I’m Over All That Read online

  The shop clerks wish you’d never come in, even though their shop is going broke.

  The coffee vendors are simply cappuccino orderers with nothing to say to help pass the time.

  The cash register clerks in the supermarket ring you up as though Al Qaeda is around the corner and they need to win “beat the clock” against the register and get out.

  The people in Radio Shack don’t know what electronics are.

  Waiters in restaurants have the amazing ability to avoid eye contact the moment you think you’d like the check or some service.

  Young people who are out of work and want jobs won’t work for less pay than the maximum they think they can get. They feel entitled.

  The young people are the leaders of the Rude Pack. I know the rest of us have screwed up the world, but I wouldn’t want to leave it to them anyway.

  I Will Never Get Over Africa

  My time in Africa lives with me always. I will never forget the magic of such a place. More than any other place I’ve been, I wish to return to Africa. I would like to live on a wild game reserve and observe the animals all day. That would make me truly happy.

  When I was there, I lived among the Masai of East Africa and what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania). I initially went to Africa to visit Robert Mitchum, with whom I was having a relationship. He was shooting a movie there. It wasn’t long before I became more interested in what I was seeing and learning than I was in Robert and the movie. I wandered off. Certain highlights stand out for me, things that I will never get over as long as I live.

  The particular tribe of Masai I met had never seen a white person before. They could identify with my freckles, which they believed would someday grow together in order to make me more brown. They were friendly and wanted me to know them. They invited me to help birth a baby, where the mother waited for me inside a hut. There was a fire in the middle of the dirt floor, smoke wafting everywhere as flies darted and landed on the mother giving birth, the newborn, the placenta, and me. Other women surrounded the baby as the mother chewed the umbilical cord away. Then the women handed the baby around the circle as each attending woman followed the custom of spitting in its mouth to welcome it (a girl) to the menyatta (the village). When the child was handed to me, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to contaminate the baby with whatever I might have brought from the Western world. The women seemed to understand. The mother asked my name. I said “Shirley.” She promptly named the child Shurri. I was honored.

  Flash forward fifteen years later. I was doing a book signing in San Francisco. A young woman came up to me, handed me a ring, and said, “Hello again, my name is Shurri. You were there when I was born.”

  How should I relate to this? She handed me a picture to prove that I’d been there. Synchronicity as a fact, not a coincidence, was becoming more of a reality every day. A year later, a man appeared at my doorstep in Encino. He handed me three stones, which he said came from the chieftain of the Masai tribe I spent so much time with. The chief wanted to be remembered to me. The man who brought me the stones was the man whom I ultimately went to Peru to visit. He was the person who said he had had encounters with extraterrestrials in the Andes Mountains. I could see the reality of the web of synchronicity in my life. Out of the Peruvian visit came Out on a Limb, which I think helped birth a New Age spiritual movement.

  I still have the ring from Shurri, and I had the stones from the Masai chieftain mounted in a triangular shape, which I not only treasure but also feel protects me.

  I was besotted by Africa—the animals, the Masai (who believe they are on Earth only to protect our planet’s cattle), the landscapes, the miracles of nature I saw every day.

  A few days after the birth of Shurri, I hired a plane to take me to Tanganyika and join what I thought was to be a photographic safari. The pilot turned up drunk in Nairobi, where we took off. So, on some level I had to help him land the plane on an isolated field in Tanganyika. I stepped out of the plane, not knowing where I was or where I was supposed to go to join the safari. Three Masai morani (warriors) came from the bushes. One of them said in English, “You are white woman named Shurri?” I nodded and followed him without asking any questions. What was I thinking in those days? Did I trust more than was wise? Did my middle-class “don’t dare” upbringing make me an adventurer, inspiring me to challenge any circumstance? I really don’t know. I do know I couldn’t do that now, whether it’s because I’ve gotten more cautious as I’ve aged, or because the world is a more dangerous place. And why is it more dangerous? Because there are too many people and there is an imbalance?

  Yes, there is an imbalance now. Everybody knows it, feels it. What can we do about it? The Masai are instructive on this point.

  The Masai led me to the safari, which turned out to be a hunting safari, not photographic. The Masai stayed with me day and night as though protecting me. The safari people were nice enough. When I told the white hunters the Masai knew my name when I landed, they said it couldn’t have been the use of smoke signals, and no one could run that fast from where I had been in Kenya. No, they said, it was their experience that the Masai had achieved the skill of thought transference. They were balanced with nature and nature’s forms of communication, and it carried over into their human communication. The white hunters noticed that the Masai were always around me, following and observing, taking spiders out of my tent at night, protecting me, and they were intrigued. I seemed to be a character in a sophisticated primitive play I hadn’t even read.

  The documentaries that have been filmed in Africa do not do the place justice. It is a paradise of balance. For example: I could bear witness to the survival of the fittest on the part of the animals because the white hunters told me they believed that the souls of the animals who were the victims of the predators left their bodies before they were ripped apart for food. They said there was a kind of collective spiritual understanding among all the animals relating to food and life. It was a spiritual game of survival because none of the animals really died anyway. Only their bodies did. As long as the game of predator and victim was played for life survival, it was part of the natural balance. I tweaked on the name the humans gave the animals: “game.” Big game, small game, royal game, big game hunters, game preserve, etc.

  The sunrises and sunsets in Africa are a testament to an ecstatic and kaleidoscopic rhythm of beginning and end. And all of it revolved around the obvious light of the sun by day and the more delicate truth of the moon by night. Animals, then, and the group mind-set among us travelers, were all in harmony. It was a miracle to behold.

  Then something happened that put me more in touch with what I was capable of doing where injustice was concerned. Leopards were royal game in East Africa, which meant no one was allowed to shoot them. Some of the people on the safari wandered away from the trained hunters and spotted a leopard and her cubs in a tree. They raised their rifles and took aim. I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed another rifle and turned it on the humans. I told them I would shoot them if they shot the leopard. They were so shocked and chagrined that I became persona non grata until I left the safari the next morning.

  I think I really would have shot that man with a rifle turned on the leopard. So I ask myself: What does that say about me? I’ve thought about it for years. My anger at injustice has not diminished or changed as I move along my spiritual path. Since the “taking” of life is the highest cosmic and spiritual crime, where does that leave the human race in relation to how we conduct our affairs of state and human justice?

  I’m Over Feeling I Need My Family Around Me at Thanksgiving and Christmas

  The turkey and the pumpkin pie and Christmas cookies better be good, so as to supersede the salt on the wounds of the family history that’s being dug up yet again. May the dialogue be salty and the outcome sugary just to avoid homicide.

  I’m Not Over Making Money

  I don’t know that money is the root of all evil, but it can certainly deter the human being from a
ttaining a spiritual balance.

  My family never had more than $300 in the bank. I didn’t know the value of money until I became an adult. And I wonder if I know the value of it even now.

  Am I over the need for making money? No. I’m still interested in it because I want to be safe in the face of what could happen if we proceed along the course we’ve chosen. I have come to the decision that I will spend what money I make on the things I need to be self-sufficient. For example, I have installed wood-burning inserts in my fireplaces because they are more efficient for wood-fired heat. I need no other source of heat in the winter and I don’t use any other form of energy (except solar) for heating.

  I have a garden where I grow much of what I eat. I have a well that I drink out of. The water is pumped into my house via solar heating. I have solar heating for my hot water. I have a solar-powered freezer to keep the rest of the food I need. I will get some chickens when I feel the time is right. I have had my house inspected for mice, insects, cracks in the walls, fire hazards, etc., so I know it’s in good shape. I use gas for cooking (again, it’s solar powered). So I spend my money on these things that are necessary to be self-sufficient in life. I don’t buy many clothes anymore. I have enough. I auction off my old clothing to benefit animal rescue organizations. I don’t wear much jewelry except for my own Chakra jewelry line which helps balance the chakras (more on that later).

  I travel coach on airplanes and buy a companion seat for Terry so she will be comfortable. I buy senior movie seats, and usually walk where I want to go. I have a housekeeper once a week. Otherwise I do all the cooking and cleaning myself. My needs are rather simple. The older I get, the more basic my life becomes, like a child’s almost. It’s those middle, creative, and productive years that so skew our values.

  I think of money not in terms of how much there is in my bank account, but more in terms of why I need it in the first place. I like Thornton Wilder’s quote in The Matchmaker: “Money is like manure. It should be spread around encouraging young things to grow.”

  I’m Over People Who Don’t Know That We Are All Performing All the Time

  They say there are only two businesses in the world—everyone else’s business and show business. But then, we’re all living a show of some kind . . . those in the business of show and those who are not. Even war and especially politics. “Shock and awe.” “Mission accomplished.” “Surge the troops.” “Win one for the Gipper.” It’s all movie dialogue, and sometimes not even very good dialogue at that.

  There are a few aspects of the life show we live that I think I’m over. I’ve always been a little surprised at how many people find show business so intriguing. “Were you really in love with your leading man?” “Was that real blood coming out of the wound?” “Can you turn it off at night after work?” Everyone wants to know about show business and glamour.

  Even the people with the money who finance our “show” are intrigued by how we do it. I think they are mesmerized at our ability to manipulate emotions and feelings. They manipulate business for money; we manipulate audiences for acknowledgment and to feel loved.

  I used to watch politicians and other powerful people quake in the presence of Frank Sinatra, who knew exactly what was happening and played it for all it was worth. They may have snickered among themselves afterward, but they were never honest enough to try and exert their own power in the presence of a seriously talented human being . . . talented not only at singing and acting, but deeply talented at knowing what other people wanted. I loved to watch him in the presence of real gangsters, men who killed people when they wanted to. They might have felt they held the lives of others in their hands, but Frank moved the lives of others with his acting and singing. He employed the universal language of music to touch the hearts of killers and he knew it. So did they . . . even though, as I sometimes heard, a few of them wanted to “whack the canary” for being a “know-it-all.”

  Frank has a prominent position on my Walls of Life. My favorite picture is one of us singing together when I opened for him on his final tour. Of course we were old friends (he put me in Some Came Running and Can-Can) but even I felt somehow subservient to his presence and his talent. That didn’t stop me, though, from standing in front of his monitor once in a while so he couldn’t read his lyrics. We all knew he couldn’t remember words much, so it was fun to watch him make them up. That was worth the price of admission for the audience, too.

  How many times did I rush to catch the private plane after the show, my long, sequined gown stuck with sweat to my body, tripping in my high heels up the stairway of the plane because I knew he would simply take off as he stepped from his limo whether I was there or not. On board, he would childishly throw jelly beans or whatever else was available, turning the flight into a kind of crazy adult flying nursery school.

  When he and Dean were together in front of an audience, it was their childhood dream of “watch me” come true. They were both comedic perfectionists, but Frank knew that Dean was the master. Sometimes he even liked to prove that to the audience. He would tell a short joke and get no reaction. Then he’d bring Dean forward to tell the same joke and watch as the audience convulsed with laughter. “Why didn’t they think I was funny?” he’d ask Dean, and he meant it quite seriously. Dean would answer, “Because you’re not,” and the audience would convulse again.

  I loved how honest they were with the audience. Yes, they were both superb singers, but the thrill for the people out front was how they related to each other with insults, teasing, and overall tomfoolery. They made jokes about their sex lives, their families, their work, and most certainly, the “Mob.” The audience loved it because they knew that both of them were telling the truth. Sometimes they would get me up on the stage, urging me to join them with respect and gentle humor, and I always realized afterward that I had learned something more about comedy by being with them. They taught me that comedy wouldn’t be funny unless it was based on truth.

  I also learned later in my life that when telling the truth about the past, it is most definitely a question of perspective. My recollections are just that—mine. Somebody else who might have been present could see the “truth” in an entirely different light. For example, when in one of my books I wrote about Frank and Dean and the “Boys” (gangsters) and their association with the joints they played and the behavior I saw therein, Frank was upset. It didn’t last long, but he thought I understood the oath of “omertà” which forbids the discussion of such matters upon the pain of death. I, of course, never took such an oath and frankly didn’t even know what it was. But knowing and being around the “Boys” was part of my life and an important part at that. As an actor, observing their behavior and clocking the results was a kind of acting lesson for me. When Frank and his then-wife and his daughter denied he even knew them, I found that funnier than all his adolescent antics. What on earth did they think they were doing? The whole world knew Frank started singing in clubs owned by Mob guys. So of course there was an association. I had a hard time processing their public denials. To Frank, I had been such a part of his “in” life that he expected me somehow to know all the Hoboken rules and obey them—even though he certainly didn’t.

  Those of us in show business sometimes call people who are not in show business “civilians” because they don’t understand what it takes to be loved by being “really” real. If we’re good at it, we usually can make a civilian believe anything we want them to believe.

  From the time we were very young, we non-civilians needed to be loved more than most. We needed to be acknowledged and noticed because we desperately felt we had something valuable to say. So with each of us non-civilian, creative, insecure, yet demandingly talented people there is a divalike environment around us charged with edgy ideas, which lead the civilians to water but never let them drink. We tease, cajole, propagandize, and promise to bring the heart and soul of the human to the screen or stage to be understood and related to. We think we understand the civili
an world, but the truth is we gave that up long ago. At the same time we divas say we reflect the civilians back to themselves.

  How can we still be one of them when we are profiting (and suffering from!) the vicissitudes of fame? Once we become famous there is only the memory of the struggle. We never want to be un-famous again.

  My orientation has been somewhat different because I labored for so many years as a dancer. Dancers aren’t as interested in fame as much as they are determined to be good team players. Dancers are not so caught up in our own identities except insofar as how it enables us to perform without getting hurt. Dancers are creative soldiers. If I were in a foxhole, I’d want a dancer with me—they think fast, are survival-oriented, able to sacrifice themselves, and will save the team. Dancers are rarely divas (Nureyev excepting). I don’t know why opera stars are divas; maybe it’s something to do with their throats and cold air. Dancers will dance on top of snow in a blizzard if told it’s necessary.

  The reason I became a famous person—an individual—is because I was never a very good dancer. Bob Fosse used to say I was wrong about that—but then, he wasn’t a very good dancer either. He and I were thinkers who moved around a lot. And if someone else did something good, we’d steal it and make it ours.

  All of that is Broadway folklore now, but to me it is ever-present. The famous “Steam Heat” dance number choreographed by Bob Fosse has moves inspired by various MGM movie musicals, which Fosse may or may not have “borrowed” and then made into a classic all its own. It was (and is) performed in black tuxedos and black derbies. It usually gets a standing ovation.