Andy's final gift was that he made us so paranoid about the realities of the actions surrounding his life that... he granted us a kind of magic.
A dis-suspension of belief, we'll call it, that allows us to rationally consider that a man who died of lung cancer over twenty years ago might've actually been alive all along.
Might've devoted his fortune and the middle age of his life to the fulfillment of the world's greatest prank and, in that, cheated death in a way that is essentially the fundamental dream of all people... to live after living, for death itself to be a trick and we might all retreat into Heaven or some other kind of hiding.
Might still step off the spaceship with Bigfoot and Elvis next Tuesday and say hello.
In reflection of Andy's life we're left with the plausable magic of a man who just might've been able to put it off. Something incredible and fantastic and yet we cannot fully dismiss it... the concept sticks to the ribs of our souls like peanut butter. That death can be cheated after all.
The same way a man can play a character for a time and... by never admitting that he is this character... can make everyone think they are in on the trick. Think that they are in on a little joke when Tony Clifton is on David Letterman cursing Andy Kaufman for stealing his act when... haha, everyone "knows" that's Andy Kaufman as reinforced by all the denials.
When, really, that's his friend Bob in the make-up on Letterman but we're all so convinced that Tony is Andy that we overlook the obvious physical differences of the men inside the costume and chalk them up to "how good that costume is, how good Andy is as becoming another person"...
And Andy's brother is playing the Tony character in Reno at the exact same moment as Letterman is airing, even though Letterman doesn't air live... especially because it doesn't... we can believe that he took some incredibly fast private jet from NYC to Reno and the "joke" is the tape delay...
When, really, Andy was in Sherman Oaks California the whole day, fuck*ng groupies and laughing his ass off.
Since this is true, we must... ever so briefly... honestly and unironically consider the idea that if he could pull that off, he could maybe maybe maybe have pulled off faking his own death, too.
We must embrace the possibility of the fantastic, if only for a twinkling, and that itself is magic.
I like to believe that he's alive and that the twenty-years promise was the cherry on top.
Of COURSE he wouldn't show up on the day he promised he would. He's Andy!
The last thing he would've done was show up on the day he had promised... he'd definitely be fuck*ng groupies and laughing his ass off in Sherman Oaks on THAT day, more than any other.
And the magic continues, you know?
I'm rambling, I'm rambling.
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Topic: Andy Kaufman... (Read 4410 times)