Tragedy Plus Time

“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.”

Voltaire

Thank you Courtney for helping me shoot and style this, and for having Ellie star as Judy. Also thank you and Nicole for being my friends, I love you.

The title of this video “Tragedy plus time” comes from a phrase…a mantra…no, a prayer… that has been with me, dogged me even…that I’ve been marinating in, ruminating on and serenading myself with…by the unforgettable Mark Twain (a more modern American version of Voltaire), and it is this:

“Humor is tragedy plus time.”

Mark Twain

Twain also said:

“Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.”

Mark Twain

And tangentially, do you know the word “twain” is Shakespearean for two? “Never the twain shall meet” comes from Rudyard Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West”:

“OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”

Rudyard Kipling

It’s the idea that the Brits and the Indians would never see eye to eye, that the twain will never meet.

Will the twain ever meet?

Will we “human beans” ever collectively find true allegiance to our beautiful species, to all species and to our home planet?

Let’s stop committing oppressive acts of violence towards each other, let’s stop killing each other’s children and mothers and brothers, because there is no peace without justice.

And there is no justice with violence.

Let’s stop our own personal tyrannies; torturing each other in the terror of this late stage capitalist grind; where many of us may not be literally dropping bombs on homes in our own country (although our tax money directly funds wars “elsewhere”) but how ‘bout we start a global peace revolution by stopping the fury directed at the people we live with, our neighbours and ourselves?

If you’re feeling utterly desperate with all we are witnessing here on planet earth, and with the pain and misery of your own life, you could try giving your all, everything you got baby, to a ceasefire of your soul. I’m living this in my own life and it’s the hardest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever done.

I grew up surrounded by war veterans and my first great love was a civilian survivor of multiple wars in Beirut, some of my other great teachers have included Holocaust survivors, Vietnam War veterans, survivors of prisoner of war camps, Iraqi, Afghan, Yemeni, Iranian, Saudi, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Chilean and Palestinian refugees, survivors of Kosovo and Ukraine and Partition, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Brazilians, Russians, Bulgarians, Sudanese, Burmese, Rwandans, South Africans, The Inuit, Hong Kongers, Eritreans, Japanese, Nigerians, Togolese, Algerians, First Nations peoples of Australia, Scots, Hawaiians, Irish, Spaniards, Germans, survivors of colonialist horrors, genocide and revolutionary wars all around the world, most gay, trans and non-binary people I’ve ever been lucky enough to get to know, and survivors of rape and domestic violence; the war rages inside us well beyond the end of the physical assaults on our bodies and the end of war on the ground…until you SOMEHOW find the courage to find your way to peace.

The “war within” sets the bodies of our children and grandchildren alight; this is the forest fire of generational trauma; let that motivate you to transform your pain.

Embody ceasefire now, teach your children to live ceasefire now, teach your parents to live ceasefire now. Normally I would warn of “the certainty of a closed mind”, but there is only one certain thing I know; we are family and the truth is love.

(Thank you Liz)