Just Do It Over (8b)—Soliloqy, with Chair

A year ago on Round and Square (2 September 2011)—Styling Culture (2)—Write Serious Prose

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Just Do It Over."

[a] Kickback RF

Click here for the individual sections of "Soliloquy, With Chair."

Chair 1                    Chair 2 

We have considered the musings of Clint Hamlet. Indeed, how abhorr'd in the imagination is the twisted chair of prime time carnage that some have called ad lib and others have spoken of as a weird twist on psychotherapy. Just talkin' to the chair...for twelve minutes. I have been watching politics since my early days on the North Dakota prairie, and I remember Richard Nixon (my grandparents were ebullient) getting the Republican nomination in Miami in 1968, balloons streaming from the rafters and a reinvention of self and society coursing through the humid south Florida air. I also remember disasters that everyone just wanted to do over, such as the Democratic National Convention in that very same 1968 in Chicago, the same party's convention in 1980, and the Republican National Convention in 1992. 

All of these were disastrous, and had lasting, negative implications. 

[b] Conceptual RF

On one level, yesterday evening's "chair talk" did nothing to hurt the party in the manner of 1968 rioting, Kennedy-Carter animosity in 1980, or Pat Buchanan's 1992 anger. Not even close. On the other hand, having watched both conventions without fail for forty-four years...I have never (ever) seen anything like what I saw last night. I looked around my own room uncomfortably, wondering how a Hollywood icon had stumbled onto the stage straight from the bed on which he had been napping (the suit was hardly "crisp," and I have seen many Hollywood hair styles...but none like this). 

Then there was that chair, standing next to the podium, taking up physical, conceptual, and dramatic space. Apparently, Eastwood had asked for a chair just moments before he went on stage, and he was accommodated with alacrity by various helpers. One story goes that they thought he meant to sit on it, but no one asked.

The dozen minutes included a long talk, a confused audience, and a half-dozen half-saves by the speaker. It is worth noticing how Clint mini-saved himself against absolute debacle throughout the speech, and one wonders why they were all just saves en petite—miniature almost-falls, with each individual element amounting to just a scrape of the oratorical knees. Don't get me wrong; the overall effect of the bumps and scrapes was far worse than the sum of the parts. Despite the spin, it was a political disaster. This is an easy non-partisan assessment. You work for years to craft this very moment—the last hour of the political convention that nominates you for the final run toward the highest office in the country. It is the only hour (these days) when all of the cable networks and all the traditional networks are focused on you, you, you. 

[c] Still life RF

It's all yours. All about you...and you don't even show the meticulously crafted documentary that makes you out to be a mixture of Ronald Reagan, Henry Ford, the (re-elected) Father of the Year, Steve Jobs, and, maybe a little bit of just Job. Beautiful piece. It played for a small set of millions, many times smaller than the prime time audience. I saw delegates on the convention floor wiping their eyes with emotion. Strong stuff.

They didn't show it for the (tens of) millions. It "went early" so that Clint could man the stage.

Think about it. You have worked for six years for this very hour, and everything has to go just right. There is only one hour in the entire campaign when you are the main event for twenty-five to fifty million people, when you can craft your narrative in exactly the way you want. You are on the verge of the summit—the last trek to the very moment when you plant the flag into the snowy rock, breathing the thin air of a major party nomination for president. Only you, William Jennings Bryan, Al Smith, Alf Landon, Thomas Dewey, Barry Goldwater, and George McGovern (and a few others, some of whom actually won) have any idea what it feels like. It needs to be highly stage-crafted, and even candidates seen as quite "wooden" (I am thinking of George H.W. Bush, Al Gore, and John Kerry) routinely nail it. There is lots of time for practice, and your aides are going to do everything they can to make it a moment that will not soon be forgotten.

[d] Calm...down RF

That is what was supposed to happen yesterday. The hour was highly crafted...with the exception of scrapping the documentary...and giving an Oscar winning actor-director a chair and no attempt at oversight (less noticed was the complete reversal of party ideology in an exhausted misstatement by Florida's junior senator). The hour will not soon be forgotten, but no one is quite sure how Dirty Harry drove his Gran Torino into Josey Wales' empty outlaw chair. I have watched it a dozen times (that's 144 minutes, people—like a full-length movie). Nothing makes sense, and I knew that things had not gone well when I saw the faces of the people in the VIP seats. One candidate's wife looked like a truck had driven into her living room.

What I saw was a confused cluster of...pale (chair) riders. 

There is only one solution, only one shot at a do-over, and it would take an absolute master to help. Not much can be done to spin this, but if I were asked (no one has), I would enlist George Strait. George could tell everyone that it was all an elaborate version of a country-western song...and improvisation. It was about love. You see, the only way to save the chair disaster is to go right back to the empty chair. When the chair bucks you off, you need to get right back on it.

George Strait, "The Chair" (2:52) 

Do it over Clint. It's the only chance. You need to Cowboy Up, pardner. 

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Click here for the individual sections of "Soliloquy, With Chair."

Chair 1                    Chair 2

[e] Perspectival RF

Just Do It Over (8a)—Soliloquy, with Chair

A year ago on Round and Square (1 September 2011)—Styling Culture: Revise, revise, revise

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Just Do It Over."

[a] Hamlet/Ophelia RF

Click here for the individual sections of "Soliloquy, With Chair."

Chair 1                    Chair 2 

I can't help it. I have tried to look away; I have tried to ignore it. I just can't stop thinking about a (sort of) talking chair...and a "mystery guest" at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

[b] Psycho-prop RF

For the last twenty-seven hours (ever since 9:03 p.m. Thursday night, Central Daylight Time) I have been thinking about soliloquy. Yes, I understand that it is not exactly an everyday word—the kind we use at the water cooler, along with "Snooki," "O-Line," "moderate," and "carbohydrate." Soliloquy is a noun, but it emerges from a pretty powerful cluster of verbal ideas. A soliloquy is something a person does. While I know that many readers of Round and Square have no problem at all with a word such as this, let us not forget that we reach 118 countries, and that not every English word is obvious to some of our most dedicated readers. Let's define it, and then discuss the way that Clint Eastwood talked trash to an empty chair. The opening of last night's final hour of the Republican National Convention was something between a train-wreck and performance art. The only thing everyone agrees upon is this:

No one has ever seen anything like it.

Here's a definition of "soliloquy." Focus on the "talking alone" idea. It lies at the heart of the strangest thing that I have ever seen in politics—and I have been watching since I was a little tyke in the late-1960s. This definition has everything to do with our "just do it over" approach to a pretty exciting political denouement in a major convention gathering.

Soliloquy         So·lil·o·quy         [ sə lílləkwee ]

                     NOUN 

                1.Talking when alone: the act of speaking while alone, especially when used as a theatrical 

                   device that allows a character's thoughts and ideas to be conveyed to the audience

                2. Section in play: a section of a play or other drama in which a soliloquy is spoken.

             [14th century. < late Latin soliloquium "a speaking alone" < Latin solus "alone" + loqui "speak" ]

Here is what I am moving toward (that toward which I am moving). There was a twelve minute soliloquy last night in the final hour of the Republican National Convention. It sent me running for parallels in the world of high drama. Suffice (it) to say that I found none in my experience with politics, and I have spent a good deal of time thinking about everything from Preston Brooks beating Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner in 1856 with a cane on the U.S. Senate floor to the founding emperor of the Han dynasty, Liu Bang (r. 206 BCE - 195 BCE), urinating into the cap of an official who had irritated him with his remonstrance during a court session.

[c] Mystery RF

This was different, though. This was an iconic actor...talking to a chair.

The chair was supposed to contain an American president named something like Barack Ophelia. Eastwood was scheduled for five minutes, but he persisted in talking to the presidential chair for almost twelve (one imagines nervous aides from, oh, about 1:35 on, wondering what was happening). "Odd" does not even begin to explain it. The only thing that will suffice in circumstances such as this is a full viewing. The performance was not vetted. There was no line-by-line check by various aides, nor so much as a "give us a sense of what you plan to do, Mr. Eastwood." Moreover, the "mystery guest" appearance (it was supposed to be a secret, but the chair was let out of the bag a day early) cut out a highly-crafted documentary introducing a very human side of the Republican nominee. The damage was (at least) two-fold.

Eastwood Chair 11:24

When I picked my jaw off the floor, I spent a little time thinking about where to "put" this post in the world of Round and Square topics. "Displays of Authenticity" crossed my mind, as did "Remonstrance" and even "Exilic Response" or "Bricolage Bibliothèque." There is a lot going on in this eleven-minute plus clip, after all. Even a glance at it will make you realize that the best topical home for this wooden, eastern, Clintonian soliloquy is Just Do It Over. 

[d] Alas RF

I am certain that is what many people were thinking, from Romney campaign aides to bewildered independent voters in their living rooms. Clint—just do it over. It was hard to imagine this making anyone's day. If that sounds "political," think again. Round and Square doesn't bother much with politics, but it can't stop focusing on those places where politics and events in the news intersect with questions of culture, psychology, economics, and neurobiology. 

Clint Eastwood's soliloquy—with (alas) an empty chair—speaks to memory, loss, anger, and confusion. Our gorges rise at it. Something is rotten in the state of Tampa, and Mr. Eastwood speaks to the empty shell of memories of the past. Unlike Hamlet's musings, though, the skull/chair seems to be talking back, and Clint is translating the words of the "chary" Yorick. Unlike last night's performance, Yorick's skull doesn't tell Hamlet to tell (someone) to do-something-to-himself (watch the clip again if you missed this).

                     Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him...a fellow* of infinite
                     jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a
                     thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is!
                     My gorge rises at it. [Hamlet V.1, 179-188]             *Chair?

Indeed, how abhorr'd in the imagination is the twisted chair of prime time carnage that some have called ad lib and others have spoken of as a weird twist on psychotherapy. We'll look at the political culture of it all tomorrow, but for now, just think about Clint channeling Hamlet. I just wanted to change the channel, but I couldn't look away.         

NEXT 

Click here for the individual sections of "Soliloquy, With Chair."

Chair 1                    Chair 2

[e] Talkin' Back RF