by Alan Alda
"Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself"
by Alan Alda
"Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself" is Alan Alda's new book where he tackles many questions in life, big and small, being funny and serious. It picks up where his memoirs, "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I've Learned", left off.
Alan Alda is making a number of appearances both on TV and in person to promote his new book. Please see the official site for his books for additional information.
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By Alan Alda Actor and author of Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself I don’t think I made a
conscious decision to live forever. But, it’s working out that
way. It started twenty years
ago in But in that “I’m sorry,
what?” She said it again: “How
long would you like to live?” It wasn’t such an
extraordinary question, but it was different from anything I’d been asked in the
previous twelve interrogations, or in any other interview. I was glad not to
have to hear myself recite the same boring account of my rise to world power
through my fantastic creative process and I let my imagination loose a little.
“A hundred and six,” I
said. “I’d like to live to a hundred and six. If I can still make
love.” She smiled and made a
note. The next day, my wife, Arlene, opened the newspaper and read the
headline: “WATCH OUT GIRLS. ALDA
WANTS TO LIVE TO 106 AND STILL MAKE LOVE.” Arlene put the paper
down and looked at me. “A hundred and
six? Give me a break.” We laughed about it but,
for reasons that would take until I’m a hundred and six to analyze, from that
moment I assumed that the number 106 would be my life span. I was certain of it.
I think of myself as rational: I ask people where they got their information
before I take seriously their thought that life as we know it will end on
Tuesday. But from that moment on, I had no doubt that I would last until exactly
106. And in good health, too. Arlene doesn’t like the
idea that we might leave our children the job of cleaning up after us when we’re
gone and every once in a while she’ll say, “We’re getting older. I think we
should clean out the closets.” When she says this, I look at her as though she’s
nuts. First of all, whenever I do go, I’m going to be dead. Let them
worry about the closets. But, far more importantly, we have a good thirty-five
years before we’ll be gone. (I’ve included her in my lunatic belief that 106 is
the magic number.) I’m not under the impression that I’ll live
at least that long; 106 is the exact, drop-dead number. I’ve been so sure
of it that when I was interviewing scientists on the television series
Scientific American Frontiers and was told that, eventually, people will live to
150, 200, and possibly longer, I was depressed. I felt I had shortchanged
myself. I should have picked a bigger number. I was too impulsive that day in
This crazy thought
persisted even after I nearly died on a mountaintop in Now, though, I had a new
worry. Would I live all those years without having lived them in the best
possible way? Having faced the empty blackness in I became obsessed with
this thought, and that brought on a second book. This time, I tried to figure
out if I could have that feeling of satisfaction in a lasting way. By now, I had
lived through most of the things that are supposed to give our lives meaning:
love, art, family, money, fame, political activism, faith, skepticism,
curiosity, mindless play, even pure motion -- just keeping busy. And the list
goes on. I wondered if any of these things had given me a sense of meaning that
was lasting. All of them have, for a time; but no single one of them has
been the solid peg to hang my hope for meaning on. It keeps eluding me. I remember nightlong
youthful conversations, trying to figure out an answer to the question: what are we here for? Now I see what a
tricky question it is. It assumes there’s an answer. Maybe that assumption comes
from the kind of problem-solving brain we have. Something seems out of place,
something doesn’t fit, and we think, there must be a way to put this puzzle
together. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe the best we can hope for is the pleasure
of tackling a hard problem. I’ve spent my life in
the theater, so sometimes when I think about this a play comes to mind: Stephen
Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” It’s a mindless, funny romp of a musical
comedy. And Sondheim knows that, even as we laugh, the part of our brain that
has made us so successful on this planet is saying, “Yes, it’s funny. But what
does it mean?” He knows that the problem-solver in us wants a useful
moment; a flash of insight -- at the very least, a handy moral. But Sondheim’s
ahead of us. At the end of the play, as I remember, the chorus looks at us,
almost with pity, and sings: “What is the moral? Must be a moral.” Then, they
throw us a bone: “Moral tomorrow – Comedy Tonight!”
Maybe that’s us at the
end of our lives. Maybe it’s more about having enjoyed it than
understanding it. At the end when, as the Italians say, la comedia è finite -- we’re lying there
in our suite at the Worldwide Hotel, about to check out and thinking, so what was that all about?
And at that moment, the door to the bedroom opens and the chorus dances into the room, singing: “What is the moral? Must be a moral. Moral tomorrow. Comedy tonight!” Alan
Alda played Hawkeye Pierce for eleven years in the television series
M*A*S*H and has acted in, written, and directed many feature films. He
has starred often on Broadway, and his avid interest in science has led to his
hosting PBS's Scientific American Frontiers for eleven years. He was
nominated for an Academy Award in 2005 and has been nominated for thirty-one
(and has won five) Emmy Awards. He is married to the children's book author and
photographer Arlene Alda. They have three grown children and seven
grandchildren. For more information on his new book Things I Overheard While
Talking to Myself, visit www.alanaldabook.com
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