Vanity of Candor

Playwright Richard Greenberg in last Sunday's NY Times Magazine:

"Well, when someone says they admire your work, who knows who's telling the truth?" he fretted. "But you know what, I appreciate people who are civil, whether they mean it or not. I think: Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There's a vanity to candor that isn't really worth it. Be kind."

-compliments of Mrs. Kennedy (you can witness for yourself her brilliance at fussy.org )

I truly appreciate this quote from Mr. Greenberg. As you may or may not know, I recently finished a one-person play that I've been working on for quite some time. There are 13 characters in the play and I will be playing all of them. I'm excited about it and now that I have some re-writes done, I'm feeling more of a sense of accomplishment. So, now I'm feeling more at liberty to talk about it.

So, recently we were out to dinner with some close friends of ours and as we had wound up a fun-filled evening at Kyoto (a fantastic sushi place here in Santa Barbara) and were leaving, I began talking a little bit about the play. I mentioned the lead character's name and the title of it.
He lambasted it, immediately. Said how stupid the name was and how dumb the title was too... His wife, our close friend Geness jumped all over him and told him that he shouldn't judge any of it since he doesn't know anything about it. Now that's a novel idea, isn't it? Not saying anything about something until one knows everything about what they're talking about?

Well, his ass can judge it all he wants once he's paid for a ticket in the audience. Because that's the next time that bitch is going to find out anything about it.