Voices: Surprising Allure

Hands up. How many of you thought actor Woody Harrelson was just a balding pothead endowed with boyish charm and a sh*t-eating grin?

Nothing to be embarrassed about. That's what I thought before reading the March/April edition of Breathe Magazine.

Turns out Harrelson is a serious eco-conscious activist. He maintains a disciplined organic raw food vegan diet and drives a biodiesel VW bug around the completely solar powered Maui community where he lives. He believes so powerfully in individual action that he and his wife started VoiceYourself.com with the goal of illustrating how easy it can be to walk the walk. Surely it's easier when you're filthy rich and live in an organic farming community in Hawaii, but most of us do have room for improvement. The interview reads sincere and notably humble. Even more surprising than Harrelson's born-again sense of responsibility is the fact that he credits his epiphany to Ted Danson. Uh-huh. I don't want to talk about it. Read the article if you really want to know.

It's refreshing when someone surprises us. But the dark side is that we first must have underestimated him. The morning after I read the Harrelson article I almost gagged on my coffee when I read that Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. Given the little I really knew of the "gonzo journalist," I had no right to be surprised. Yet, I had apparently come to the conclusion that Thompson was more likely to put a bullet in a complete stranger or his best friend or maybe even his wife before he would turn the gun on himself. He must have been sick, I concluded. Didn't want to make everyone suffer a long, agonizing death or worse yet, wind up like poor food-tube tied Terry Shiavo. Wait a minute - where was I getting these ideas?

I had read a great anti-Bush essay back in November but I hadn't read a single novel. I remember a feature story on Johnny Depp when he was studying Thompson for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And of course, there was the movie itself.

I think I hated it. Don't get me wrong; I thought the acting was fantastic. The art direction was commendable. But I was appalled by Thompson's excesses and by the selfishness that justified it. I remember walking out the movie theater exit into a blinding Tucson heat. I felt nauseated, disoriented and vaguely afraid. I didn't speak for hours.

Based on that knowledge alone, a self-destructive death would seem to be the obvious choice. So why was I surprised? Maybe it was because of the respect that he garnered despite the outlandish behavior. I've read recently that he used to submit pages of upon pages of complete crap and his editors willingly sifted through it to find the gem they hoped was buried there. Celebrity alone could not inspire such tolerance. He must have been a legitimate genius journalist.

When people surprise us, it means they've stepped out of character or we've expanded our thinking. For example, when Bill O'Reilly says something genuinely compassionate, surprise is a logical response. Most intriguing is that we tend to be impressed, even when the surprising behavior disturbs us.

"I wouldn't have thought him capable of that," we might say. Clearly there was more to so-and-so than we had imagined and we therefore give him some kind credit for it.

We say it's wrong to judge people or to make assumptions about their character, but the truth, is we do it every day. We have to because there's just not enough time in the day to not apply some kind of filter. There's just no time for legitimate research. We screen people with hearsay and instinct. We subconsciously interpret nuances we don't even know we've detected. It's the body language we glimpse out of the corner of our eye. The tone of his voice on the phone. The stylishness of her outfit. The people on the fringes of our life become "the one who spits when she talks" and "the hot delivery guy." We chase down facts on those who intrigue us and the rest, like Britney Spears, are necessarily cursed to remain defined by a limited scope of knowledge.

Thanks to Breathe, Woody Harrelson has attracted more of my attention. I'll notice next time I see his name on a list or hear his voice on TV. While it's too late for Hunter S. Thompson on one hand, he's definitely attracted our attention. When someone dies, it's kind of like last call. You pay your respects which means pausing to think beyond the filters. You pick up the book you never had time to read. You open the door to surprise.


-- Alicia Grega-Pikul, 24 February 2005


Send email to: apikul@timesshamrock.com.