Living in the Present

Spalding Gray felt regret.

Could it have been fatal?

In February of 2002, two years before his suicide, I spoke with him on the occasion of an anniversary engagement, hosted by UCLA Live, of his monologue “Swimming to Cambodia.” His work was of interest to me since I was a teen when I saw him perform “Sex and Death to the Age 14.” We shared a Rhode Island pedigree, and his stories of growing up in New England achieved a measure of timeless verisimilitude that impresses to this day.

His visit to California offered me a chance to write for this magazine about Gray’s perceptions of Los Angeles, formed while he lived here, developing material that became his monologue “Monster in a Box.” I hoped for a lively piece capturing his unique insights and dry humor. Gray agreed to an interview.

There’s an old expression that reflects a Yankee sensibility, “Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true.” We decided to meet over lunch and I invited him to choose a favorite spot. His management called to say he preferred Figtree’s Cafe at Venice Beach because looking at the ocean relaxed him. My expectations soared. A relaxed Gray, I thought, would be a witty Gray. This was going to be an easy piece to write. But additional requests came in quick succession. Would I mind picking him up at his hotel in Santa Monica? Not a problem. Could I park close to the restaurant? Of course. Would I make sure he wasn’t exposed to cold?

What? I knew Gray referred to himself as a primal narcissist, but this seemed too much.

The assistant explained that Spalding had been in a near-fatal car crash in Ireland the previous summer that left him with a fractured skull, broken hip and nerve damage to his leg. He was having mobility problems, and even a common cold could cause grave complications to his compromised health.

My finding humor in the interview suddenly seemed remote. As I drove to pick him up at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, I wondered whether I could instead find some universally insightful material, which Gray’s monologues often achieved. But I knew that discovering those touchstones could be monumentally difficult if they arose from physical and mental suffering. I also knew that a discussion of those afflictions was not what I wanted at that point in my own life. Gray, as it happened, wouldn’t be the only narcissist at lunch.

As the noticeably aged performer greeted me, he asked how far away my car was parked. It was difficult for him to step up onto the high curbs when we crossed the street.

Conversation flowed easily at Figtree’s, until we turned our attention to Ireland. Before the trip, he had remarried and started a new family with two young boys and a teenage stepdaughter. He’d moved to the quieter environment of eastern Long Island. In his performances, his angst was evolving into a mature wisdom. Then, fate snatched it all away. He blamed himself.

There was something brutally tragic about Gray losing his bearings at such a transitional moment in his life. He believed that the only way to deal with the regret and depression he felt was to turn it into new work, and he was frustrated at having to perform his old monologue “Swimming to Cambodia” when all he really wanted to talk about from the stage was the turn his life had taken on the Emerald Isle.

As I listened to him recount the events after the accident, I felt I was at one of his shows. Detail and mordant humor laced his remarks. But he struggled to clearly organize his observations. He had not yet found the focus that comes from developing material through performance and editing, and he was particularly concerned that he hadn’t figured out a title for the monologue. Titles always came at the beginning of his creative process.

As we talked, my eyes wandered to the ocean. I had recently examined my own choices and accomplishments, concluding that I should take advantage of life while healthy even as I feared that everything could end in despair. Gray’s state of mind didn’t help for, among other things, it seemed to doom my hopes for a piece worth publishing. I returned him to his hotel and began considering the material from our lunch.

Writers know that profiles of people they admire can be tricky propositions. Often, the perceptions they have are much different than the reality. In homage to Gray, it seemed appropriate to abandon my original plan and lead my piece with “Spalding Gray feels regret.” But I needed to make sense of the two hours of interview tapes. There was some great material in those exchanges but, sadly, it was still a jumble, like Gray’s mind. Reluctantly, I asked to schedule another meeting after I’d seen his performance at UCLA.

We met for morning coffee. He immediately apologized for not being more concise in our first interview. When I shared my impression that regret would be a theme of the piece, he spoke of the film director Steven Soderbergh’s opinion that Gray’s whole life was “ruled by regret” and that it permeated his writing. This led to his most intriguing and, possibly, prophetic comment: “The problem with regret is that it keeps you from living in the present.”

In a strange way, that remark assuaged my reservations about the article, for it accomplished what art, literature and performance aspire to convey--a universality of human experience that we all can share and use to enrich our lives. I recall that line today when my own melancholy points toward roads not taken.

Gray might have been a narcissist, but I wonder how many lives his work changed. He was a pioneer in his field and has created, for better or worse, an avalanche of personal experience monologuists. Many of the new artists that followed him never seem to connect with the audience. It’s as if their inspiration comes from 12-step meetings where everyone gets to tell their story and have it dignified with applause.

Gray used to conduct interviews with his audience as part of his work. The work was never selfish. In the end, he committed the most selfish of acts but let’s hope it was his brain that finally betrayed him as the rest of his body had in its struggle to recover from his injuries.

Before his death he found a title for the final series of monologues he developed about the accident.

Life Interrupted.