enter the Age of Comedy

It's time for us to end

The Age of Tragedy;

we've been living in it

far too long.

Now, you wonder,

what on God's earth 

does she mean, but you know

this verbious chick will tell you

that, and more.

Furthermore, perhaps you

(like I) are beginning to wonder 

if I ever laugh.

Those last two entries were

dark, and darker still.

But in fact,

I crack a smile on many occasions, and my laugh

is loud.  I love the rush of fresh air

that comes with laughing,

and the way it loosens my clamped

jaw.  This is why

I write this entry:

~ ~ 

We've been living in the Age

of Tragedy 

for far too long.

Now the word "tragedy" can be defined

in a number of ways; I talk

to my students about this a lot,

and here, as in the classroom,

I define it in its most classical sense,

the way Aristotle did:

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.  (Poetics)

Thus, 

as you can see,

tragedy is all about

plot and performance.

Its single, ill-fated action

does unfold in narrative time,

enacted by humans

(Notably, according to Aristotle,

the most suitable tragic heroes are men)

while others witness,

watching one man, one great man

make one great

big

stupid mistake.

We, the onlookers,

are supposed to benefit from watching

that fatal error.  We're supposed to be purged

of our own sadnesses and nasty desires,

learn a vital lesson,

and get on with living,

civilly.

Over time, dramatists like Shakespeare

added a second plot,

and even women;

dear Arthur Miller made sure

the Common Man could share

in the carnage, and August

Wilson painted it black.

Tragedy, for thousands of years,

has, ultimately, held the place of choice

in our dramatic fayre.

( wikipedia )

~ ~ ~ 

Now, I'll take a logical step here

that asks you to apply some of my other ramblings:

Narrative time 

is Real time; 

Narrative time

is All Time.

A distinctive feature of

Narrative time

is that it has a clear

beginning, middle and end

(aka: birth, life, death);

its dominant message

can be summarized

in stories.

Narrative time is the time

we live in.  Lives unfold around

us, patterned by established patterns

we have come to call History.

We live in narrative time.

We --         

----- each of us ---

write our stories with each step

we take, each word we 

utter, each heart we

break.  Of course, when we get

to the end of our stories, and

look back at them,

we just remember

the highest highs and the lowest

lows, editing out the daily trips

to the bathroom.

On some level, we all know

that this is what we are doing

in our lives:

creating our own stories.

This is why we 

go to college, 

get married,

get promoted

have children

get divorced

go on journeys

retire

:

all of these acts provide chapters

in the narrative of our lives

and lead us to place we think

we'd like to be

in the end,

as we face our end.

Sometimes, we feel the need

to edit our stories, with lies

and omissions,

we convince ourselves that we

are always right,

believing that when we review

it all at the end,

the lies will have the power to erase

our biggest transgressions.

Unfortunately, I tend to think that in the story

we will witness at the end, when

we confront that unflinching mirror

of death, those lies and denials will apear

just as that: 

lies and denials.

(ex: she had an abortion

and told everyone

she lost the child

or

he cheated on his fathful wife

and when his wife suspected, he convinced her

she had an overactive thyroid

to divert her attention. .  . 

That's how the lies will appear to us.

The mirror that divides

this world from the next

captures each of our actions

unflinchingly.

Anyway, I can see my own pen meandering.

Back to my point:

we live in narrative time

and each of our lives,

so distinctly framed by

a beginning and an end,

all contain a series of plots.

~ ~ ~ 

Now, a bit over a year ago,

I wrote an entry that referred to the idea

that there are 36 recognized plots

in drama (or so some critics

say), and every play

can be summarized by one

of those plots.

Notably, they're all Tragedies.

In that earlier entry I wondered if the same

could be said of our lives.

At that time my own life

seemed to be catapulting

down a pre-ordained path

that could only end tragically,

and quite frankly, 

I didn't like it.  I felt fated,
and I refused to accept that version
of my own story.
In the time since,

I have reclaimed power over the direction

my feet are tracing, but I'm still 

unsure of the ending.

But aren't we all?

That truly is the part of each

of our stories

we generally have little power over.

Anyway, at that time, I considered how perhaps

our lives follow

pre-ordained, repeated plots,

that traverse this earth in cycles,

unrecognized until the end, when

we come face to face 

with the plot we accepted,

and lived,

trudgingly,

in this lifetime.

Thinking we couldn't change it,

we followed the footsteps of those

who came before.

And the dominant genre,

the favored genre 

of the past 2,500 years or so,

has been Tragedy.

Just look at it:

the blood spattered across the lines

our feet have traced, 

collectively and individually.

Even the story of Jesus

is a tragedy : He saves us

in a self-sacrificial gesture; He

provides us all with a text we repeat

annually,

a text that documents humanity's greatest sin:

the Sin of Killing Innocence.

A sin we keep committing,

over and over.

Who is the Hero in that?

* * *

Notably, the joy in the story of Jesus

comes from two places:

in the insistence of the primacy of Love

and

in an act that, in other circumstances

would be called "magic."

He rose from the dead:

magic.

And, arguably,

Comic.

 ( utexas )

 Now, quite frankly,

one is more likely

to encounter

magic,

rebirth,

restoration of order

and a celebration of Love

in a Comedy.

Aristotle, by the way,

appeared to disapprove

of Comedy.  

This is what he had to say about it:

Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain. 

Aristotle did grant women a place 

in Comedy.

~ ~ ~ ~

Now the thesis of this rambling blog entry is 

that we should have done with 

The Age of Tragedy

and commence

with Comedy

(or at least the Tragic-Comic,

which acknowledges that life has elements

of both.)

I propose (as I have said) that each 

of our lives follows a path,

a path we choose;

our feet are our pens,

their markings, ink, indelibly

etched across the pages of earthly time.

Unfortunately, I propose,

collectively humanity keeps following in the previous

generations' paths, wearing them deep into the brow

of human memory,

so deep we seem to have 

no other option.

Those paths are painfully tragic,

and sad, full of mistakes that we could not accept,

as we are

as blind as Oedipus before his 

eyelessness.

It's time,

I think, to have done

with the Tragic Plots that History

continually replays; 

we've become too obsessed with gore,

titilated by catharsis so much so

that we've lost sight

of the lessons we are supposed to be learning,

all because we,

the potential heroes, 

keep lying, from age to age, refusing

to accept responsibility for the sins

we've committed.

The lesson I've learned in my multiple lives

is

that you cannot hide from yourself.

Ultimately, when the crowd is gone,

when you face your own silence,

the truths are always there.

The only way out of the lies that cloak our vision

is to tell our own truths,

first to ourselves,

and then to those we've deceived,

always remembering

that only (s)he without sin

can cast 

the first stone.

So let's imagine the majority of humanity

decided to do this.

The only humans who should qualify as judges

in this collective, individual confessional

will be

children, with the average age 

of three.

If they heard all these stories

of our indiscretions

they would laugh at the foolishness

of humanity before them,

they would cry a little too,

but finally,

thank us for finally telling them

the truth,

and they'll still love us,

because we taught them well.

Jesus will come again

at the very instant 

the Age of Comedy dawns,

at the crack of the collective human laugh

at our own foibles

and clumsiness,

at the bursting of

collective love

that refuses to lie

ever again.

Jesus will be there,

covering the earth like a blanket,

his smile glimmering in the stories

that we've each told, 

and in our final realization that WE 

have the power to end the Tragedy

as Comedy.