America
can be, and in fact more often than not is, a stupid selfish heedless
county. A disappointing country. So much possibility, so little realization. I
have no time for a proper posting about the sadness and tragedy of Donald Trump’s election victory
last night, an event in my view more tragic and with potentially much more dire consequences affecting many more people than what took place on 9/11; but in its stead I am moved to post something I wrote to one of my
grad students who contacted me today and told me how upset he was about the
outcome. I wrote him the following reply. Of course, I was really only giving myself advice in the guise of giving it to
him. But I believe it was good advice, and I offer it to students,
scholars, and artists everywhere. We need to keep hold of our souls, to hold them tight, to keep
them alive, to make them keep counting for something other than the disgrace of the public world.
I’d note
parenthetically that it’s unfortunately necessary for me to withhold the name
of the student who was in communication with me to prevent the risk of administrative
retaliation against him. (Most of the grad students learned long ago to take the precaution of writing me at this email address rather than the bu.edu one, out of fear of having their emails read by Boston University adminstrators, who have asserted their right to monitor my exchanges with them.) In short, the atmosphere in the Department of Film and Television,
the Cinema and Media Studies and the Film Studies programs is almost as poisonous, bullying, and vindictive as that
of the Trump campaign. The worst traits of human personality can make themselves felt anywhere. Even in a university. Alas. — R.C.
* * *
Subject: making a place for beauty and truth / holding on to
our souls for the good of the world and their own preservation
Dear XXXX,
I just watched HRC's gracious and inspiring concession
speech. She said something that I want to adapt as advice for you and me and
anyone else in our position. It's a lesson I learned a long time ago as a result of all that
I have been, and continue to be, put through by the Boston University administration,
but it bears repeating here and now in the present situation.
In the world we live in, a world out-of-order and out-of-balance (in the Godfrey Reggio sense), a world of mental and emotional instability
and warpage, it's all the more important that we hunker down and do our good,
solitary, beautifully self-sacrificing imaginative work of writing and teaching
and mentoring. Each of us must create and protect our own quiet true inward space, one that is all the more important to sustain in a world of
chaos and distortion and mistakenness. We must hold onto our souls, and move ever more deeply into them.
If we lose that capacity, if we give up that attempt, we will only merge back into the world of confusion and falsity—and
it will win for a second time. We will die twice. We must hold onto our private spiritual identities and continue our noble inward missions. It's even more important to do that today
than it was yesterday.
Ray
Ray Carney is the author or editor of: Henry Adams, Mount Saint Michel and Chartres (Viking Penguin), Henry James, What
Maisie Knew and The Spoils of Poynton (New American Library/Signet), Rudyard Kipling, Kim (New American Library); The Films of John Cassavetes:
Pragmatism, Modernism and the Movies (Cambridge University Press); The
Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World (Cambridge University Press); Speaking
the Language of Desire: The Films of Carl Dreyer (Cambridge University Press); American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra (Cambridge University Press); American Dreaming (University of California Press at Berkeley); Shadows (British Film Institute/Macmillan); Cassavetes on
Cassavetes (Faber and Faber/Farrar, Straus); Autoportraits (Cahiers du cinema), The Adventure of Insecurity;
Necessary Experiences; Why Art Matters; and numerous other
books, essays, and editions, published in more than ten languages. Professor Carney is currently working on a three-volume treatment of the early, mid-career, and final films of Robert Bresson intended to transform the understanding of his work.
