no piggy she

    I'd fallen asleep with the BBC World Service still playing
    on the bedside radio & was woken in the early hours
    by someone sounding youngish, earnest, American & female.

    She went rattling on most articulately about life, work, love
    & the whole damn thing - in what, to go by the acoustics,
    must have been some kind of public hall. The voice was
    vaguely familiar but I couldn't quite place her. She was certainly
    going on a bit: her struggles for validation, her search
    for authenticity, her thoughts about this & that, but, above all,
    her 'WORK'. Her WORK, apparently, involved gathering
    all her aspirations & prejudices, all her love & hate, all her joys
    & dreads - & wrapping these round a metaphorical arrow which
    she then fitted to her bow, took careful aim & fired at humanity,
    establishing thereby communion with such innocent bystanders
    as stood in the way - but above all with 'the one JD Salinger called
    The Fat Lady.'

    O God! O Montreal!

    It was a college occasion, all right, a commencement probably.
    You could tell by her references to gowns & mortarboards &
    the quiet murmurs & shufflings in response. But WHO the huck
    could it be? It wasn't Hillary & she sounded too young for Sontag.
    Then the penny dropped. Of course, who else? What gave
    the game way was her story of agonised self-questioning when
    invited to take the lead in The Accused. Of COURSE. It was
    that little lady from Hollywood with the 200 point IQ. Jody herself.

    So now you know. When you watch Clarice staring with that
    ever so slightly cross-eyed apprehension past Hannibal's left shoulder
    what she's actually seeing is the 'big fat smile on the face of
    the Fat Lady embracing us all with her unconditional, unquestioning
    love....'

    Gruesome, man.

    Scottie B.

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Received on Sun Jun 8 06:44:39 2003