The Not So Successful Rumors

While everyone seems to think a Neil Simon play inevitably will be a hit, I have to disagree with Rumors. After seeing a recent local performance of what was called a farcical comedy, I came out hating the play. Even, as with most theater performances I attend, my sincere effort to try and enjoy the play by supporting its actors was met with a queasy unliking to by the end torture at being trapped in the enclosed theater with those who seemed to love it. Symbolically it personified my own self prescribed war between those that love pop music and those who appreciate jazz and classical music. One is selfish, sickly sentimental, and inept at delivering a Freudian does of ID, and the other embraces the true human condition. As America seems to have forgotten, the ID is the driving force of human nature. If we as adults cannot continue to appreciate mature sexuality is our present from God for being human, we as a cultural and artistic county will continue down the road of despair. I, as a 48-year-old single adult male, have to self-medicate because of the lack of healthy sexuality in America. Everywhere I turn conversely I am confronted with gay rights. The message is not about being straight and nurturing humankind with what God intended. The message is about an aberrant behavior probably worthy of being accommodated but needing to be kept on the down low. That exactly is why past President Bill Clinton’s policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” worked. Making homosexuality a platform for notoriety is exactly why this local performance of Rumors failed. It didn’t deal with the real issues. It created a false platform for actors to be appreciated for their work, not the content of the play. This has been the trend in popular music for quite a few years now beginning with Glam Country. America, along with her cultural history, has abandoned the need for a far reaching and substantial philosophy of life. We have regressed into the most base consumerist society peddling shallow anodynes to a purposely uneducated populace for the financial gain of those who hold private stock. There is no money in art, so America would think. The artistic aesthetic, once valued and collected for the spiritual enlightenment of Americans, has been replaced with cheap immediate gratification commodity. With over 300 million cellular frequencies in use today, the mobile telephone distinctly has changed the cultural habits of America for the worse. The sheer necessity of having to ambulate to achieve social development has been bandaged with convenience, a convenience that has stymied the emotional dynamic that once fueled American popular music. How can art exist if there is no life? Rumors proved that. It did not exist, because there was no life. It was a farce so off the beaten track from what is now mainstream America, it almost was almost incomprehensible at least to me. I hated it. Hate is a strong word, but it is better to understand your suppressed feelings than suffer the consequence of depression. Acknowledging and understanding negative emotions is crucial for survival in the human race. Without being unpatriotic how can I express my vehement dislike of Rumors, a Neil Simon play? I can say that in l988 at the height of Reganomics and a recently created upper middle class, watching neurotic rich people behave badly may have funny. Today in our current social and economic climate it almost incited an Extreme Muslim type of reaction in me. “Why are these rich people being indulged in public at my expense?” They were not funny, and in a rare dichotomy it was on two discreet levels. The characters in the play were not funny, and the actors themselves were not funny. This raised the scenario if the play could have been successful with a different cast. Ask Ellen Chenoweth. Secondly is raised the scenario if the play could have been successful with a different director. Probably both are true. It would have saved the cast from humiliation, and only the play would have been bad. I kept hoping for that as the minutes tooled by. Unfortunately the dichotomy continued with no salvation, except for the utterance of a few profanities and some carpet crawling. It just didn’t work for me. Because it has been several decades since I have been exposed to the elite rich, luckily I had forgotten their vanity. The cruise industry in its tremendous favor has eliminated social class for the most part. Only recently on my last vessel did its ugly head rear condensed in one short sentence. “These guests’ money pays our salaries.” Suddenly my life as a cruise ship musician was reduced to Reganomics for the first time in ten years. I am working for the man, and I am being expected to do what the man says, not what my experience and education has taught me. That would be construed as talent, and as it now commonly should be known, America does not seek talent. How can that be true? Although I never once in my life have watched a reality or talent show on American television, I can instinctually say they have nothing to do with talent. The themselves are farces, much more successful ones than Neil Simon’s Rumors. I found myself throughout the dull narrative yearning for a Woody Allen moment, steeped in heterosexuality, warmth, and harmless self indulgence. Instead I got a grand peacocking glorification of the wealthy replete with their arrogance and expecting acceptance in society solely because of their money. It was repugnant to me, exactly like it was in the l980’s when I played music for the same social class. Both my retribution and salvation for hating the rich came from moving to the Midwest away from the South’s old money. I started a new life as a doctoral student and opened up my life forever away from the oppressive Good Old Boy network in place in the South. I was able to grow into an adult with an identity of my own, respected for who I was and what I believed, and accomplishing many of my personal artistic goals. It was blissful, and now it is over. Rumors proved that.