Friday Feast Seventy One

Appetizer

What did you look like when you were a teenager?
I was much thinner than I am now, but I've always felt this heavy.

Salad

Whose advice do you listen to?
I don't listen to a lot of advice. I hear a lot of advice, and I seek out advice giving. But more and more, I find myself only judging the emotional reaction that I might expect if I follow a certain course. Why I'm trying to anticipate emotional reactions, I don't know.

Mostly I look for proper authority and general evenhandedness in an advice giver. If someone just doesn't know what they're talking about, or if they betray wacky assumptions in broad areas of their life, it's hard to take their advice seriously. These are all the reasons that no one should ever listen to a word I say, by the way. I know I never do.

Soup

Name a book you would like to memorize.
On the practical side, the book I'd like to memorize hasn't been compiled yet. It would probably have the title Defining a Career: A Showcase of Plays for the Middle Aged and Older Actor. It would have Death of A Salesman and King Lear; probably Macbeth and The Dresser (for Sir) as well. That way, I could use what's left of my brain learning the roles that I might play in the future. It would be nice to be off book for all of those plays.

However, of the books that are out there right now, I suppose I would pick The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Or 1984 by George Orwell, which is about the same thing for the current American administration. Both books deal with manipulation of people and ideas, something that I am wary of. It's interesting to see how people conspire and wheedle and force others to do their bidding. Often people are blind to their own strategies.

I don't mean to sound as if I'm exempt from all this, and perhaps my choice of book creeps you out. Well, so be it. It's more a defensive choice than an aggressive attempt to learn how to manipulate. I want to know when I'm being manipulated. It helps me maintain a sense of freedom (illusionary or not).

Main Course

How often are you sick?
I am almost never sick. I get head colds. In the past three years I've caught the flu, and dealt with a hacking cough for about a month afterwards. But that's about it. I rarely get headaches, although working for Dell last December, I had my first migrane ever that I'm aware of. The nurse I called about my symptoms had me go to the emergency room for a detached retina! Thankfully, it wasn't that.

But the last time I went to the doctor, he pronounced me obscenely healthy. That's lucky for me.

What a paltry main course!

Dessert

Do you like or dislike change?
I dislike change, but change is inevitable. It's much better to develop a consistent approach to dealing with change, than to resist change.

But isn't resistance to change itself a consistent way of dealing with change? Well, you have to resist it for a while. Change is the wind that will help you get where you want to go - but if you've found where you want to go, change is your enemy. Resistance to unnecessary change is what develops your character. But when the motivation for change becomes overwhelming, you have to lift anchor and navigate to a new harbor.

Change has been my constant companion all my life. I've never been anywhere long; even here in Nashville, going on nine years or so, I've moved around quite a bit. And now the end is near, even here. I'm tired of the ruts I'm in. It's time to find a new pair of ruts. So I must learn to love change once again.