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poring over medical photographs of disease-ridden victims and staring at March of Dimes posters of crippled children. Old Granddaddy has always told her: With your talent, all you need is exposure. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/crimes-heart, "Crimes of the Heart She made him spend a night with her in a house that lay in the path of Hurricane Camille; the roof collapsed, leaving Doc with a bad leg and, soon thereafter, no Meg. elite of the American theatre for years to come. A very brief review with a strongly negative opinion of Crimes of the Heart that is rare in assessments of Henleys play. And while Henley has broadened the geographic scope of the play by bringing you "offstage" (to the jailhouse, the lake, the hospital), her storytelling is still wedded to the theater -- the pivotal events are mostly recounted in flashback. Sugar and spice and every known vice, the article begins; thats what Beth Henleys plays are made of. Corliss observed that Henleys plays are deceptively simple. Beth Henley in Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, Beach Tree Book, 1987, pp. And Babe, the youngest, has just been arrested for the murder of her abusive husband, Zackery Bottrelle. There is a thud from upstairs; Babe comes down with a broken piece of rope around her neck. 25, no. Henley challenges the audiences sense of good and evil by making them like characters who have committed crimes of passion. As Spacek, Lange and Keaton clamor for attention, "Crimes of the Heart" becomes less a movie than a three-ring circus, and ringmaster Beresford does little to direct your gaze. She fears continuing the one romantic relationship, with a Charlie Hill from Memphis, which has gone well for her in recent years. Chick shows obvious displeasure for Meg, and for Babe, who doesnt understand how serious the situation is. Lenny and Chick run out after a phone call from a neighbor having an emergency. But Henley's attempts to open up her own play are less successful. The many published interviews of Henley suggests that she attempts not to take negative reviews to heart: in The Playwrights Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Dramatists, she observed with humor that H. . Barnette arrives; he states that hes been able to dig up enough scandal about Zackery to force him to settle the case out of court. Its sad. Spinotti's light re-creates the Mississippi heat without ever becoming bland or bleached out, and Beresford frequently keeps you at a daring distance, using production designer Ken Adam's architecture as a kind of proscenium arch. She also wrote the screenplay for Nobodys Fool (as well as screen adaptations of her own plays) and collaborated with Budge Threlkeld on the Public Broadcasting Systems Survival Guides and with David Byrne and Stephen Tobolowsky on the screenplay for Byrnes 1986 film True Stories. ." The play has to fight its way through the opening half hour or so of this production before it lets the author establish what she is getting atthat, under this molasses meandering, there is madness, stark madness. While Kauffmann did identify some perceived faults in Henleys technique, he stated that overall, she has struck a rich, if not Lenny, in particular, resents having had to take upon herself so much responsibility for the family (especially for Old Granddaddy). Through this process, Henley suggests the sheer complexity of human psychology and behaviorthat often, actions cannot be easily labeled good or evil in a strict sense. HISTORICAL CONTEXT . 22, no. She is a very demanding relative, extremely concerned about the communitys opinion of her. Corliss stated concisely and cleverly the complexities of Henleys work. Children under 13 should be accompanied by a parent. The result is that her characters seem stilted and artificial. Join StageAgent today and unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. As an eleven year-old child, Meg discovered the body of their mother (and that of the family cat) following her suicide. In "Crimes of the Heart" and, for that matter, in her entire career, Spacek never strikes a false note. At first, the only explanation she gives for the act is the defiant statement: I didnt like his looks! Summary: Three eccentric sisters from a small Southern town are rocked by scandal when Babe, the youngest, shoots her husband. Barnette reveals that hes taken Babes case partly because he has a personal vendetta against Zackery, Babes husband. Babe admits shes protecting someone: Willie Jay, a fifteen year-old African American boy with whom Babe had been having an affair. Meg then comes home and listens to the news about what Babe did; he shot her husband. . Beth Henley embraces them. With the possible exception of Chick, whose exaggerated concern for what is proper provides a foil to Lenny and her sisters, Henleys characters seem tangibly human despite the bizarre circumstances in which the audience sees them. A rare interview conducted before Henley won the Pulitzer Prize for Crimes of the Heart. Betsko, Kathleen, and Rachel Koenig. And though the action takes place mostly in the MaGraths' rickety old mansion, the movie never seems cramped or claustrophobic -- Beresford's fluid angles and gliding camera make the story cinematic. Why do you think Henley chose to set. While this macabre humor is often associated with the Southern Gothic movement in literature, Henleys dramatic technique is difficult to qualify as being strongly of one theatrical bent or another. The Miss Firecracker Contest was adapted into a film in 1988, starring Holly Hunter. Writing in the Southern Quarterly, Nancy Hargrove, for example, examined Henleys vision of human experience in several of her plays, finding it essentially a tragicomic one, revealing . When Babe reveals to Meg her affair with Willie Jay, she admits that shes so worried about his getting public exposure. This is a necessary concern for public opinion, as Willie Jay might physically be in danger as a result of such exposure. She defies him to do so and hangs up the phone, but she is clearly disturbed by the threat. Beth Henley in Mississippi Writers Talking, University Press of Mississippi, 1982, pp. Chick, meanwhile, has what Henley characterizes as an unhealthy concern for public perceptionshe cares much more about what the rest of the town thinks of her than she does about any of her cousins. A Play that Proves Theres No Explaining Awards in the Christian Science Monitor, November 9, 1981, p. 20. Pygmalion is a comedy about a phonetics expert who, as a kind of social experiment, attempts to make a lady out of a, INTRODUCTION Crimes of the Heart is a truly tender read about three sisters. The time of the play is Five years after Hurricane Camille, but in Hazlehurst there are always disasters, be they ever so humble. When you cast, as the sisters, three of the biggest actresses in Hollywood, you take one more giant step away from reality, and it doesn't help that Beresford rarely molds them into an ensemble. I have only one fearthat this clearly autobiographical play may be stocked with the riches of youthful memories that many playwrights cannot duplicate in subsequent works. Evening of the same day. Nevertheless, Henley shares with these playwrights, and others of the Absurd, a need to express the dark humor inherent in the struggle to create meaning out of life. Lenny expresses a vision of the three sisters smiling and laughing together . This theatrical dialect, combined with Henleys unlikely dramatic alliance between the conventions of the naturalistic play and the unconventional protagonists of absurdist comedy gives Henley what Haller called her idiosyncratic voice, which audiences have found so refreshing. "Crimes of the Heart" is rated PG-13 and contains some profanity. can be glimpsed through the sisters remarkable endurance of suffering and their eventual move toward familial trust and unity. Henleys later characters, according to Harbin, possess little potential for change, limiting Henleys success in finding fresh explorations of [her] ideas. With this nuanced view, Harbin nevertheless conforms to the prevailing critical view Two Cheers for Two Plays in the Saturday Review, Vol. Thompson, Lou. . Of her eccentric brand of humor Henley, quoted in Mississippi Writers Talking, suspected that I guess maybe thats just inbred in the South. (Names have a way of being transsexual in Hazlehurst.) The play was chosen as co-winner for 1977-78 and performed in February, 1979, at the companys annual festival of New American Plays. 4, 1984, pp. . When it did, in November, 1981, the play was a smash success, playing for 535 performances and spawning many other successful regional productions. I regret, Heilpern wrote, it left me mostly cold. It is interesting to consider whether, as Heilpern mused, he found the play bizarre and unsatisfying because as a British critic he suffered from a serious culture gap. Instead of a complex, illuminating play (as so many American critics found (Crimes of the Heart), Heilpern saw only unbelievable characters whose lives were a mere farce. MARY CHASE 1944 The article does contain some of Henleys strongest comments on the state of the American theatre, particularly Broadway. An ambitious, talented attorney, Barnette views Babes case as a chance to exact his personal revenge on Zackery. Feingold finds the play completely disingenuous, even insulting. In a rare example of reverse adaptation from drama to fiction, Claudia Reilly published in 1986 a novel, Research the destructive effects of Hurricane Camille, which in 1969 traveled 1,800 kilometers along a broad arc from Louisiana to Virginia. Doc is Megs old boyfriend. While the characters eat compulsively throughout, foraging in an attempt to fill the void in the spirita hunger of the heart mistaken for hunger of the stomach, the sisters share Lennys birthday cake at the end of the play to celebrate their new lives.. Oliva, Judy Lee. Ludicrously horrifying honesty is., Because of the distinctive balance that Henley strikesbetween comedy and tragedy, character and plot, conflict and resolutionthe playwright whose technique Henleys most resembles may be Chekhov (although her sense of humor is decidedly more macabre and expressed in more explicit ways). From time to time a play comes along that restores ones faith in our theater, that justifies endless evenings spent, like some unfortunate Beckett character, chin-deep in trash. Speaking of Babe in particular, Henley said in Saturday Review: I thought Id like to write about somebody who shoots somebody else just for being mean. Corliss, Richard. Crimes of the Heart Beth Henley 3.81 6,943 ratings138 reviews This drama in three acts won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1981. Lenny wonders at one point: Why, do you remember how Meg always got to wear twelve jingle bells on her petticoats, while we were only allowed to wear three apiece? . She fled the small town of Hazlehurst, Mississippi in order to become a hit singer.. Their lives are lavish with incident, their idiosyncrasies insidiously compelling, their mutual loyalty and help (though often frazzled) able to nudge heartbreak toward heart-lift. INTRODUCTION Crimes of the Heart Monologues Crimes of the Heart is a three-act play by Beth Henley. Crimes of the Heart is about all those crimes that people commit every day. Meg, however, at least to Lenny and Babe, appears to have had endless opportunity. (The title refers to the musical Merrily We Roll Along, which Feingold also discussed in the review.) Crimes of the Heart written by Beth Henley (Meg is heard singing a loud happy song.Babe then arrives and excited to see his.. st. The major thing he did, Barnette says, was to ruin my fathers life. Barnette also seems to have a strong attraction to Babe, whom he remembers distinctly from a chance meeting at a Christmas bazaar. Wanting to tell someone, she runs out back to find Babe. FURTHE, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/crimes-heart. How spontaneousor notis each one? Willie Jay, meanwhile, will be sent North to live in safety. At the end of Crimes of the Heart, at least, the sisters have found a kind of unity in the face of adversity. And Babe, the youngest, has just been arrested for the murder of . Exhausted by their traumatic night, Lenny and Babe break down in hysterical laughter telling Meg the news about their grandfather. Barnette leaves; so does Meg, to pick up Lennys late birthday cake. Henley explores the pain of life by piling up tragedies on her characters in a manner some critics have found excessive, but she does so with a dark and penetrating sense of humor which audiencesas the plays success has demonstratedfound to be a fresh perspective in the American theatre. When news is published of Babes shooting of Zackery, Chicks primary concern is how shes gonna continue holding my head up high in this community. Chick is critical of all aspects of the MaGraths family and is always bringing up past tragedies such as the mothers suicide. Babe also begins revealing to her sister more about shooting her husband. The South of Crimes of the Heart, meanwhile, seems largely unaffected by the civil rights movement, large-scale economic development, or other factors of what has often been called an era of unprecedented change in the South. In the following review, Simon applauds Crimes of the Heart, asserting that the play bursts with energy, merriment, sagacity, and, best of all, a generosity toward people and life that many good writers achieve only in their most mature offerings, if at all.. Offbeatbut a Beat Too Far in the New York Times, November 15, 1981, p. D3. Babe, feeling enlightened, says she knows why their mother killed the cat along with herself; not because she hated it but because she loved it and was afraid of dying all alone. Meg comforts Babe by convincing her Zackery wont be able to make good on his threat. Babe rates only local headlines. . While the family is often portrayed by Henley as simply another source of pain, Harbin felt that Crimes of the Heart differs from her other plays in that a faith in the human spirit. Crimes of the Heart Monologues - Read online for free. The other sisters have their own difficultiesMegs Hollywood singing career is a As Henley herself put it, with typically wry humor, winning the Pulitzer Prize means Ill never have to work in a dog-food factory again (Haller 44). Crimes of the Heart Play Writers: Beth Henley Monologues Start: After I shot Zackery, I put the g. Rebecca "Babe" Botrelle (nee Magrath) Crimes of the Heart 6 All monologues are property and copyright of their owners. . A more recent assessment which includes Henleys play Abundance, an epic play spanning 25 years in the lives of two pioneer women in the nineteenth century. The U.S. government blamed the Arabs for the crisis, but American public opinion also held U.S. companies responsible for manipulating prices and supplies to corporate advantage. Lenny and Babe find many of Megs actions (abandoning Doc after his accident, lying to Granddaddy about her career in Hollywood) to be dishonest and selfish, but the sisters eventually learn to understand Megs motivations and to forgive her. Crimes of the Heart went on to garner the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New American Play, a Gugenheim Award, and a Tony nomination. Oh, it's a wonderful morning! When it was produced at SMU her senior year, she modestly used the pseudonym Amy Peach. Crimes of the heart beth henley script. //]]>. STYLE Her southern heritage has played a large role in the setting and themes of her writing, as well as the critical response she has receivedshe is often categorized as a writer of the Southern Gothic tradition. In particular, Henleys treatment of the tragic and grotesque with humor startled audiences and critics (who were either pleasantly surprised, or unpleasantly shocked). I Go with What Im Feeling in Time, February 8, 1982, p. 80. At the same time, however, McDonnell observed many important similarities, including their remarkable gift for storytelling, their use of family drama as a framework, their sensitive delineation of character and relationships, their employment of bizarre Gothic humor and their use of the southern vernacular to demonstrate the poetic lyricism of the commonplace., The failure of Henleys play The Wake of Jamey Foster on Broadway, and the mixed success of her later plays, would seem to lend some credence to John Simons fear that Henley might never again be able to match the success of Crimes of the Heart. Willer-Moul, Cynthia. 428 b.c.e. Just this one moment and we were all laughing. In addition to drawing strength from one another, finding a unity that they had previously lacked, the sisters appear finally to have overcome much of their pain (and this despite the fact that many of the plays conflicts are left unresolved). It opens five years after Hurricane Camille, in a Mississippi town called Hazlehurst. A review of three Broadway productions, with brief comments on Crimes of the Heart. The play was eventually produced in the Actors Theatre of Louisvilles 1979 Festival of New Plays. At the end of 1980, Crimes of the Heart was produced off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club for a limited, sold-out, engagement of thirty-two performances. Contrast Lennys and Megs life strategies: how do they each view responsibility, career, family, romance? The most remarkable thing about "Crimes of the Heart" is the way Spacek blows both of these powerhouses off the screen. CRIMES OF THE HEART: Babe tells the court what happened after shooting her husband. By the conclusion of Crimes of the Heart, however, hysterical laughter has been supplanted by an almost serene sense of joyhowever mild or fleeting. Chick returns to the house, accompanying Babe. she is exuberant! Consider Babes legal position at the end of the play. At the same time, however, it is difficult not to find her unbelievably denseor, from a dramatic perspective, becoming more of a caricature to serve Henleys comedic ends than a fully-realized, human character. The hope is that if you can pin down these emotions and express them accurately, you will somehow be absolved.. sisters break into hysterical laughter. . Hargrove offered one possible explanation for this phenomenon, finding that one of the real strengths of Henleys work is her use of realistic details from everyday life, particularly in the actions of the characters. Her next play, The Debutante Ball, was better received, and throughout the last decade Henley has remained a productive and successful writer for Broadway, the regional theatres, and film. Perhaps even stronger than these reminders of physical death, however, are the images of emotional or spiritual death in the play. never at any point coming close to the truth of their lives. Feingolds opinion, that the tinny effect of Crimes of the Heart is happily mitigated, in the current production, by Melvin Bernhardts staging and by the magical performances of the cast, is thus diametrically opposed to Kauffmann, who praised the play but criticized the production. Lenny Magrath is a thirty-year-elderly person. And all of it is demented, funny, and, unbelievable as this may sound, totally believable. Chicks voice is heard almost immediately; her questions reveal that grandpa is in a coma and will likely not live. . CHARACTERS Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Her sisters have forgotten her birthday, only compounding her sense of rejection. Can you use a glass?. Crazy things happen in Hazlehurst: Pa MaGrath ran out on his family; Ma MaGrath hanged her cat and then hanged herself next to it, thus earning nationwide publicity. Barnette is interviewing Babe about the case. Meg: I dont know. Lenny enters, also weary. At the start of the play, she has shot her husband, Zackery, a powerful and wealthy lawyer. Henley was the first woman to win the Pulitzer for Drama in twenty-three years, and her play was the first ever to win before opening on Broadway. Babe follows, to comfort her. (They finish their drinks in silence) Doc: Is that what I said? When Lenny ponders why should Old Grandmama let her sew twelve golden jingle bells on her petticoats and us only three? this is not a minor issue for her and Babe. The content of those monologues only makes matters worse. Many critics have joined Haller in finding in Henleys work elements of the Theatre of the Absurd, which presented a vision of a disordered universe in which characters are isolated from one another and are incapable of meaningful action. He wrote that it gives the impression of gossiping about its characters rather than presenting them . Walter Kerr of the New York Times felt that Henley had simply gone too far in her attempts to wring humor out of the tragic, falling into a beginners habit of never letting well enough alone, of taking a perfectly genuine bit of observation and doubling and tripling it until its compounded itself into parody. Throughout the evening, Kerr recalled, I also found myself, rather too often and in spite of everything, disbelievingsimply and flatly disbelieving. In making his criticism, however, Kerr observed that this is scarcely the prevailing opinion on Henleys play. Meanwhile, baseball player Hank Aarons breaking of Babe Ruths career home-run title in 1974 was a significant and uplifting achievement, but its painful post-scriptthe numerous death threats Aaron received from racists who did not feel it was proper for a black athlete to earn such a titlesuggests that bigoted ideas of race in America were, sadly, slow to change. Meg:Good morning! While the mistakes her characters have made are the source of both the conflict and the humor of Crimes of the Heart, Henley nevertheless treats these characters with great sympathy. PLOT SUMMARY Lenny, the eldest, never left Hazelhurst -- she is the caretaker of the sisters' cantankerous Old Granddaddy. Crimes of the Heart is a 1986 American dark comedy film directed by Bruce Beresford from a screenplay written by Beth Henley adapted from her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1979 play of the same name.It stars Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, Tess Harper, and Hurd Hatfield.The film's narrative follows the Magrath sisters, Babe, Lenny and Meg, who reunite in their family home in . From your own perspective, how do you think Babe will change as a result of this event and what do you feel her future should rightly be? Doc Porter, an old boyfriend of the other McGrath sister, Meg, arrives, and Chick leaves to pick up Babe. because of their human needs and struggles. HISTORICAL CONTEXT 1974 marked a midpoint in the campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which declared: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. The amendment was originally passed by the Senate in March, 1972, and by the end of 1974, thirty-one states had ratified it, with a total of thirty-eight needed. Crimes of the Heart is a play by American playwright Beth Henley. Beth henley crimes of the heart pdf. The other MaGrath sisters share a perception that Meg has always received preferential treatment in life. Lenny is frustrated after years of carrying heavy burdens of responsibility; most recently, she has been caring for Old Granddaddy, sleeping on a cot in the kitchen to be near him. The playwrights share their remarkable gift . . Hargrove, Nancy D. The Tragicomic Vision of Beth Henleys Drama in the Southern Quarterly, Vol. Her characters unobtrusively, but constantly are doing the mundane things that go on in daily life., The roots of our modern theatre in ancient Greece established a strict divide between comedy and tragedy (treating them as separate and distinct genres); more than two thousand years later, reactions to Henleys technique suggest the powerful legacy of this separation. Gussow wrote that among the numerous women finding success as playwrights the most dissimilar may be Marsha Norman and Beth Henley. Lisa J. McDonnell picked up this theme several years later in an issue of the Southern Quarterly, agreeing that there are important differences between the two playwrights, but exploring them in much more depth than Gussow was able to do in his article. In the end, however, they manage to come together in a moment of unity and joy despite their difficulties. A. Monologues are presented on StageAgent for educational purposes only. Babe (who would like to be a saxophonist) is in serious trouble: She needs the best lawyer in town, but that happens to be the husband she shot. . While Gussows article marked an important transition in the contemporary American theatre, it has been widely rebutted, found by many to be more notable for its omissions than its conclusions according to Billy J. Harbin in the Southern Quarterly. CHARACTERS Far from finding in Crimes of the Heart a kind of parody, they have elucidated how real Henleys characters seem. Lenny loves her sisters but is also jealous of them, especially Meg, whom she feels received preferential treatment during their upbringing. Encyclopedia.com. Gussow, Mel. In an unfilled kitchen she attempts to stick a birthday flame into a treat, yet it disintegrates. Enjoying one anothers company at last, they decide to play cards, when Doc phones and is invited over by Meg. . Many people now have the perception (as Meg and Lenny discuss) that Meg baited Doc into staying there with her. Doc, who now has his own wife and children, nevertheless remains close to the MaGrath family. Crimes of the Heart, according to Henleys stage directions, takes place [i]n the fall, five years after Hurricane Camille. This would set the play in 1974, in the midst of significant upheavals in American society. . She submitted it to several regional theatres for consideration without success. She makes another attempt to commit suicide, on-stage, by sticking her head in the oven. An article published a week before Crimes of the Hearts Broadway opening, containing much of the same biographical information found in more detail in later sources. Despite the many troubles hanging over them, the play ends with the MaGrath sisters smiling and laughing together for a moment, in a magical, golden, sparkling glimmer.. And if he cant take it, if it sends him into a coma, thats just too damn bad., Struck by the absurdity of this comment (for Meg, unlike Lenny and Babe, does not yet know that her grandfather already is in a coma), Megs. Crimes of the Heart was adapted as a film in 1986, directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, and Sam Shepard. Often compared to the work of other Southern Gothic writers like Eudora Welty and Flannery OConnor, Henleys play is widely appreciated for its compassionate look at good country people whose lives have gone wrong. Stanley Kauffmann wrote in the Saturday Review assessment of the Broadway production that Crimes moves to no real resolution, but this is part of its power. Meg has also been surrounded by men all her life, while Lenny has feared rejection from the opposite sex and become withdrawn as a result. . I just didnt like his stinking looks! Eventually, she reveals that the shooting was the result of her anger at Zackerys cruel treatment both of her and of Willie Jay, a fifteen year-old African American boy with whom Babe had been carrying on an affair. It may also be a reflection of Henleys perspective on small-town life in the South, where, she feels, people more commonly come together to talk about their own lives and tell stories rather than watch television or discuss the national events being covered in the media. A review of the Broadway production of Crimes of the Heart. As Scott Haller observed in Saturday Review, however, Henleys purpose is not the resurrection of this tradition but the ransacking of it. Mary Coyle Chases Harvey has been an American favorite since it was first brought to the Broadway stage in 1944. Babe shows Meg the envelope of incriminating photographs. then obviously race is important because there is a segregated bigoted thing going on., Beth Henley did not initially have success finding a theatre willing to produce Crimes of the Heart, until the plays acceptance by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. What are the strongest bonds between the sisters, and what are their sources of conflict? In an empty kitchen she tries to stick a birthday candle into a cookie, but it crumbles. Source: Christopher Busiel, in an essay for Drama for Students, Gale, 1997. Meg finds her there and pulls her out. Accompanying the exploration of good and evil in Crimes of the Heart are its insights into violence and cruelty. Not all the Broadway reviews, however, were positive. Doc: Shes fine. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. THEMES conflicts that have unfolded in the course of the play, it does endow their lives with a collective sense of hope, where before each had felt acutely the absurdity, and often the hopelessness, of life. Berkvist focused on the novelty of a playwright having such success with her first full-length play, and summarizes the positive reception of the play in Louisville and in its Off-Broadway run at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Familial Bonds in the Plays of Beth Henley in the Southern Quarterly, Vol. The production was extremely well-received, and the play was picked up by numerous regional theatres for their 1979-81 seasons. Barnette leaves and Babe reappears, confronted by Meg with the medical information. 2, January 12, 1981, pp. About a production of Chekhovs The Cherry Orchard which particularly moved her, Henley commented in The Playwrights Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Dramatists that It was just absolutely a revelation about how alive life can be and how complicated and beautiful and horrible; to deny either of those is such a loss..