“I’m not afraid of failure anymore–I guess because we’re such old friends by now, you know? Failure and I see each other now and just nod and get comfortable. What I mean is that my education as an actress and as a person is very dependent on those failures: What I learned; how I accepted it; how I moved on. And when I say failure, I was still working with great people on important plays with noble themes. I was often best in the failures, God knows. I hear all the time now how horrible the failures are, that the closing of a show is like a death, and this is stupid thinking. Really stupid. You can’t judge yourself or your career or the theatre by a mistake made by a critic or a lack of judgment on the part of producers or the lack of interest in audiences. My failures taught me to love the work and what it taught and gave me. My failures made me strong. Love all of it is what I’m saying, if you’ll bear with me. Love the openings and the closings, the glitter and the shit. Love it all.”–Colleen Dewhurst/Interview with James Grissom/1990/
Author: admindavid
Paganican
I had offered these definitions to the internet, years ago, but was rejected, for lack of citation. I am certain that all these senses come from a reading of The Golf Omnibus, by P.G. Wodehouse, but i can’t be bothered to go back thru the whole thing and find them. Maybe i will someday. You could look them up.
Paganican
(1) of, or concerning, the Cult of Golf. The over-riding philosophical and moral orientation of ancient Celtic tribes from which the Game of Golf is derived. See also Highland Games
(2) to be severely austere in the observance of a very few unwritten laws, and penally punitive to transgressors.
(3) to be unforgiving, parsimonious, curmudgeonly in the pursuit of some High-Minded or Noble End.
What is not arguable is that paganica was a Roman Game, an historical certainty
though it might be conceded that the provenance of the lineage between paganica & golf is uncertain, i maintain that the citations in Wodehouse to which i can’t exactly point prove the assertion. The classical training & erudition of Wodehouse, in addition to the sincerity of his sporting enthusiasm give him that postion of authority, just IMVHO.
The fusion of Roman Order and Celtic Wildness, I also maintain, reaches its flowering in the game of golf, and its fruiting in Wodehouse, if you see how i mean. And the importance of THAT is that Golf is the flowering of Culture & Civilisation, the fusions of Violence & Rationality, of Beauty & Crudity, of Risk & Reward, of Man & Nature (the Universe, if you prefer), and so on . . .
