Blog

In the spirit of the Valentine season when warm and amorous feelings are expressed to our significant others, I thought I would write about the one who caught my eye several decades ago. So with Shakespeare’s admonition, “Never durst poet touch a pen to write / Until his ink were temper’d with Love’s sighs,” in mind, I will venture a few thoughts on being a victim of Cupid’s arrow. Kay and I could not be more opposite: farm girl vs. city boy; introvert vs. extrovert; psychology counselor vs. actor & writer; serene and contemplative vs. sarcastic and cranky; Jedi Master Yoda vs. know-it-all Han Solo.  Early in our courtship, Kay was warned more than once not to get involved with me. A well-meaning church-lady even said of our courtship and prospective marriage that, "it would never work out." It is certainly within the realm of possibility that such extreme personalities could be attracted to each other.  There was and is and always will be our physical attraction to one another—we still like to flirt and tease—but along the journey of almost thirty-seven years of marriage to date (May 12, 1979 to be exact), we have taken the risks and opportunities to go beyond the physical and expand the depths of our human connection with one another, a special challenge when the two personalities involved in this quest are polar opposites with “irreconcilable differences.” A few years ago in Philadelphia while having breakfast around a large table in a house shared by seven, twenty-something, single women, one of whom was our youngest daughter, Lauren, one of the young ladies asked, “How did you two get together and how have you stayed together?”  The Questioner had appraised Kay and me after only a brief time of observation and so posed the question in amazement that we should have first, been attracted to each other, and second, that the marriage had lasted so long. We began the conversation by referencing the “Star Wars” analogy to illustrate our opposite personalities: Kay, the supremely composed Yoda calmly appraising situations and dispensing wise solutions, and I, Han Solo, who happens upon a discarded lightsaber, picks up the curious object and bangs it on a rock shouting, “How does this thing work?” to which Kay responds with, “Just push the ‘on’ button,” then rolls her eyes in dismay.  From that jumping off point the collected memories of our courtship and life together began to flow uninterrupted throughout the morning, soaked with laughter and tears, and ended well into the afternoon. Strange Bedfellows is certainly a catchy phrase. Like politics, for which the phrase was originally coined, marriage can make strange bedfellows.  It was Charles Dudley Warner, the 19th century American writer and contemporary of Samuel Clemens (they co-authored The Gilded Age, a novel that satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America), who created the original phrase: “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”  The truism “strange bedfellows” has a universal meaning that can apply to any human institution…

Black has to be the most ancient of colors. The book of Genesis states that it is the black darkness that shrouds the Spirit of God while contemplating the formless void before speaking the light into existence. There is no reflection in the color black. Black swallows all color concealing deeper mysteries. One of my favorite artists is Caravaggio, the Baroque painter whose bold, rich colors were more vibrant and profound because of his lavish use of the color black and its shadowy shades in each canvas. Most often when Caravaggio used light it was to illuminate the human actions of his subjects frozen in dramatic performance and often with postures and expressions of anguish or wonder or radiance. In the opening scene of the film “The Fabric of Space,” a father and son lie on the ground contemplating the wonder of the black sky above them pierced with tiny pinpricks of starlight and what it might be like were they to be flung into all that space. I’ve been asked by several people who have watched this film as to its possible meaning. I feel honored by those inquisitive enough to ask about our process in creating such a story. It seems their imaginations had been “flung into space” by the film. One person even said, “I don’t fully follow the tale, but I am scared every time I watch it.” Life can be unpredictable, I reminded them, and sometimes dangerously so. Events and people can change suddenly and drastically. There is only so much we can do in our efforts to safeguard against unpredictable and unwanted disruption in our lives.   When Derek Pearson and I were discussing this abstract notion of the coexistence of spirit and body and what might happen when they separate, we went further with the storyline and began giving it muscle and bone: how the father would witness the unexpected departure of his son’s spirit from his body; how the father would chase after his son’s spirit into a dark forest where he comes upon an extraordinary character weaving a giant fabric; and how the father would desperately bargain for his son’s life in exchange for his own. When Derek said he planned to shoot his film in black and white, I thought of Rod Serling and “The Twilight Zone.” This concept was in homage to the genre created by that great television show. Meaning, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and assigning specific meaning to works of art risks impertinence. I see something different each time I watch the film. There is a poetic phrase we use when we are certain of something: “Without a shadow of a doubt.” I have learned to be comfortable with my doubts, which may mean I am comfortable remaining in the shadows when offering any definitive meaning to this film. Remember, in this dreamlike world Derek has created, anything can happen that would offer multiple meanings, and he uses the palette of black…

Life will often surprise us with a dose of reality that rearranges our private universe in unexpected ways. The incident can be the equivalent of tasting the forbidden fruit. While the experience might expand the knowledge of ourselves and the place we inhabit in the world, it can also reveal something about our character we may have never known before leaving us feeling naked and in need of covering in a garment of fig leaves. To belong and be accepted is a vital part of being human and central to our survival. I do not believe anyone who says they don’t care what others think of them. We are, in part, exactly what people think of us for better or worse. In this second chapter of “My Better Angel,” I write of the young protagonist's hope to make the final cut of a Little League team. He arrives at the baseball field right after landing a job as a paperboy to hear the final verdict announced by the coach. The outcome makes an indelible mark on his soul. Though last month's first chapter, "Staying Power," and now this second one are told in first person, I again admonish the reader to remember it is only fiction. Not a Team Player In the heat of my first employment, I saw the world as fruitful.  To have a job at my age with such freedom and responsibility would make my friends envious at my graduation from parental allowance to self-regulating earned income.  I never could tell my friends I didn’t receive an allowance because my father’s income was unable to compete with the lawyers, doctors, stock brokers, and bank vice presidents who never blinked at the size of the checks they wrote to the private religious school we all attended.  Allowance for my friends inspired more one-upmanship than any thought of gratitude, but I saw allowance as familial welfare, a way to manipulate and enforce authority.  And I could imagine the girls at school awed in the presence of a boy who has severed the parental purse strings.  I was stepping outside the safe confines of what I had known, and a flicker of potential new worlds stirred the juice in my system. I coasted onto the Little League field where other boys, their parents and the coaches gathered at the stands.  I parked my bike behind the bleachers and swaggered to the front trying to squelch the unchristian pride I felt at just having stepped into a wider world.  In restrained tones I spoke to my schoolmates as I took a seat among the group.  Every summer the school we attended sponsored a Little League team.  Baseball was a rite of passage for the chosen few and we all wanted to be chosen.  I thought being a future Wildcat would be an added breadth to my destiny. For days leading up to tryouts, baseball dominated the minds of my contemporaries. During the two-day tryout period where the coaching staff tested our…

"The world never comes at you all at once," John O'Donohue states in his book "Beauty, The Invisible Embrace." If it did we would combust. Most moments in life barely register; others leave an impression that remains for a lifetime. I had two seminal experiences that helped me shed the skin of childhood. One evolved over a period of time bringing with it a gradual awareness of a wider world beyond the borders of my rather sheltered existence. The other was a revelation into my character that came like a lightning bolt. I became a paperboy at a young age, and around the same time, I tried out for a Little League baseball team. A few years ago I decided to write a coming-of-age novel based on some of my early experiences growing up in the 1960s. The novel is entitled “My Better Angel.” It has yet to be published due, in part, to my own inertia. So just for the fun of it, I’ve decided to post the first two chapters of the novel on my website. The first chapter is entitled “Staying Power.” I will post the second chapter in December. This is fiction. I was a paperboy, and I did tryout for Little League. Those are facts beyond repute. The rest I will leave for the reader’s imagination. It is simply written to delight. Chapter 1 Staying Power “So you threw the papers for one of the boys while he was on vacation,” Aaron Rubenstein said.  He snorted a staccato sniff of early morning air up his bulbous nose sounding like baseball cards’ flapping against bicycle spokes.  I detected a hint of condescension. “Threw for a whole week,” I said, unable to hold back a little crow. “Threw for a whole week,” Aaron said glancing heavenward as though the statement was worthy of contemplation. Aaron was a paperboy for our two daily newspapers in Davis City, Tennessee: the morning Sentinel and evening Monitor.  I had had a whole week of experience, enough, I thought, to qualify me for a route of my own, but as Aaron stared into the pre-dawn sky, his silence allowed for doubts to creep into my mind.  Aaron had impressed the newspaper’s delivery managers and they promoted him to a larger route after a year of delivering the papers for the route I hoped, with his blessing, would assume.  I had passed the interview with the managers.  The last hurdle was the approval of Aaron Rubenstein.  We had met before dawn at the drop-off site where the route manager left designated bundles of papers for the paperboys to pick up before heading out on their neighborhood routes.  Even though Aaron and I would have two different routes, we would gather our paper bundles at the same drop-off site beneath a giant hickory tree. “Throwing for a week of four‑thirty mornings and three‑thirty afternoons is like slipping off a wet rock, nothing to it,” he said redirecting his eyes on me. Condescension confirmed.  Shamed, I…

It came as a terrible disappointment the day I realized I would never become James Bond. Like most boys growing up, I went through a long list of potential careers. In the early days of my childhood I was influenced by the characters I saw on television; the standard cowboy, soldier, and adventurer types. None of these stayed with me for long. I was attached to one superhero for awhile. I believed then and do now that Superman was the best of a whole slew of superheroes. Too many superheroes had specialized powers that required a team of "experts" to take down the bad guys, or someone like Batman who was dependant on technology. With my limited techno skills, I would never make it out of the bat cave. Superman was an all-inclusive power machine. He required no technology and did not have to summon a gang of one-trick wonders to help him vanquish the bad guys. As long as he avoided the kryptonite and did not get entangled with Lois Lane, he could save the world whenever duty called. My parents did not have disposable income to purchase my own Superman costume sold in the five-and-dime stores. So before my resourceful mother sent me outside to rid the world of crime, she pulled an old blue shirt of my father’s and a worn towel out of the rag-bag under the kitchen sink, painted a red “S” on the front of the shirt, and attached the towel-cape to my shoulders with duck-head diaper pins borrowed from the stash stored on the shelf next to the crib of my much younger sibling. One must dress for the role, and my mother’s creative inspiration helped me convert discarded materials used to mop floors and wash cars into an outfit worthy of a superhero.     I completely believed my mother’s magic to transform me. I could leap tall buildings, outrun speeding bullets, and display impressive feats of strength. And I tested this theory against the laws of nature. I would leap from the roof of our garage or the ledge of our tree house or fling myself from the tire-swing once it reached the apex of its back-and-forth. I loved hearing my cape flapping in the wind. Everything was going great and I was keeping the neighborhood crime-free until one day when I almost hung myself by my cape. I was in pursuit of two scoundrels (neighborhood friends who drew the lot of “bad guy” in our after-school, make-believe play time), who dashed into a hedge separating one backyard from another. I chose to leap the hedge assuming their intention was to come out on the other side. If my timing was right, I would fly over the hedge and crash land on top of them just as they emerged. In mid-flight I realized I had miscalculated the cunning of my foes. They had chosen to remain inside the thick hedge and escape by retracing their steps once I plopped down on the…

“People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to the Machine.” E. M. Forster In my eclectic reading habits I frequently stumble upon subjects and stories that surprise me. I love to be surprised. I was reading an essay in The New Yorker that referenced a short story by E. M. Forster entitled “The Machine Stops.” Yes, that Forster of “A Room with a View” and “A Passage to India” fame. My initial surprise came when I read that Forster’s short story was first published in the Oxford and Cambridge Review in November of 1909. “The Machine Stops” is a futuristic tale. It might fall into the science-fiction or fantasy genre in today’s publishing pigeon-hole mentality. There are only two characters: a mother, Vashti, and her son, Kuno. By decree of the invisible Central Committee who had designed and set in motion this omnipotent and omnipresent Machine, all babies were put into public nurseries. “Parent’s duties,” said the Book of the Machine, “cease at the moment of birth.” Vashti could visit Kuno in the nursery until the Machine assigned him a room on the other side of the earth. After that the only means of communication was through electronic telephones with plate screens. The populations of the earth lived underground in elaborate honeycomb system with individuals housed in small, hexagonal rooms. Every need was met inside the room. Few ventured to the “surface of the earth” except for a rare flight on an airship with the sky windows concealed by blinds of pliable metal. “When the airships had been built, the desire to look direct at things still lingered in the world,” writes Forster. But over time the “civilized and refined” found it discomforting to view natural sights such mountains, oceans, woodlands, night and day, stars and planets. At the beginning of the story Kuno has called his mother from the southern hemisphere and asked her to take a flight to the northern hemisphere so he could tell her something important. The idea of flying in an airship was frightening enough to Vashti, but it was even more terrifying to speak to someone in person, even her son. The advance technology of this brave new world had made face-to-face contact obsolete. “It is contrary to the spirit of the age,” Vashti asserted, and Kuno countered that human contact was “contrary to the Machine.” Public gatherings were abandoned for the insular convenience of multi-technical connections with audiences through screens. Knowledge was passed through lectures on screens from lectors who gathered their information from other lectors who had sourced their learning from the Machine’s book of knowledge. No personal experience was required in the gaining of knowledge. “Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience,” Forster writes. The communication systems, the illumination, the food and drink, the temperature of the filtered air, all requirements to sustain human life in one’s personally-designed abode was provided by the Machine and its Central Committee. And whenever Vashti was compelled to worship…

Kay and I homeschooled our daughters. I should qualify that statement by saying I was more the sub. Kay had the lion share of the responsibility for the girl's education. My contributions were more in line with artistic field trips: museums, galleries, dance recitals, concerts, theatre (a lot of theatre). I usually was the one who took them to these performances and got them prepped to have a deeper experience with the art form. Kristin went all the way through her senior year as a homeschool student. Lauren decided she wanted more athletic activities and social interaction, and at the beginning of her freshman year we enrolled her in the local high school. Not all of the homeschool field trips were of an artistic nature. Some were inspired by life experience. I think the girls started the conversation about potential causes for homelessness as we would drive through Nashville and see homeless people wandering the streets. The curious and impressionable natures of our then ten and eight-year-old daughters could not fathom why people would choose to live in such a fashion. I know whatever feeble explanation for the plight of homelessness I tried to articulate did not satisfy them, so I suggested that we just try and get to know some of those folks. We chose a soft approach in our initial attempt to connect with this unique population, which was to make sack lunches, drive through downtown and find random individuals, then stop to offer them a pbj and then hope to engage them in conversation. Over time these field trips led us to a man nicknamed “Bear” who lived in a two-room shack under the bridge over the Cumberland River and within a few feet of the busy railroad tracks. This was a time when there were make-shift tent-villages set up by the homeless population in that part of town. These encampments would eventually be cleared out to make way for the construction of a football stadium. Bear got his nickname for obvious reasons; he was hairy in the extreme. Face, arms, chest, head were a thick covering of dark hair with streaks of gray and grime. He was the unofficial mayor of this homeless enclave, and we soon realized that if we brought supplies to him, he would equitably distribute the items among the people. By association with Bear, we were more acceptable to the homeless citizens that would drop by Bear's home. Bear’s small domicile was made of plywood and palates, tar paper, shingles, and tin, all scrapes he had gathered on his scavenger hunts. He had grown up in a satellite city not far from Nashville and had chosen a homeless lifestyle over the traditional familial one. We did not pry for more specific reasons for his current living situation. What we appreciated was his expansive personality that was warm and inclusive, and how he approached his responsibility as “mayor” like that of a mother hen extending her protective wing to gather the needy beneath it.…

A little game my three siblings and I played as kids was poking one another with a finger and then running away as fast as possible. We hated it when one of us got poked by the other…a fear of the transference of cooties perhaps. The victim would complain to the parent within earshot that so-in-so “touched me.” If a threat was even perceived by an approaching sibling the immediate response was DON’T TOUCH ME! And back in the day when there were no seatbelts, when we got into the car to go anywhere, we would draw invisible lines across the backseat and threaten the offender with mayhem should they cross said line and touch the other. Today we can’t hug each other enough. A few years ago I was asked to perform a one-man show I had developed from the Gospel of St. John, similar to what British actor Alec McCowen had done with the Gospel of St. Mark, for a chapel service at the Nashville Rescue Mission, an organization devoted to serve Nashville’s homeless population. I had agreed to do the performance months in advance, but when it came time, I regretted having said yes, and found myself struggling to summon any enthusiasm. I was tired. I was unmotivated. On the drive to the Mission, I toyed with a number of creative excuses I could use to get out of it at the last minute without just pulling a no-show. I even grumbled to God, ending the conversation with, “I’ll go through with it, but I don’t have to like it.” If I was hoping my little complaint might invoke a divine change of heart, it was not in evidence when I got out of the car and entered the building, or went through the sound and light check, or faked half-hearted interest in the chaplain’s sincere attempt at conversation, or watched as the six-hundred seat auditorium filled to capacity. Some level of joy began to seep in as I performed the play, but it was hampered by the constant wheezing and coughing and sneezing and yes, snoring, that echoed in the room during the presentation. It was like audible sounds of diseases cavorting and cultivating in a giant Petri dish. I appreciated the occasional interjection of laughter at a humorous moment and the enthusiastic applause at the end, but it was not enough to help me overcome my initial resistance. This was not the traditional theatrical venue to which I was accustomed, and after the performance the chaplain asked if anyone wanted prayer. So many men came forward that he asked for more staff to help with the penitents. The brokenness displayed by those who came forward began to dissolve the crust around my heart…a little. Then came a surprise. The chaplain announced that if any of the men would like to greet me that I was happy to meet them. Whoa there, partner, I thought. I’m an actor not a minister. I like that aesthetic distance…

Growing up in the Bud and Bernie Arnold household we practiced certain rules that helped stem the tide of chaos and kept certain rituals that over time grounded and centered us giving us a sense of our place in this world. One such regulation/ritual was the dinner hour. Regardless how the day went for the individuals in the family, sitting down to break bread together at six p.m. was a precedent we maintained at all cost, and within that auspicious span of time, our raw humanity was illuminated. It would be safe to say that over the years, thousands of people have sat at the Arnold table and each guest was honored by my parents if not always by their children. Missionaries, actors, teachers, journalists, writers, preachers, freeloaders, boarders, artists, strangers, students, politicians, all racial stripes, all gender stripes, rich, poor, ex-cons, addicts, alcoholics, the terminally ill, the greatest of these and the least of these (a guest list that would rival the Queen); if you were at the house at the dinner hour, invited or uninvited, a plate was set for you at the table and a bed was made if you needed a place to sleep. There were guests who stayed for a few nights or a few weeks and sometimes to infinity and beyond. The weirdest guests I remember was a marginal friend of mine from my college days who brought his new bride to Nashville for their honeymoon and was too broke to afford a hotel so they stayed in my sister’s room upstairs. She was still away at school so no one had to be displaced from their rooms. The newlyweds were very quiet. My brothers and I could only imagine what was going on. The couple was invited to our evening meals, and my friend accepted a few times, but the bride never made an appearance. He took her meals up to their room. How romantic we thought, but no; the romance seemed to be missing like the bride herself for we never laid eyes on her after their initial arrival. They never went anywhere during their stay. On occasion, my friend would apologetically walk through the house offering as an explanation the need to fetch something for the bride. After several days of this absurdist drama, the couple slipped away while we all were conveniently absent, and within a few weeks, we got word that their marriage had been annulled. That explained the silence in the next room. As it has been said, you will never realize how peculiar your friends are until you start to describe them to someone else. To gather around the Arnold dinner table was always a mixture of the sacred and the profane. It was rarely a Rockwell painting. However, my parents, Dad in particular, did their best to elevate conversation and not stoop to the discourse and behavior of their offspring, especially in the presence of company. But sometimes they could not avoid being dragged down into…

Let me start with a disclaimer: I have not read Harper Lee’s, “Go Set a Watchman.” I have every intention of reading it but will probably let the brouhaha die down before I crack the spine of my copy. I did not read “To Kill a Mockingbird” until I was an adult. I did not read much of anything until I was an adult. I was and am a very slow reader; my dyslexic nemesis sits atop my head and loves to trip my brain with linguistic landmines. I do not remember when I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the first time, but I do know when I read it the second time. In the spring of 2010, I had gone through a rigorous audition process for the role of Atticus in a play adaptation of the novel that Nashville Repertory Theatre would produce in the Fall. Rene Copeland, the artistic director of Nashville Repertory Theatre had pared the “Atticuses” down to nine, or so, for the final callback. It was an embarrassment of riches for Rene, and she could have cast any of the actors for the role. Several weeks later I happened to be at a theatre event that Rene was also attending. She asked if I had read the novel before the audition. I confessed I had not, and she said something to the effect of, “Well, you’d better get on it, because I want you to play Atticus.” I excused myself to go outside the theatre and call Kay, followed by calls to our daughters to share this exciting news. I was able to reach Kristin and tell her, but Lauren was unavailable, and I did not want to leave a voicemail. I was to see her in a day or two and would tell her at that time. We had scheduled a little Daddy/Daughter time, and I remember we were driving in the car when I dropped the “I got the role of Atticus Finch” bomb. Her reaction was immediate, no hesitation, no thought taken to formulate a response, just pure impulse: “Oh Daddy, I’m so excited. Atticus Finch is the father I always wanted.” The second after the words sprang from her mouth was a moment of profound realization for both of us. Lauren knew she had said either the most insulting thing a child could say to their father, or it was the funniest thing that could be said regarding any paternal comparison. And for me, I knew I was about to square off with a quintessential American icon seared into the consciousness of our society. Five years later Lauren and I still laugh at her faux pas. But it is not easy for any actor who has played the role of Atticus for the stage to go up against the iconic Atticus portrayed in the film adaptation of the novel. For a nation that suffers from amnesia on most subjects, the lawyer from Monroeville, Alabama, was an icon not easily forgotten or replaced. I…