On Cunnilingus And Psychiatry: In Memorium, James Gandolfini
By John Samuel Tieman
Why did my wife and I fall in love with James Gandolfini and his Tony Soprano?
Because art speaks in ways that are at once both clear and unconscious.
We missed the first episode or two. But we heard from buddies that “The Sopranos” is a good show. We’d also heard that it’s written by David Chase, the same guy who wrote large parts of “Northern Exposure”. We’re of the opinion that “Northern Exposure” is one of the best shows ever written. So, sure, we’d give it a look.
I was hooked from the second I heard the opening lyrics –
Woke up this morning, and got yourself a gun.
Mama said you’d be The Chosen One….
She said, you’re one-in-a-million — you got that shotgun shine.
Think about it — born under a bad sign with a blue moon in your eyes.
The real clincher was later in that episode, when Tony, who is in therapy, says, “Uncle Junior and I, we had our problems with the business. But I never should have razzed him about eating pussy. This whole war could have been averted. Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this!”
So every Sunday evening, my wife and I invited Anthony, that lovable sociopath, into our home. We admired the way he cared for his family, the way he was loyal to his colleagues, the way he killed people who needed killing. And he scared us. Sometimes Tony needed killing.
I could give all kinds of technical reasons why “The Sopranos” was great art. Great writing I’ve mentioned. Also, the show had one of the greatest endings big screen or small. But that’s not why my wife and I loved James Gandolfini.
So let me just say – he had great eyes. When he’d get mad, that flash of anger, I know that flash of anger. Gandolfini was a big man, and he played a very physical character. But those eyes. When he loved, hated, softened, hardened. Those eyes.
Artists live unusual lives. So do audiences. Artists paint, write, act, sculpt, compose alone in our small rooms, or on our small stages, and, no matter how popular we are, we never meet even a fraction of the folks who invite our artifacts into our lives. Yet they allow us into their unconscious. They actually let us make them laugh and cry and such.
99.999999999% of the time, we never even meet these people. They never meet us. We communicate using a very narrow vehicle, the artifact. Yet there is communication on the most profound level.
We artists open our unconscious, our loves, our hates, we pour stuff into the artifact, stuff we know is in the artifact, and, if the artifact is ever to become art, stuff we didn’t consciously realize is there. Then something remarkable happens. An audience. An audience who opens their unconscious, their loves, their hates, stuff they know, and stuff they didn’t even realize was in their soul. That’s when the artifact becomes the art. When the unconscious of the artist, carried by the artifact, engages the unconscious of the audience. The art is not in the artist; it’s not in the artifact; it’s not in the audience. It is in the unconscious engagement, the we-ness of the moment that is facilitated by an artifact. Hence, those eyes. Gandolfini’s eyes. Tony’s eyes. Those eyes.
To put it differently – Forget about it! Here’s what Tony taught me.
There is no such thing as art. There is only that moment when the unconscious of the artist touches the unconscious of the audience, the moment of we-ness. It is a moment of which we can speak. But it is a moment we can neither control nor fully understand. It is a relationship that will live on in these folks, a relationship that will search for some resolution neither audience nor artist will ever find. Yet search they will.
In other words, when Tony holds a gun to your head, you don’t look at the gun. You know what the gun will do. You search the guy’s eyes.
While the show was in production, I facilitated a professional development for a school in Jersey City, Tony’s hometown. I asked a teacher there if she’d take a picture of me outside the set for Tony’s strip club/office, the Bada Bing. We didn’t have time. She joked that she was going to photo-shop me into a picture, but we also simply forgot to have any photographs taken. I now rate this among my life’s great regrets.
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