On My Defeat for Re-Election to the School Board

May 18th, 2005

It is time to go now

and not to come again.

Willie Loman's bags can be left at the stage door.

The strain, the passion, may be unrewarded,

but the play was no less good because others have judged it badly.

 

No actor wants to see his part cancelled.

But performing is and was its own reward.

Only bad actors require applause of the groundlings.

The play will go on.  It always does.

Some one else will learn the lines and attend the rehearsals.

 

Watching  from the audience

It may never be possible to fairly criticize the product.

Passion, after all, is not dispassionate.

But what are critics for if not to guide appreciation?

They know by their own exposure right from wrong or so they believe.

 

On the other hand, it does not matter what the critics say.

Actors may botch their lines, the costumes may be in tatters,

The theater may be a fire trap,

But if the groundlings cheer the play will run until disaster strikes.

 

 Lawrence Olivier, when he was very old,

was hired him to play a king.

He could not remember which one he was playing.

My partner wanted to fire him.

I said “no,” we will get by with cue cards.

When we cut the film together, Olivier's performance was magnificent.

He was, after all, Lawrence Olivier.

 

Why this recollection comes now I am not sure.

Maybe it is that when all else goes, accomplishment remains.  

(And I understand I am not Lawrence Olivier.)