I haven't answered the ICWP question because it means so much
to me I'm almost embarrassed to acknowledge it, and at a loss
to express it fully.
I've been part of this list since the beginning, and never
away from it for more than a week. It is the Great Conversation
I dreamed of when a child bookworm: sensitivity and eloquence
addressing the big questions, summed up as "How ought we
to live?" Love and work, courage and kindness, the struggle
to find a balance...... I feel for some of the people on this
list a combination of the hero-worship I felt for my favorite
authors when I was young and the occasionally exasperated tenderness
I feel for my own family. I sometimes worry that I neglect my
dear friends near at hand because these cyber friends are so
vividly present in my imagination--- especially the ones I have
met and can supply with faces and bodies and tone of voice.
ICWP does make it too easy to relax into the bookworm's vicarious
adventures and empathetic passivity. I can bustle about for
months in the real world without hearing a discussion like the
one going on here now--- and in truth, I seldom see one of this
quality on stage. Much of the world has accepted Mamet's axiom
that human intercourse is a Zero Sum Game, and bullying or manipulation
the basic survival strategies-- they've given up on truth and
beauty.
My play "Intercourse,
Ohio" is about my idealistic freshman self going off
to college hoping to join the intellectuals' Great Conversation
about Truth and Beauty and finding Games and Gamesmanship instead.
In this wonderful list, when Gamesmanship rears its ugly head,
somehow tact and humbleness and empathy manage to overcome it--
or turn it into a wry joke of a tactic.
I am perpetually grateful. When I count my blessings, this
blessed list is a top item. (12/21/04)
by 
