Facebook, Mortality, and Innocence

August 19, 2010
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Among the scrolling hilarity confronting me on Facebook this evening was a smattering of commentary on the plight of the actress Lindsay Lohan. It seems our ill-fated starlet has been sentenced to do some time in the slammer. I don’t really follow Lindsay’s movies. I won’t necessarily walk out on her or change the channel (or – as she might say – ‘whatever’). The thing I remember her being in was that Altman picture about the Prairie Home Companion radio show. It had much to make it interesting: it was Altman’s last picture. Garrison Keilor was in it being his (usual) unusual self. Meryl Streep. Ah, Streep. One of those rare cases where a word is worth a thousand pictures. And in the middle of it all, all “train-wrecky,” is Lindsay Lohan. So I haven’t, at this point, been paying any attention to her court case. But, the story goes, she got to work on Twitter, and tweeted something somebody said at the Cato institute about (what?)…
Somebody said something snarky about Ms. Lohan tweeting away, citing a scholar. So I had to get into the act. Snark hunting is a national passtime.
A little scarlet letter appeared on my screen. Long lost friend re-materialized after about 30 years. I’d be shocked if it weren’t getting to be a fairly common shocker. Another friend interrupted this to comment on its occurrence IN REAL TIME. Perhaps the youngsters are used to this, but me…I get whiplash. The chat touched on mortality and viruses, human and computer respectively. Is it mortality that revives the interest in old friends? Have we developed a sixth sense that warns of our impending doom? Maybe so, but some of us have been sensing doom for our entire lives.
An earlier exchange on FB probed the purity of our youthful motives. One thing led to another (as usual with FB, as noted above). A name I had forgotten popped into my mind, bringing with it a picture of a naked man answering his door. I queried an old friend on Facebook –  there’s really no such thing as an old Facebook friend – and found myself wondering what the word “innocence” really means.
I now submit to blogdom the first draft of an email message. (The second draft dumped all of this and, doomed to fail, was sent.)
To wit:
Having looked up innocence in the dictionary, I am now ready to argue that none of us were innocent in any sense of the word except one: we may have ‘lacked worldliness or sophistication.’ Even there, I’m not willing to let it go without a fight. It’s a good word and a marvelous exploratory fight, especially if you toss the word ‘truth’ into the mix.

The truth I’m after is this particular fictional one: 

” We were inexperienced, yes. But we were hungry for experiences and took them on as fast as opportunities arose. We broke the law by using drugs. We violated taboo by sharing partners and exploring homosexuality. (Even abstinence is uncharted by American culture.) We absorbed our lessons and took extra care to insult our professors. We were accused and we disproved. We broke the rules of the school and we broke and entered. We were arrogant and unreasonable. Our honor was the dubious honor of thieves. We ‘wept and fasted,’ ‘loved and lost.’ Yet some truths do take time to experience. Youth itself cannot fathom growing old. Years pass and experience coalesces into a web of action, clearer conception and conviction. One wants to snatch the fabric of fleeting time right back, like a sheet that has fallen out a window. Now that I understand, let me express it. Our youth was not wasted, but it was too damned short.”

That naked stranger did not appear in my notes. He was gone before we convened. I wonder if “openness, virginity, newness, innocence, and the childlike” would have stood up to the intellectual rigor we tossed ourselves into? I have been with dancers all my adult life. I know that when there is too much talk and not enough action, they turn away.