Barak Obama wants to put the Latina Ms. Sotomayor on the Supreme Court not just because she has a dazzling resume and a legal mind like lightening. Apparently she also has a heart. The Republicans do not want anyone with a heart on the court. They would have cheered a nomination of The Tin Man before he met up with The Wizard. (Well, actually maybe not, for, as played by Jack Hailey Jr. in the MGM classic, The Tin Man is an obvious, effeminate homosexual.) The Republicans don’t want emotion to come into it. You don’t need your feelings to make laws that will govern human beings, dammitt.

In a way, I agree. Fair is Fair. What have your feelings to do with it? A man shouts “CUNT!” at a woman at the other end of the bar after she refuses the drink he sent her and she gets up, walks over to him, and hauls off and whacks him in the face with her fist. Many would say he had it coming. The problem is, she broke his jaw. He’s rushed to the hospital, and because of the way his jawbone was shattered (she was wearing a large diamond engagement ring on the fist she hit him with) his face is going to require several difficult surgeries, he can only eat through a straw, and there’s a good chance he may be permanently disfigured.

What is right? What should the law say? Should it be in any way based on how some element of this incident makes you feel?

I think the law should say: You cannot hit someone who calls you a name. Period. And my feelings are more sympathetic to the woman in this particular scenario. This guy is a total drunken asshole. But how you feel about men, women, bars, mating rituals, “cunt”, plastic surgery, etc. shouldn’t come into it. Emotion is the enemy of Reason, of Rightness.

When an actor is brilliant, emotion, if there is any, is a by-product of what he is doing. Not the other way around. The actress is not doing because of the way she feels. Just like in life. People who are inclined to behave according to how they feel end up in jail or a padded room. Behavior should result from reason, from choice, and should not be dictated by emotion.

When a person is brilliant, let’s use Barack O as an example, (and don’t get the impression I’m in love with the guy or some of his policies, I’m not). He is guided by a set of reasoned principles, a hugely complex collection of ways to determine the difference between Right and Wrong. And Science and Religion. And Life and Art. And on and on.  Emotion has nothing to do with it.

Bad actors always lead with their emotions. They decide how they will feel about each moment in the scene, or perhaps about the other actor, and then they adjust the lines to those feelings of sadness, anger, or joy. They are not led by Doing anything.

Bad people are also led by their emotions. They decide how they feel about something in their lives, or in the lives of others, and then allow that emotion to guide their behavior. (The guy who murdered the late-term abortion doctor is a perfect example.)

Let’s say a man is strongly attracted to his 12 year old daughter as her body develops. His emotion is lust. Happens every day in this country. Does he follow the feeling? Or does he accept the lust as real, though inappropriate, and hideously inconvenient, and then reason himself into counseling that will ultimately facilitate the healthy development of his little girl through his acceptance of self-restraint.

What he is doing is being a good father. What he is doing is suppressing his own emotion in order to protect both the physical and spiritual health of his little girl. Doing takes Courage. He can’t help that she turns him on. But he must channel that desire away from her and find a way to love her that will leave her undamaged by his neurosis. It won’t be easy. But he better fuckin do it anyway.

I believe courage is the single most important attribute for an actor. And it’s real close to the top of the list for a great person too. All of the most acutely painful moments of my life, my most deeply felt humiliations involved, somehow, a lack of courage. And all of my best moments, the ones where I surprised even myself with behavior that bordered on perfection, were, of course, courageous ones.

Maybe my best moment ever was the day Scott’s lungs collapsed for the second time. I was teaching class and someone interrupted with the news he had been rushed to the hospital. When I arrived, he had already been taken into Emergency, and the nurse would not let me in. She was firm. No admittance. My feelings were bursting inside me. Fear, anger, loss, self-recrimination. Terror, really. But my mind took hold. “Keep your eye on the ball, ignore your emotions, get into that room, and do it fast.” I sized her up in 2 seconds and launched into a quiet, almost cooing rendition of how much greater a chance this man I loved had of survival if I was to be allowed to stand next to him and hold his hand. I quickly explained that his fear of being alone while unable to breathe could induce a panic attack and that I would cause no disturbance or interference of any kind, I would hold his hand and that was all. I wanted to strangle this woman, but instead she saw behavior that respected her while asking for an exception to a rule that, in this case, needed, occasionally, to be breakable. She opened the doors, saying, “You know, people usually just scream at me but the way you explained…” and took me right to him. He was sitting in a wheelchair, in a corner, with a tube down his throat, gasping, covered with a blanket, with a look on his face that could break the heart of Satan, and in that moment I knew I had accomplished something terribly difficult that actually mattered.

I’m not going to tell you my worst moment. Well, not here and now anyway. I want to let the aura of Heroic Vic linger a moment.

The Republican lie about Ms. Sotomayor is not that she possesses empathy, but that she will allow it to overcome her reason. Especially if the plaintiff is not White. 

Our emotions can be thrilling to feel. The perfect karmic upside of my plan to depart this planet on my own terms has produced an unexpected but very welcome fringe benefit. The people in my life who are true and loyal and deep with me are truer, and more loyal, and deeper than ever. The ones who maintained a somewhat shallower relationship with me, have either shallowed further or entirely disappeared.  So all that is left is a kind of pure intimacy I have always craved, the intimacy of what is real, an almost deathbed vigil of truthfulness guarded by a “what the fuck” willingness to cast aside that which is false or petty.

What’s left is love. The real, unequivocal, unconditional variety, which on any given day now flares up and out of me freely. I am so grateful to be loved deeply. But I’m more grateful to love. To be able to feel that desire to hold another person, to listen to their worst anguish, or to laugh uncontrolled at the absurdity of their funniest gaffe. To feel a connection that transcends words, experience, judgment, emotion, a connection that exists even below the very bedrock of who we are to ourselves. A connection so pure and so deeply unavoidable that an intimacy junkie like me feels the drug has been pumped straight into the heart.

Dare to love someone you know (who is truly worth it) beyond unconditionally. It’s a great real-life exercise for actors and people precisely because it involves no imaginary circumstance. You. Pick someone to love without reservation, without judgment, without scrutiny. Love them more than yourself, let them off the hook more easily than you do yourself, lick them all over, metaphorically, like a mama cat with her kittens. (Or literally if that works for you both. Saliva can be a powerful agent of change.) If you get nothing back, keep licking. You’ll get it back from somewhere else. And even if you don’t, ummmm, that licking feels good because you do it freely, as grace is given by the divine.