Dark People, Gossip, and Envy
I spoke to Marian Seldes almost every day for many years. I could go to her with anything, or simply to talk. She would tell me to get my pad and pen and then say, “Let’s begin.” Unfortunate circumstances necessitate my publishing this particular conversation, but I’m happy to note the support that has shown up for me; the strength of friends and evidence. Things will be said and written, but as a great attorney told me, in a style not at all like Marian’s, but similar in sentiment: “They’re throwing shit up a pole. The shit lands on them.”
Avoid fear and shit. Know that you’re loved. Be strong.
“There are people who are dark. That’s all I can manage to say about them: They are dark people. They laugh at others; they make fun of people. They make fun of me. I’ve sometimes walked into a room where I can see or hear someone talking like me or using their arms as I do. They stop abruptly and smile, and I pretend I’ve heard nothing. It hurts. Of course it does. It’s not about me, though. It’s not about you, when people say hurtful things.
“How do people become dark? Fear. I’m back to fear. I think fear is the foundation of all dark things. The fear of not being seen as clever or unknowing. Some of the cruelest places are green rooms or rehearsal spaces before the work begins, and people gather to gossip about people they’ve worked with, or would like to work with. Envy. If you’re afraid that you’ll be left behind or that you won’t be noticed, it gives an odd sort of comfort to negate the success or happiness of someone else. I’m not like that, thank goodness, and I want you to promise me that you won’t be like this.
“No one can alter who or what you are. That power rests with you. People can imitate you and denigrate you and slander you, and there will be people who might believe it, but there are always people—I’m happy to say—who will look not at the gossip or the slander, but the bearer of it. Most people don’t like cruelty, and they can see through it, right to the dark heart of the person spreading it.
“Move forward. Shake it off. Just as I pretended not to hear or see things, do the same. I think they wanted to hurt me. I wouldn’t let them, not for long. Don’t you let them.
“Leave them where they are.”
From a conversation in September 2009.
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