Winning
The role of the Jester
The jester wears a funny hat. Charlie wears a fedora. The jester says
outrageous things that makes the king go mad. Charlie says outrageous things
that make the kings of media go mad.
Picture The Fool from the greater arcana. He has his hat and he is wistfully
stepping forward to a place where no foot fall shall be found. He is not the
hanged man. He is not the Wizzard (the warlock?). He is not a sorcerer. He is
'the fool'.
And heaven loves the fool. Heaven helps the fool. The fool walks through the
danger unscathed.
As an actor Charlie Sheen would be suitable for either role. The role of the
Jester  seems, to me, to better suit him. The jester is wise and cunning. The
fool is a naive. Sheen is no naive.

Why don't some people understand artists, poets, and fools? In what some consider 
the mainstream artists, poets and fools are met with disdain. That kind of stream
is a polluted stream, like a sewer line. 

The jester is often the one who is most sincere, even in his debauchery.  The jester
speaks with truth, which always worked to get a laugh before. Now that Sheen is doing
it to power they don't get the joke. They don't get the joke, and he is sick, so 
they say, from what they've observed. And they've got outtakes. “Here he is, here
he is, stumbling over his lines.”  Don't you have something like that for every
actor? Isn't there some kind of an agreement for privacy. By showing these
things publicly aren't you kind of trying to torpedo his future chances for
making success?

The fact of the matter is that the money goes to the talent. That is talent to
be so hilariously Buster Keaton or Fatty Arbuckle, or Moliere funny, like Charlie
 is! . . . we get a light like that, a beacon, only every so often.
Someone like Charlie, even though he does seem to be sick to the outside world,
has a gift for dead-pan that most performers don't. It's not a joke that the guy
knows how to deliver lines and be funny. And now Sheen has his whole life as
his stage. He is never out of performance. He needs us to bust a gut. So he's had
a bad week or two where some of his shstick, off the cuff quips, didn't go
so well. It was, in fact, inprovised and spontaneous and that often needs
editing. Call it a rough draft. He was doing his rough draft in public.

Get on your Charlie mask and nod your head in a winning way. Give
a sample of your adonis DNA (wait, that might be 'hateful').
Charlie Sheen is the kind of guy
who puts the 'F' in funny.
In any case Charlie is now showing the world the person behind the mask, who the
world has found so funny:  “Here is the real dark guy behind the mask. I've
taken the mask off and you don't like me. Or maybe this is just another mask? 
I drink, I smoke I fight and fu_k. You all knew this about me. I was the one
who was getting all the babes. And you didn't mind when I said the word 'babe'
because I do it so naturally. Where were all the feminists back then? Oh, ya,
the straight ones were all banging me.”  I imagine thoughts like that.
Charlie funny~! 
Charlie is the kind of guy who puts the 'F' in funny. 
Cut the guy some slack
But really, how can I know what the man thinks? And if he's really sick and
having a nervous breakdown then the world will cut him some slack. He's out
there and out of it so it seems to many. But when I look at the photos of him I
see more a clown who has that look that the crowd may be getting ugly. It's
never an ugly clown it's an ugly crowd that ruins a performance. And Mr. Sheen
is, after all, a performer. And now he is making his grand art for the world:
his own personal life. Can we all agree that the narrative about the money
aspects, about how various entities and corporations and other (alleged) talent
(a cheep shot. Take that for Charlie!) have behaved, that narrative makes not
just Charlie look like Lucy from an episode of I Love Lucy, say one of her
schemes goes bad, but it makes the others look like Potter from Pottersville in
Its a wonderful life. Sheen is just playing a part in some sense. His whole
life has been stage oriented. Have we all forgotten this? He imagines  (so it
seems to me) that he is being heroic for the cause of actors and show-folk who
are beholden to the behemoth for their livelihoods. someone who was a partner
(Lorrie) put crap up on a vanity-card  that he'd outlive Sheen. That is kind
of creepy sh_t for a boss to be saying about one of his employees in a public
forum viewed by millions. I understand how Sheen would become enraged by that. 
He got so enraged that maybe he's forgotten what made him so angry? And we all
knew he was diagnosed with substance abuse problems.

And I suppose he knows that the other folks have their own addictions:  money,
power. And he knows how he enables them by making them billions (and he does). 
So is he saying out loud 'hey, get over your money whore instincts?'  Well, kind
of. But he's not really cogent enough to do it. He's obviously having a
transcendental meditative experience. He's on a journey of the inner mind and
he's doing it in public.

I don't see him as a villain. Why are people villainizing him? He's having an
explosion. He has taken off the mask. There are other masks. He's made of
masks. He is a performer. He's supposed to have his emotions right on the
surface. He's supposed to have many masks. We expect him to reflect back and
show us ugly parts of himself. Ugly parts that are just as ugly as we are. 
That is why it is funny. And then the ugliness is seen as an illusion too. We
are all just human. That is what he is. He sins. He wants to be better. A
lot of the time he isn't yet. He's wanting to do things that other people shun.
 Whoring. Drinking. Wild bacchanalia behavior. It's something that very many
people do. It is Mardi Gras, by the way.

But will he stop on Ash Wednesday? Will he turn himself over to Lenten fasting?
 Will he prepare for the Holy Days? Will he atone for the bad things that he
did?

Is it any of our business? Should we even care if he does? I'm hoping maybe he
can see the better story. Sad guy on a binge, dance, clown, dance kind of guy. 
Hides  behind hookers and pills. Has a famous brother who openly wears a cross
in public interviews. A well-loved father. Guy is well-loved himself.
Oh, ya, I really am in need of laying down and sleeping and loving Jesus. And
he can come to know that Jesus loved hookers too but that doesn't mean that you
treat them like they aren't human.

Who says that he does that? He calls them goddesses. 

So, world, here is a task for you:  write the story that Charlie, and all the
hookers too, find that they do have flaws that need repair. And leave them
alone enough so that they can do the soul healing that they need. And write the
story that you do that too. And Chuck Lorrie:  did you apologize to Charlie
about your creepy post about out-living him? Even if he is drug-sick,
junk-sick, manic, whatever, he is still human and has feelings.

And me, I've got to do all that for myself too. Find out what I need to fix in
myself. And these thoughts of Charlie, these judgmental thoughts, don't they
just reflect what I want for myself and are more about me than they are about
him? I don't even know the guy. Probably will never meet him. Don't care
either way. And hope for the best. I won't be surprised if Charlie Sheen is
walking around tomorrow with ashes on his forehead. And Charlie:  it would be
cool to meet you but it isn't on my bucket list. Sempre Fe. I get what you are
doing but . . . remember to keep some things private. You've crossed a line and
you need to cross back. I agree that you shouldn't pretend to be sick for them
again. But, at the same time, you shouldn't pretend to be well either. You
aren't either of those things. Neither is anyone else. Isn't that part of what
you are saying? Well at least it is what I am trying to say. I've gone through
my whole life an AA skeptic but still realize that it helps a lot of people. 
The idea that we are either 'well' or 'sick' is a fallacy so it seems to me. We
are always well about some things and sick about others depending upon the
context and situation of our lives. You have given then 100's of millions of
dollars in free publicity and maybe they are letting their big fat egos get in
the way. The public loves you more than it does them but they own the studios. 
They want to force you to go and 'get well' about drugs and alcohol and you
can't force them to go and 'get well' about their addictions to money and power.

So you resent that? Is that it? I don't know. 

Hey, Charlie, please feel free to contact me here at this website and talk to me
directly. I know you have a real story to tell. You don't have to be afraid,
and I know that you know that. You are winning in some things, and loosing in
others. We are all like that. When you are doing an interview you are supposed
to be outrageous. You are, after all, a performer. And somehow people are
expecting you to be Dr. Phil. What the hell is wrong with them? 

Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Bill Perilli

   




Fret not over crap you read on the Internet