Tennessee Williams: Come With Kindness

Photograph by Cecil Beaton

1982

It somehow has to happen. It somehow has to hang together. We must all hang together, support each other, be a distant shore to which someone, anyone, can swim. There is no reason in the world to continue, really, unless all of us decide that it is good and necessary and kind to do so. No one really allows a book, a play, a child, a piece of music--anything at all--to become, to exist, to thrive except for the dreamer who wants to matter, who wants to commemorate a moment, a memory.

Why is it so necessary to know why things happen? Why things turn out the way they do? I'm not against knowledge, but I am against the bland refusal of so many to acknowledge magic and mystery. Strange things happen all the time--the result of energy and faith and herculean will. Don't always get to the bottom of things. Get to the heart of things.

To know too much and do too little--to believe too little--is to me suicidal. 

Every work of art is enclosed in that bottle that is thrown into the water of humanity. It awaits an audience and surcease. Be the one on the distant shore to pick it up, acknowledge it, and rush to help.

Ultimately, we cannot be alone with or for anything. We have to get in the mix. Come with kindness.


© 2013 James Grissom