So It Goes

Since we now live in a world where our media’s attention is exclusively focused on Anna Nicole Smith’s baby or Don Imus’ ‘nappy-headed’ comments, I wanted to take a brief moment to remember one of America’s greatest and funniest writers. I was introduced to Kurt Vonnegut’s writing my senior year of college. I was taking a contemporary literature class and the professor assigned us Cat’s Cradle to read. At the same time, I was performing as Malvolio in a production of Twelfth Night. As amazing as the experience was to play that fantastic Shakespearian character, what I remember most distinctly was exiting the stage after a scene, going to my dressing room and reading three or four chapters before my next entrance (Luckily each chapter was only a page or two long). Though entirely unrelated, I don’t think I will ever be able to separate the Box-Tree scene from Bokonon.

A few years later I had the chance to hear Kurt speak at Theatre for the New City. Though I don’t think the quote originated with Vonnegut, I’ll always remember him saying, “Live in New York when you’re young and get out before it makes you hard. And live in Northern California once in your life and get out before it makes you soft.” During his 'last speech for money' at Ohio State in 2006, he gave this bit of advice to the students. "If you really want to disappoint your parents, and don't have the nerve to be gay, go into the arts.”

Though Vonnegut was a religious skeptic, he wrote in his final essay collection, “If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: ‘The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.’” I’ll certainly be singing his praises for years to come. So in memory of such a prolific and radical writer, I include the ‘Caylpsos’ from the 58th chapter of Cat’s Cradle.

I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense,
So we all could be happy, yes,
Instead of tense.
And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice,
And I made this sad world,
A par-a-dise.