The goal of the game is to play. You play by entering their world.
Two exes have independently called me a muppet.
Today I meandered through Central Park with a literal muppet.
She didn’t have fur or someone’s hand up her backside.
But she voiced a muppet in the 70s and became one of the most in-demand voice-over artists in the country.
Partner and I met her at a Burning Man-esque immersive theater event. She and Partner exchanged numbers. We met at noon today. She has white hair and takes stairs slowly and always with a handrail. She mentions her sciatica. Thrice over the next 90 minutes, she slips into a character voice. The first: a high-pitched mocking childish sing-song, context-fit for parodying the president. Second: Italian, to correct my poorer accent. Third: I can’t recall.
We started at the Museum of Natural History. By the time we entered the Shakespeare garden a block or two away, an hour had passed in our minds. In reality, under ten minutes.
There’s a time dilation that happens with some people. Where they keep saying “Look at those flowers!” so you do. And when you’re looking at the bright purple of a cherry blossom, you lose yourself. Floating away, endlessly, somewhere into an abyss you didn’t recognize existed, let alone could be accessed at any second… where 90 minutes could have been 3 or 4 hours… you move slower, your internal monologue slows, but you don’t mind. The same place you’ve been a half-dozen times, but this time you enter it in a new way.
It’s not new. You’re new. The collective you is new.
This experience happens more with artists. With creatives and children too. You spend an hour or a day or the rest of your life studying the veining in one perfect leaf.
Suddenly, she’s apologizing on the phone. “Lunch Saturday? Wasn’t it Sunday? I’ll be right there.” She’s sure they agreed Sunday, but won’t leave her friend alone at the restaurant.
Then you leave and you return to the honking cars and the car exhaust fumes and the hot dog vendors and the rest of the dragnet made out of always-fraying sinew that yanks us all forward.
You asked how she does the voices. She said, “They just come to me. They always have.” Your father has said you do voices well — but each time he says it, you’ve thought, “I know people far better.” Having gone beat-for-beat with a real character, you know this to be true.
So you return home, where you wonder about what you have to Give. What naturally comes to you the way voices do to her? Then you shake your head because mulling and musing and obsessing and ruminating never got anyone anywhere. So you smile, because you finally met a real-life muppet.
I’ve been a muppet to others. This is a muppet to me.
Julian Wise 