excerpt performance by Boxcar
Is it hard for the Spectacular Failure to be in the presence of greatness?
Of course not. Usually, it is the Greats who have a hard time having him around.
The Truly Very Great Peter O’Toole was on the road with his designated driver, promoting his most deliciously titled autobiography, Loitering With Intent.
An admirer of all things excelling in excess, the Spectacular Failure wanted a chance to say goodbye to the aging Mr. Chips before it was too late. Arriving at the University of Washington bookstore at 8 AM, he stood in line waiting to shake the hand that once trembled while losing its virginity to the bodacious Bubble LaRue.
O’Toole arrived, an unfiltered cigarette dangling from the thin jet-black holder. And with that long, effortless glide, he strode to the table stacked with books. Glancing down at the plastic chair in front of him, you could almost see him want to scream: “You must be joking?”
And yet, sitting, he made that chair a throne.
It was only a moment until the Spectacular Failure was standing face to face with Peter O’Toole. Taking one of the books from the stack, he placed it on the table in front of the Lion and slid it towards him — with intent.
“Thank you so very much for coming this morning,” O’Toole said, flashing that charming, toothy smile.
“It doesn’t mean you have to buy my book, you know,” he joked — perhaps noticing the tattered tweed blazer standing in front of him.
“Who shall I make it out to?”
The Spectacular Failure, reflecting O’Toole’s calm poise and elegant demeanor, delivered his line perfectly:
“To Failure.”
“WHY… not!” thundered Lord Jim.
With his familiar chaotic grace, he shot upright. In a single motion, he extended one long arm to summon a pen while the other plucked the holder from his lips — ashes intact. Pen in hand, he snapped the book open. With an imperial flourish, he closed the book, handing it back, O’Toole exclaimed, proudly:
“TO…..Failure!”
Wondering who was directing whom, the Spectacular Failure found his mark.
“Thank you.”
Dismissing the bit players in the line behind him, he said:
“To hell with them, Peter. Here’s an idea. Let’s get outta here. Just you and me. I know a tiny little bar, right around the corner. Very intimate — doesn’t allow riffraff — or students. Drinks on me. What do ya say?”
O’Toole leaned back, cigarette holder firmly in his teeth. Mid-drag, his eyes widened. He lurched forward, fixing his gaze intimately upon the Spectacular Failure. With his trademarked stammer, he began:
“Well…ah…capital idea — but…you do know…it’s 9:30 in the morning?”
“I know,” the Spectacular Failure said dryly. “Sorry, I’m so late. I meant to be here hours ago.”
Later, at the bar alone, the Spectacular Failure dabbed peroxide on the welts given to him by the UW footballers — masquerading as bouncers — who’d kicked him down the stairs of the bookstore like a hacky sack. O’Toole’s full-throated belly laugh, head rocking with delight as the Spectacular Failure was dragged away, stayed with him, filling his drink for hours.
That exchange with Peter O’Toole is as close as the Spectacular Failure ever gets to greatness. Experiencing greatness is simply an echo — that he need not respond to. He gave up long ago ever wanting or expecting greatness — though it gave up on him first.
The people watching, however — the liggers preening for a glance, a nod, even a syllable from the momentary hero of their imagination — now, that is outstanding fun!
Greatness has an instinct — like a bouncer with a clipboard at the hot nightspot — admitting only the A-listers and arm candy. Greatness has an intuition that protects itself from any All About Eve subversions. Yet, greatness needs an audience: the hangers-on, the entourage, the autograph whores, to validate their greatness. And for the paparazzi — to prove it to People.
The necessary evils of greatness are evil simply because they are so necessary.
The Spectacular Failure does not long for — or need to steal — greatness from others.
Yet, like most everyone else, he feels the gravity of its allure, the desire, the seduction, of greatness. To feel, even for just a moment, to pretend to reflect that greatness onto himself. In that stolen sheen, the Spectacular Failure can sense what it might have been like, if only in a once upon a time, to be Great. A fairy tale that will never be written.
The Poets, Priests, and Politicians — the key swindlers of these fairy tales — are liars. Despite knowing this, the Spectacular Failure is not above paying the admission fee and enjoying the ride. Everyone, including him, allows themselves this fantasy: believing that the glow on them now comes from within.
It is a diversion.
Another drug to enjoy.
But the Spectacular Failure knows his addictions, and that light is only a reflection. Like the moon, which the poets insist “shines”, when it only steals its light from the sun. And, like the moon, all fairy tales have a dark side.
For a while, that glow, like the drug, can feel good. Comforting. Seductive.
It can, in the right moments, inspire and console — like the posters hanging on your teenage bedroom wall.
Unlike the gaping hangers-on who try to fob that greatness off as their own, padding the cells of their delusion, the Spectacular Failure knows it never was his. He knows how fleeting the illusion of mirror-shine is, and, at times, it drives him mad. Not because it is false, but because he allowed himself to fall for it once again. It reminds him of how vulnerable he is to his vanities.
So many claim to feel misunderstood, out of place.
“If only others could see the real me,” they love to tell themselves — almost as much as they love to tell you. Many people, especially artists, wear this costume of childish misunderstanding so intensely that the costume becomes the child. A self-replicating body of resentment, masked as self-earned glory.
That’s fine — for them. They will have their moments among their acquaintances, colleagues, the new faces at the openings, installations, premieres — to reflect this stolen glory. No bystander can escape the lies they insist on selling of their brushes with greatness. With each retelling — adding richer embellishment and self-reinvention — the listeners come to believe they, too, are now in the company of greatness. And they dream that one day they’ll be the ones retelling the story — now many times removed —adding their own layer of inherited greatness. A brand new tale spun from a moment’s interaction. A Rashomon — an incestuous quilt of appropriated grandeur.
This regurgitated self-aggrandizement sustains many people.
Not so for the Spectacular Failure.
The thought of basking in someone else’s glow and passing it off as his own betrays the contradictions he pained to embrace — knowing he would ignore them in the end.
“I tell my own stories.”
“My stories are just as worthy. They are real. I have lived them,” he confides to no one.
“They may be miserable. They may recount failure after failure after failure — with no denouement of glory. Only vileness, deception, and betrayal. But they are authentic. Borrowed from no one. The view left after the mirror finally shatters. Every shard word is real.”
“If the Great — and their gaggle — want nothing to do with me, I don’t blame them.”
And it doesn’t mean you have to buy his book.
The Great — and Not Great, who puddle at their feet — want the Spectacular Failure nowhere nearby. The life he has lived, the tales he can tell, are so raw they burrow into the phonies and poseurs, reminding them that they, too, have similar tales, buried deep within. Tales they dare never tell — not to others, not to themselves, and certainly not to their audience. The stories don’t fit their brand.
The many coats of black lacquer — layer upon layer, like the fake Maltese Falcon — encase their failures, along with themselves, deep within a mask they can never escape. The mask that will always expose them for what they are: nothing more than stolen moonlight.
That is the stuff nightmares are made of.
