Memoir and Healing

I am still shaking from having seen, heard, and witnessed, We’re Only Alive for A Short Amount of Time--a song-studded stage memoir written and performed by David Cale at The Public Theater in New York. "‘It's all been leading to this,’” says David Cale. “'And there's truth to that. But I think it was out of my reach a few years ago, artistically. I didn't want people to feel sorry for me, I didn't want it to be indulgent or just a slog through depressing stuff. It had to be, to some degree, about transcending your past, your background, your genetics. And redefining yourself. And I'm on a little bit of a mission with this in terms of trying to represent my mother, who was an extremely abused, overlooked and misunderstood person.'”*

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Cale's hometown of Luton is 30 miles northwest of London. He remembers it as an ugly, sooty factory town "where the gray meets the gray." Cale was escaping from Luton long before he left and came to the United States. First he escaped to his “Bird and Animal Hospital" built out of a discarded garden shed; then he melted into the music of Petula Clark; and later, in adolescence, sought solace in Joni Mitchell's songs.

Cale plays multiple roles— his mother, Barbara, a stifled designer and artist; his father, Ron, a brooding drunk; and his younger brother Simon. Dressed simply in street clothes, Cale relies on voice and posture to transform from one family member to another.

The actual facts of Cale’s life are searing. Believe me. I don’t want to state them here because I hope some of you will see the performance and I don’t want to spoil it. How did this man survive what he experienced as a child and young man? How did he keep his sanity?

As a psychoanalyst, I have a few ideas. Cale gives some hints. He loves birds and started taking care of wounded ones when he is a young boy. Their chirps blocked out the sounds of his parents’ screaming at each other in the house. He identified with the wounded birds, but also their ability to fly away. That’s exactly what he did—he literally flew away to the United States! Cale disappeared into music as a boy and an adolescent and later became a musician. In We’re Only Alive for A Short Amount of Time, Cale doesn’t disappear into the music, rather the lushness of the orchestration intensifies the emotion of his story. And when David Cale sings, although he is no Frank Sinatra, our hearts ache with him at every refrain. The repetition of lyrics felt like pounding on my chest.

The performance is not only about resilience in the face of developmental trauma, it's also about a person's ability to transform pain and anguish into something integrated and beautiful. David Cale said it took years to develop We’re Only Alive for A Short Amount of Time because he didn't want the audience to feel sorry for him. I know what he means because psychoanalysis takes years as well. That's just how long it takes to pour out all the pieces of yourself and develop a narrative that incorporates the past, but is entirely new and whole. When the performance ended, I was shaken; I felt emotionally exhausted.

But I didn't feel sorry for him.