The Gardener

The Gardener of “Souls”

“He was such a wonderful human being. He was gentle, not a Hitler-esque cruel director. I never saw him get angry; he wasn’t a tortured human being in any way. Because he’d been an actor himself, he made a gardener director. He knew exactly what the plants were, how much sun and how much earth and water they needed. He let them grow and blossom in their own time. I loved him and I shall miss him like anything.” –Saeed Jaffrey

“Dickie, a one-man entertainment empire, was at least as significant as those humanitarian titans he brought to life on screen. He was also the quintessence of kindness and modesty, and it was a privilege to have known and worked with him.” — Michael York

It took twenty years.  He told everybody that he would do it. 

It took him twenty years of Championing to get the funding and to make it.

Richard Attenborough was able to make Gandhi (1982), which had a fine performance by Ben Kingsley in the title role. The film is dedicated to Lord Mountbatten, Pandit Nehru and an unknown Indian called Motilal Kothari, who suggested the subject to Attenborough in the first place in 1962.

Nehru’s advice to Attenborough was that it would be wrong to deify Gandhi: “He was too great a man for that.” The film won eight Oscars – best picture, best actor, best director, best original screenplay, best cinematography, best art direction, best editing, best costume design – the biggest haul ever for a British movie. In his acceptance speech, Attenborough said: “Gandhi believed if we could but agree, simplistic though it be, that if we do not resort to violence then the route to solving problems would be much different than the one we take.”

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Hammer Words

He had this look in his eye.
He knew the answer.
He was certain.

He drew up, paused, and slowly readied himself for the assault — chalk in hand, poised to hit the board.

He glared at the audience and said: “Bayes

He had just demolished in his own mind, the enemy.

That hack of a job, not theoretically grounded — that gibberish of ad-hoc computation used by MYCIN and PROSPECTOR. Crazy! Silly! Why did they use such sloppy kludges! He had the better solution. “Bayes” — Bayesian theory could answer it all.

Bayesian this, Bayesian that, he rammed his argument into his audience, flittering for one mathematical equation to another — from one argument to another, with a real vehemence. He prowled back and forth, for the entire talk. Bayes formula. Bayesian. Vanquishing all opponents, real or imagined, once and for all. In the end, the audience was silent, not a single objection or comment.

Those who travel in academic circles, or religious circles, or even political circles know the feeling. The hammer words change for each domain, but the same thing happens. People use their words to vanquish the demons and heathens among them, make sure the faithful know that the speaker is one of them. In fact we all know the feeling — we have done it ourselves, many a time.

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Don’t Worry, Be Happy

That’s not easy to do.Especially for the talented Performer Artisans.

For they are the happiest people in the world, but…

On the side of light: There are the highs, the higher highs, and the highest high.

On the side of dark: Then there are the lows, the lower lows, and the lowest of lows.

Creativity can be an addiction.
— Robin Williams

What happens when you feel that your creativity and grace disappeared, not to be found ever again? There is no faking(acting) fix.  No, the quick fix of drugs and alcohol can’t solve the problem, either.

The curtain rises on the scene
With someone shouting to be free
The play unfolds before my eyes
There stands the actor who is me.  

The Word that Dr. Keirsey used for this is Latin (via French): ENNUI

Freedom just another word for,
nothing left to lose.

en·nui

noun
  1. a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.
    synonyms: boredom, tedium, listlessness, lethargy, lassitude, languor, weariness, enervation;

    malaise, dissatisfaction, melancholy, depression, world-weariness, Weltschmerz
    “an ennui bred of long familiarity”

“Ennui” is how the Artisans become “depressed.” There are two kinds of “depression” (for two of the Temperaments) and they are quite different. Depression for the Guardian is painful and “red”: they are very sick and very tired: they are demobilized. The Artisan “ennui” is akin to boredom — they find themselves in grey and fog filled landscape, they are beguiled. To them, they feel in their gut, nothing exciting will ever happen again. It scares the Artisan

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Ralph at Cato

You would have never believed it, not ten years ago, or even now.

It must be a fake picture 😉
What is he doing?

What is the Unreasonable Man, Ralph, the man “on the left,” trying to convince those who might be viewed “on the right”?  Left or Right, never the twain shall they meet?

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Ralph Nader compromise?  Not chance.  He wants to be Unstoppable:  by joining with the Libertarians and Conservatives in common cause.

Strange Bedfellows?

Maybe the conventional “wisdom” or common bromides used in political and conventional media discourse is badly wrong or hopelessly simplistic?  — Naw!  Can’t be.  It will never happen?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.

— Henry David Thoreau

“If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.

Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.

Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, or your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right — for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences.

The point of this book is that people are different from each other, and that no amount of getting after them is going to change them. Nor is there any reason to change them, because the differences are probably good, not bad.”