OF REPUTATIONS

In my own disgrace in America, for whatever reasons, and disgrace is exactly that, dis-grace, reputations were very much on the line. It isn’t true I don’t care what people think of me, because then you just swap achievement for some awful notoriety, like the guy in Shamelesss. But only care what the people you love or respect think of you. I don’t care what ‘The World’ thinks though, because ‘The World’ is like a storm, and only the sum of swirling interpretations or judgments. I hope people who do know me are a bit more generous than a partner was, but Dad told a story once about when John Gielgud was caught cottaging in a loo in Piccadilly, and his friends immediately asked him to dinner! But then he was John Gielgud, and people usually want to know all the human bits. It’s only art that brings out the spiritual bits too. The whole story is really only about that, and it’s the saddest and strangest story I’ve ever read, or helped to write.

Now I’ll try to stop judging, myself and others, and remember what Paulo Coehlo said, ‘follow your dreams, dark and light, most people usually know where to stop.‘ We only ever understand what we understand, but he saw something long ago that made him write about those Warriors of Light! I prefer JK Rowling’s idea of Death Eaters being the bad, because you really can see too much, and in certain states, swallow darkness. Just throw away what denies life, light and growth, inside and out. But above all, at times judge or even condemn yourself, by all means, but don’t ever Damn youself and say you are not fit to live and love. My father said it to me in hospital, ‘Open like a flower’.

“And a Youth said, Speak to us of Friendship
And he answered, saying:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love
And reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and
You seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not
The ‘nay’ in your own mind, nor do you withold the ‘aye’.
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart.
For without words in friendship all thoughts, all desires, all expectations
Are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaiamed.
When you part from your friend,
Your grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence,
As the moutnain to the climber is clearer from the plain.’
Kahlil Gibran – The Prophet