The Generosity of Strangers Open Thread

I'll admit it up front. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for all things Irish. From the opening chapter of Leon Uris's Trinity, in which Finola tells Liam to spread the word that Kilty has died ("Be sure to go to the byres and the beehives and let the cattle and bees know that Kilty Larkin is gone."), to the sheer genius that was the wit of Oscar Wilde, to the awesome certainty in the order of things demonstrated by this hilarious Quentin Crisp quote:

"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'"

My first love was Irish (we had been together about 7 years when he passed away, about 10 years ago [yes, I'm that old]), and I was best man in the wedding of a dear friend whose Irish clan held the kind of parties in the hotel all weekend that nearly got us kicked out repeatedly.

So it's probably no surprise that I simply adored the charming independent Irish film "Once," which won the Oscar for best song this past year. We only watched it last week on DVD, but I can't get its haunting melodies or simple beauty out of mind. The Oscar-winning song, "Falling Slowly," was one I had heard a few times before watching the film, never quite understanding what all the fuss was about. Then I saw it performed in context and I nearly lost it:



Watching this scene, two things became clearer to me. First, the song is about hope. Second, this scene is about generosity. The guy had only just met this girl, and here they both were sharing through their music, so generously, and both obviously getting as much as they were giving.

But I've got a busy schedule, and so, as I tend to do in such situations, I set out to exhaust my interest by learning as much as I can (as to find something mundane and/or off-putting within the entire effort to break its spell on me) and tucking it safely under my belt where it wouldn't keep haunting my thoughts. In one interview I saw with Glen Hansard on the Today Show (see You Tube version here), I thought I found that mundane thing. In response to receiving a new guitar by a stranger who saw him in concert (it had belonged to her deceased husband), he finally crossed the line and left the realm of inspiration and entered the land of trite (whew, I could move on). In response to the notion that giving is its own gift, he said:

"I'm a real believer in...when something comes into your life, the best way to hang onto it is to pass it on."

"Groan..." my inner cynic thought. (To quote the Magnetic Fields again, "Drag another cliche howling from the vaults.") What a fantasy...what does that even mean? The best way to hang onto it is to keep those who would take it from you at bay.

Then, this morning, I read the Appreciation on the editorial page of the New York Times, that Maura Casey had penned on the reportedly fearless (and unrepentantly atheist) Irish Times editor and columnist Nuala O’Faolain, who passed away at 68 last week:

There was little comfort, though, when she revealed her terminal cancer in an interview last month on RTE radio in Ireland. She confessed that she felt shattered by the pointlessness of it all. “It amazed me how quickly life turned black,” she said. Beauty, she said, meant nothing; she didn’t believe in the afterlife. “I can’t be consoled by the mention of God,” she said. She wished everyone who believes “every comfort,” but, she said, “to me, it’s meaningless.”

Typically, in discussing her impending death, Ms. O’Faolain didn’t cover her experience with the veneer of denial, or even the faintest glimmering of hope. She was heartbroken to leave her apartment in New York, with its yellow curtains and books. “I know loads and loads of songs, and what’s the point of it all?” she said. “So much has happened, and it seems such a waste of creation, that with each death all that knowledge dies.”

And then it hit me. The true fantasy is the notion that you can hang on to anything (of any value) in any other way but passing it on. The day will come when it's time to tell the bees and cows about your passing too, and then what? All that knowledge only dies if you horded it. If you shared it, then it wasn't a waste, because you've spared someone else the trouble of learning it the hard way that you did.

Upon further reflection, it dawned on me that this is why I gravitate to artists. The act of making art has often been described as a gift, but it's a gift that embodies what the artist has learned, his or her knowledge, and encapsulates it in a form that is easy to pass on. In fact, it's made specifically to pass that knowledge on with or without the artist still being here, and as such becomes a gift all the more generous because it's a gift to strangers.

I know I've dived head first into icky touchyfeelyville with this post. Feel free to batter it back to cynicism. If you can.