There is a section of the show, “All In with Chris Hayes” called “Click Three,” where Chris highlights three Websites. Yesterday he departed from norms and had just one “click,” a video of Jon Stewart on an Egyptian parallel to “The Daily Show” hosted by Bassem Youssef.
            Youssef had been on The Daily Show some months back and Jon Stewart was returning the favor. It was all very light-hearted and funny, but with serious overtones all the time. Both men kidded each other about getting in trouble for poking fun at the government and other self-important institutions. Apparently the Egyptian government has actually charged Youssef with insulting the president, Mohamed Morsi. On that point, Jon Stewart waxed philosophical and said, “If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you don’t have a regime.” It drew significant applause.
          The Trickster archetype (a la Joseph Campbell and Chris Vogler) is a source of storytelling energy. It’s their unpredictability that ups the stakes. Real life tricksters: the court jester, the cut-up, the class clown bring much more than just spontaneity to their “scene.” It’s their irreverence that contributes to the health of whatever institution is brave enough to abide their presence. I heard it said, and believe it’s true that the one thing power-hungry people cannot abide is ridicule. That said, truly powerful people have the strength to withstand a joke.

         And that’s not much of a story. I will do better next time.

          I passed by the display case of pastries and when a decadent cinnamon bun whispered my name, I gave it the Geraldine – “Get back, you devil!” and ordered a bran muffin instead.
         After Wally and I got through the chit-chat about what’s been happening with families and mutual friends, he picked up where we left off about the “right man,” as in “there’s nothing more dangerous than a right man.” Turns out we both went online looking for who said that and neither of us could find it.
         We did find some good quotes, among them Cher’s observation that while a woman waits for the right man to come along there’s nothing wrong with having a wonderful time with all the wrong ones. “That’s funny,” I said. “Irreverence is funny.”
         And Wally answered. “That’s the heart of it, isn’t it? Maybe it’s a person who is never irreverent who’s dangerous.”
         “When has the world been in trouble,” I asked, “if not when pious, self-righteous souls have wielded the power? Do we think the Inquisitors in Spain and Portugal got together for a good laugh now and then?”
         “I ran across the Puritan’s Joke Book the other day,” Wally offered, “the one published in Salem in 1692?” I waited, knowing the punch line was coming. “All the pages were blank.” He sat there a second and then he said, “Circus Galaxus.” I almost choked up.
        Wally has read just about all of my stories and I was flattered that he made the connection. The Hero of the story, Alec Gonzales, is a trickster archetype. The theme of Circus Galaxus is whether irreverence and levity can exist in the presence of awesome responsibility, whether a clown can be forced to exercise the power of life and death and still keep his fun-loving soul?

          We talked some more but I will get into that in the next post.

          How rude of me to mention my friend and not introduce him.
          It seems like I’ve known Wally (Walter) Dykema my whole life. We grew up not far from each other and went to the same schools. Because our birthdays are so close, we were usually in the same classes, had the same teachers, the same circle of friends. In junior high they used to tease us – but in junior high they tease everybody, don’t they? I remember our eighth grade French class. The teacher introduced the expression Bien dans sa peau and one of the meaner kids shouted that Wally and I would be comfortable in the same skin. It got a laugh and that hurt at the time but in retrospect, he was probably right. We really are two peas in a pod.
        So that’s my friend Wally and as I said, we were chatting the other day and, silly me, I took him up on getting together for a beer some day this week.
        I can’t have a beer with Wally because my wife is chaperoning a gaggle of students in France for three weeks and she’s not going to drink any alcohol. Like shaving your own head when your “significant other” goes through chemo, I’m tea-totalling for the three weeks as kind of a moral support thingy.
        So Wally and I changed plans and we’re going to have coffee tomorrow morning – probably some obscene cinnamon bun or chocolate-covered Bismarck to go with it. One of the things I’ve always liked about Wally is that he has interesting ideas and sometimes comes up with interesting ways of expressing them. If he’s true to form, I’ll pass along whatever pithy comments he makes (and no, I don’t have a lisp).

          Again, sorry for not introducing him to you earlier.

          I spoke to a friend the other day and he asked me, “What motivates people to purge ‘evil’ from their world?” And of course I’m working on such a similar question as I seek to post a blog story about Benghazi or the NSA or the IRS.
         “Why don’t they just tend their own garden?” he continued, and I had to stifle my pat response that they have no seeds and their soil is worn out and in their heart they know that nothing will come of their garden. And so I answered, “In their mind’s eye, they are right.”
         “Righteous,” he answered with more than a hint of sarcasm. He is, after all my friend and we’re cut from pretty much the same cloth.
         “The villains I create see themselves as the Hero of their own story,” I answered.
         He winked.
         It’s so easy to fall into demonizing. Here I had identified the Inquisitors as villains and was by that action engaging in their game.
         “You wanna go have a beer?” he asked, “We could talk this over a little more.”
      “Maybe next week,” I answered. “My wife’s out of town and I’ve got a few things I need to get done first – a blog post and then I am actually going to go to my real garden and tend it, and then Father’s Day.”

And so we set a date next week to have a beer.

          As I watched the “news” last evening (that in quotes because it was about half MSNBC and the other half Fox) I heard a world of facts – and a universe of opinions – and throughout I was like, “I don’t get this.”
          Tell me the story about what happened in Cleveland (or Benghazi or NSA) and my comprehension of that situation will skyrocket.

          A story is about a person who . . .

          So the story I want is about someone who was in that IRS office (Rusty Gatekeeper). His “ordinary world” wasn’t OK (he was swamped with tax exemption requests) and so he made a decision (“I need some way to sort/prioritize these requests”). He was nervous about it, so he talked to a colleague he thought he could trust (Emily Confidante) and she said “Do it!” and so then, . . .
         Enter the Senate and House “investigative committees.” They’re here to probe an incredibly complex situation. And how do they proceed?
         They go for fact-finding. They call Rusty to testify and each committee member gets a turn at asking him specific questions. And what do they get?
         They get facts: non-linear, sometimes contradictory, often incidental facts.
         They haven’t a framework for making sense of the facts, so they call for more. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” the committee members cry, and they call Emily to testify. And what do they get?
         More facts: more non-linear, often contradictory, frequently incidental facts. And rather than clarifying the situation, the new testimony has made it cloudier.
         And one last note before I wrap up. Just a second ago I got an email from Fidelity with the subject line, “Are you asking the right questions?”
         Any of you, dear readers, want to suggest that the gods don’t think this issue is timely?

          Tomorrow a story. I’ll tell a story, since nobody involved with this seems interested in that approach.

          Every few days I return to the pages I've created hoping with a fresh eye to find the right photo or graphic to enhance the experience. But I went to the Miss Peck's Promotion 1-sheet half an hour ago and when I clicked the link to the Coe College rendition of the work, I found myself drawn into the story again. It's really pretty writing: evocative, engaging, - somehow Ms. Jewett manages to generate sensuousness and austerity at the same time. (pity that governments seem to think the two are mutually exclusive). But I should stick to writing and storytelling and so I recommend the story to you. I suspect if you read it you will think the hour well used.

          When I was in college I arranged Grieg's "Morning" - probably more honest to say I mis-arranged the thing as background music for a stage performance created by my then-roommate, Mike Vogas. You work on all those notes and think about how you expect it to sound and then the moment comes when actual players execute what you put on their pages. The fact I still remember it is testimony to the impact it had on me.
          After all these years it's still a thrill. Cantate's concert this past weekend concluded with an encore I had spent the last several weeks arranging (not Grieg). You can ask your synthesizer to "shimmer" in the strings and for a lovely high D to float in above by the flute but you really need people and instruments to make that happen. And so they did and so my heart was full up with joy. Thanks to Benjamin Rivera, the orchestra and the singers of Cantate for "making my day."
          Starting tomorrow, posts about storytelling.