reflection lately has been dedicated to one of my heroes, a man who inspired me in terms both creative and survival.
Carl Reiner died last week at ninety-eight years old. Carl was, and still is, a massive figure in my life. Renowned for his pioneering work on TV, film, and the stage as an actor, singer, and especially a writer, I looked to him as not only a beacon of artistic triumph, but the poster-child for how to live a happy life. There was nothing he did that failed to contain at least a speck of joy.
I grew up watching his work as the creator, producer, and writer of The Dick Van Dyke Show, which originally ran on CBS from 1961 to 1966 (I had DVDs and YouTube as my outlet). There, he explored the inner-workings of entertainment: the writer’s room. The show and its characters inspired thousands to seek out the under-appreciated career of screenwriting. I am one of them. As I grew I discovered his 2000-Year-Old Man comedy albums with his best friend Mel Brooks and collected several of his movies: Oh, God! (1977), The Jerk (1979), and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982). Oh, and lets not forget he has a plethora of novels, short stories, and memoirs published throughout the last several decades.
Active on Twitter in his later years, I followed him and have probably read every thought he ever sent out since 2015. It was here that I grew to love and respect Carl Reiner as a human being. His messages were often thought-provoking, humorous, witty, and sometimes random and accidental (there were instances where I wondered if he meant to Google something rather than Tweet it out). As I learned about the inner-psyche of this almost century-old World War II veteran-Civil Rights Activist-Television Pioneer, I found the mold of exactly what I want to be as a human being: a constant participant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5he62h6GFSU
Carl Reiner never wanted to exit the social conversation. In his work and life he fought for justice for the oppressed. This, of course, coming from a man who fought against fascism and anti-semitism in his twenties. I often times felt sad for Carl as it seemed he grew dismayed that the country he fought to defend nearly eighty years ago seemed to turn apart on the inside from the very same evils that he battled then. But, I do not believe he died a sad man. This is because Carl Reiner taught me the secret to living a good life. I will now share that secret:
Wake up every day happy to have opened your eyes.
It’s simple; it’s broad; it’s general; it’s complex.
It is a sentiment that triggers much deep thought and, hopefully, inner search as to how to attain such an attitude. Might I suggest counseling? There are loads of tools.
When I was sixteen, I wrote a 5-page letter to Carl expressing my immense love and respect for him and what he had brought to the world. I’ve reached out to many a filmmaker in my life, and he was the first to ever reply to me. I received an autographed portrait and a sweet note attached with his famed quote: “Lust is easy, Love is hard, Like is most important.” His action was a great boost for me and reminded me that if I make the effort, people will notice and respond.
I miss Carl Reiner very much. His loss is a personal one and I am still heartbroken that I will never see a new book release by him, watch a new interview with him, or read his latest tweet about going to the dentist or impeaching Donald Trump or watching The Net with Sandra Bullock for the fortieth time. Seriously, I think he watched that movie more times than the editor did.
His passing has inspired me to work harder. I will go forward in my new decade Carl-less but motivated by the time I knew of him and he knew of me. So many titles have been given to him lately and they are all justifiable: legend, pioneer, titan, king of comedy. I think of him as captain; captain of the vessel of hope and persistence.
O, Captain, I love you and all of my work will be crafted with you ever in my mind. Rest in Peace and Power.
