Now I must leave. Strange, when you get to be my age you can leave without regret and arrive without anticipation. I have perhaps lived to the point where what I have learned about the world begins to be unflattering. More and more, people seem to be like trained monkeys. What is it Steven Sondheim called Ethel Merman, “The Talking Dog”? Something like that. They are programmed, either by birth or by their environment, most probably a combination of both, and they cannot be dissuaded from their courses. I suppose that was what Freud was all about. Trying to help people step back enough from their own personalities to at least see what the course was they had set out upon. And then to help them alter that behavior. Rare. So rare. I don’t know that I have ever observed that happening.
The noble thing about acting is that it can only be done alone. So many enterprises are team activities. But to learn a role, to learn a song, to learn a dance, that is something you can only do by yourself. And, true, you may be performing in an ensemble, but each performer is like a planet, slowly revolving about one another. There is no one who can rescue you if you have not prepared. You are the sole commander of that little spaceship, you. And you alone know how well that spaceship has negotiated its passage about the stage before reaching the safety of the wings. It makes for great self-sufficiency. And it constantly instructs that you are alone, you are alone, you are alone. There may be others to be of solace or comfort or to distract in the wings. But for a stage person, real life is there upon the stage and there you are eternally alone. Lost in the stars. It is probably a great preparation for death.
And now I must go to sleep as tomorrow I depart for New York and leave this French village behind. Because of this festival, there are probably more lone travelers in this small town than there are in most communities of this size. I wonder if I communicated any of this to these young people this summer? I hope so.