The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Tuesday, February 4 2014, 17:39:42 (UTC)
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....and a culture of "who me"?

Sad and tragic and a waste yes, but, he bought himself peace at last. Actors always troubled me.....I was married to one once....she didn;t bother me but there is something intrinsic in the profession that is more dangerous to sanity than even being a shrink. It's the fact that the better the actor, the better he or she gets out of their own skin, puts aside their own being, to become someone else....for many it turns out that they prefer being someone else to being themselves....they seem not even to want to know themselves, at least consciously...they may be very aware of themselves, from the inside in terms of being able to catalog their pain and suffering, but not from the outside, not as an objective eye examining themselves. this is, of course, horribly un-scientific of me, but I'm not a scientist...I'm someone left making sense out of my world as best I can...I can't afford to wait "until all the facts are in". They'll NEVER all be in...so I can't wait and I'll just blunder along trying to make sense of things as best as I can...because even some vision is better than utter blindness.

Why would someone like him, so talented, so successful, so respected and with a clear road ahead of him of all the work he wanted to perform open...why would someone like that even take such risks...and what is this drug business all about....what did he get from being so "high" that he flirted with and then embraced death? Taking heroin or cocaine or even psychedelics isn't like unwinding with a glass of wine after a hard day...in fact, using such powerful agents can be disastrous, under those conditions.

Ages ago it was Black people, the poor and dispossessed who needed such massive amounts of tranquilizers...and one could understand why they needed it...why immigrant workers to America living in squalor and dead-end jobs would need to drink every day and all day, if they could afford it...and why ghetto dwellers needed to take trips in their heads when they stood no chance of getting away in any other way...but then it began creeping over into white society...what was THEIR reason? On the surface 9and "surface" may be key) they had it better...maybe not "all" but certainly better...what induces them to want to get away from their lives, from themselves?

Similarly with the old dig at Blacks that while they lived in extremem poverty, they all drove new Cadillacs....not true of course, but indeed there were some who put everything they had into new shiny cars...why? Well, a fancy clean new car is easier to come by than a new, clean, fancy house...so at least there was ONE place a Black could go that was as good as any place, or car, a white could have...but in the last few decades more and more white people sink their all, their identities, their sexuality into a car...what was once true only of Blacks, is now true of whites...as with drugs...the question might be asked what could now be common to both poor Blacks and much wealthier whites...maybe the same sense of a dead-end existence....why did Hoffman need to get away from himself...did that make him a better actor?

I could never "act"...I can't speak someone elses lines, even if it's Shakespeare...I would never spend my time learning other people's words and thoughts...I'm too busy and too interested in knowing what I think...what my ideas are...I have too much to say to bother about memorizing what others have written even though they are far more brilliant and adept at it than I am...that isn't the point to being alive: it is not to mimic others excellently well that we ought to bother to live...but to know ourselves, however paltry and insignificant, or painful, it may be to make our acquaintance.

Hoffman was brilliant at being other people...he apparently mostly wanted to not be himself, when he was alone with himself....drugging yourself, at that level, is no longer a question of "seeking" of breaking through the Doors of Perception..it becomes literally, mind-numbing...and avoidance of consciousness, literally.

For the few years I used mind-altering stuff I never just sat there...like a mushroom, or plugged into music while I "tripped"...I was a bore because I always wanted to DO something...to go somewhere and SEE things....even people.....climb a mountain...swim in the ocean, the cold ocean, as the sun came up, or went down....anything to stimulate my mind...not dull it. The only freak-out I ever had was when I couldn't clear my mind instantly when a crisis arose...THAT scared me, that I could be "out of it" when I didn't want to be...I realized only later that I did it to myself because I took LSD when under great stress...and that's a big boo-boo...these things don't "relax" you...they also shouldn't...the whole point is to alter your awareness, an awareness, by the way, that isn't all that "aware", as you quickly discover....but you're supposed to learn to do without the kick-start...that's the whole point, or should be...the key open the door, it isn't supposed to BECOME the door.

Now they say there is a spike in heroin use..not to mention the gobs of legal drugs out there...at some point you have to ask why? Just as with Hoffman...why would he do such a thing, risk such a thing...what pushes people? This isn't "getting high"...this dying by inches and finding more pleasure in that than living...also by inches, at first maybe but with the possibility of eventually taking strides and then leaps...what is it that makes people want to go the other way?

This country has a bad case of "who me"? We are not responsible for anything...if a man beats a woman for twenty years and she finally shoots him...it's HER fault...that's all we want to know...it was murder..."she could have left him"...we don;t want to admit that mental harm can be DONE to a person who then can think of no other option but to kill a tormentor....same with our foreign policy..."You mean it's OUR fault" is a mantra among all politicians...Arabs are just behaving this way because THEY are this way...nothing we have DONE in their part of the world has ANYTHING to do with it...yet WE attacked Iraq for something they DIDN'T do!

...I'm getting the headache.



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