Notes on Timothee Chalamet: The Commencement Address

This is college graduation week around the country and I have a message to all those graduating –

Do not try to be Timothee Chalamet. That’s already being done.

And quite well.

I was reading a piece in Vulture the other day that he’s been cast as the young Bob Dylan in a biopic that centers on the moment in 1965 when the already-famed folk singer transitioned to superstardom legend by picking up an electric guitar at the Newport Music Festival and slaying an unsuspecting crowd.

Yes, Timothee Chalamet can sing.

And sing well.

That just sucks, right? Is there anything he can’t do?

Well, maybe he’s a jerk.

Not really.

A dear friend of mine was at an event a few years ago and approached TM (Note: Even his initials personify relaxed ease.) for a selfie because her teenager daughter had a massive crush on him and the photograph would make her year.

Yes, he obliged.

But not only that, he impishly followed it with:

Let’s call her!

At which point, the number was dialed, he got on the phone and they had a fun, cool and sassy conversation.

What’s next? Well, he doesn’t have an Oscar. Yet.

That is if you don’t count the Oscar that was stolen from him for his utterly raw and original performance in Call Me By Your Name by Gary Oldman for his mumbly, blustery portrayal of some weird version of Winston Churchill in the somewhat forgettable The Darkest Hour.

But that’s only my opinion.

Which is really the point.

See, I recount all of this not to anoint TM as any kind of creative Messiah, modern day personal deity, or even an individual incapable of having a bad day and being a jerk.

I mean, given the demands of being an A-list actor, he likely is not ideal relationship material (Note: Don’t worry, I have no stories).

Instead, I merely bring it up to state that the only way to happiness and success is:

You do you.

It may sound snide and corny but, sadly, so are a lot of phrases that are… true.

Something else:

Don’t worry about how well Timmy or any of your other more successful than you friends and peers are doing.

It’s not a race, despite all appearances to the contrary in everything you see, hear and read.

We Americans in particular, and I unfortunately count myself among them, can’t resist a good competition. And we loooooove a scoreboard. Because it means in those moments we are out in front, everyone else is a looooooooooser.

But if you subscribe to that kind of logic the reverse is true. You’re a loser the moment you’re not in the #1 position out in front.

Which, if you consider all of the categories in life under which you could be rated, is most of the time.

The real task now is what do you do with the time at hand? Well —

What do you like to do? What are you good at? Who do you want to be around? Who makes you laugh? What do you want to get better at? Who believes in you when you don’t believe in yourself? And —

Who is smarter, more talented or simply wiser than you?

Go find those people, in whatever form they are available to you, and figure out what you can learn from them. Ask them questions, if possible. Better yet, ask yourself questions and then try to figure out the answers.

And here’s a hint: You likely won’t find the answers sitting alone in your room.

No one, not anyone, does life alone. That’s not the way it works. You need a core group of those you can trust, learn from and be your nutty self with. That’s how you get ahead and that’s how you discover and hone your talents.

I was watching Rainn Wilson, the Emmy award nominated actor from The Office, being interviewed while promoting his Peacock documentary series, Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss.

Admitting he suffers from lifelong anxiety and depression that has taken him down some dark roads, the effort takes him around the world seeking to figure out the answer to happiness.

Spoiler alert: There is none.

I imagine this was also part of their discussion

But the one thing he noted that happy people have in common are that they are part of a community.

Yes, I rolled my eyes too. And I’m many decades past graduation. Until I realized that community doesn’t necessarily mean being a member of a church, community organization, political party or even your traditional family.

What it means is compiling your own group that helps to support you, advise you, tell you the truth, see you and yeah, love you.

Slow teardrop. (Note: Snide).

And know, none of this has to be said. You just feel it. (Note: Corny).

That’s the road to dealing with the world and achieving what you want. Which is not the necessarily the same thing as what you think it is right now.

Though it could be.

Yeah, you’re gonna make a ton of mistakes. You will hurt people you don’t mean to and be a real asshole to them and others at times.

Mistakes of all kinds are inevitable, messy and…welcome. Don’t beat yourself up for them.

Just do better.

Your crap and the crap will never end but neither does the good stuff. Focus on the latter and keep moving forward.

And please floss.

Timothee Chalamet – “Everything Happens to Me”

07.26.21

by notesfromachair

Notes from the Edge

Carrie Fisher wrote these words for Meryl Streep to say as a fictionalized version of herself in the semi-autobiographical film Postcards from the Edge:

I can’t feel my life. I look around and I know so much of it is good…but I just can’t believe it…I don’t want my life to imitate art. I want my life to be art.

Those lines are condensed from a climactic speech where a perennially snide, yet terribly insecure and newly sober actress for the first time admits she realizes how fortunate she is to be alive and to have opportunities in which to thrive.

It was an embarrassingly honest bit of contemporary self-parody 30 years ago.

I mean, who is truly going to feel sorry for a talented young woman born into a wealthy show business family whose real life inspiration played Princess Leia in Star Wars?

But who knew it would have additional resonance all these decades later where so many of us are walking around wringing our hands over what our 2021 lives are, are not, or may never be?

The very same people who could have predicted that both Princess Leia AND the actress who played her would also be gone.

It doesn’t help that the news gives us daily warnings that the Covid Monster we assumed we were beginning to slay is actually still lurking just outside our door and ingeniously getting even closer.

The latest tidbit is that the viral load for those infected with its new and improved Delta variant is ONE THOUSAND TIMES higher than its original and almost TWICE as CONTAG IOUS.

This reminds me of another line from another even more classic film, The Wizard of Oz. After her house accidentally drops on the Wicked Witch of the East and that witch’s evil sister stands before her, an already nervous Dorothy is immediately warned by her friend Glinda that:

This is the Wicked Witch of the West. And SHE’S WORSE THAN THE OTHER ONE!!

Considering film is our best cultural representation of what it’s like to be human, it shouldn’t be at all surprising that so many of us are in our current emotional states.

Well, I for one, had to take at least a partial step back from all of it this week. There is nothing clever nor particularly profound about this decision except, well, I had to do anything but intermittently freak out amid, well, intermittently freaking out.

And as someone once told me, sometimes it’s better to do something, or anything, than nothing.

(Note: I think it was a therapist who gave me that advice but I can’t be entirely sure I actually didn’t once read it in some old Carrie Fisher interview).

In any event, since I wasn’t up for volunteering in a space where I would be around anyone or anything I didn’t know (or anything or anyone who wasn’t vaccine certified), I chose to go back to the one constant in my life that has almost never let me down – friends.

One day I had an outside lunch with a buddy who I’ve known for over FORTY YEARS and haven’t seen in two. Another evening was spent with two guys I haven’t seen in person in three years but have known for THIRTY.

Another close friend I first met in 1982 is here for the summer and we’ve had a bunch of get-togethers. I’ve also had a ton of long conversations with family members and others close to me that I haven’t talked to in a while.

I even – and I know this is shocking – made it a point to actually pay more attention to the person I see every day of my life – my HUSBAND – and actually make it a priority to LISTEN to what he had to say before I SAID anything.

The latter might not seem like a lot but, well… okay… the long married/long term couples will tell you…

I can’t tell you any of these was a panacea aka CURE for what’s been lurking outside my door, or yours, but it did help – A LOT.

At least for a while. Until it didn’t.

It was at that time that I reached out to even more people and began to listen and look around at my surroundings.

And breathe.

That helped too. A bit. At which time, things got somewhat anxious again and I started to write stuff. Not a lot but enough to get me through some rough hours. As it has so many times, through so many decades before.

And when that lost its effect I even went for a run and…worked out?!!?? A bunch of times. That, in turn, bought me a whole bunch of extra, non-worrying hours. Much as it hurt and I didn’t want to do it.

Oh, and it also brought….appreciation.

See, at the end of the day what you realize is that any life at all is art, woefully imperfect and consistently stressful, daunting and even haunting, though it may be.

I wish I could cure Covid but I can’t. I wish I could thoroughly avoid Covid but, practically speaking, it’s impossible and not advisable.

Though what I can do, and all of us can do, is live our lives with some meaning AND with the people that make us laugh and make us happy, and not let it poison so much of what is good about living at all.

It’s not a perfect art but, as Ms. Fisher observed all those decades ago, that’s not what life’s about anyway.

She also once famously said:

Instant gratification takes too long.

Amen to that, also.

Meryl Streep – “I’m Checking Out” from Postcards from the Edge

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: Meryl Streep

Notes on Timothee Chalamet: The Commencement Address

Notes from the Edge