When I was younger, much younger, I had the idea of naming the white boy rhythm and blues band I was starting The Intruders. The name was perfect for the type of band we were to be: dangerous, rude, aggressive, impertinent. Alas, I discovered that there was already a sweet soul vocal group of this name, and I had to give up the whole idea of competing with the Rolling Stones and the Stranglers, and the...
You can believe this story or not, (the alternate name considered was The Tormentors), but believe me when I say that the idea of the intruder has haunted me for a long while. It is a common theme of course. What would the Western literature be without the Intruder? Odysseus was an intruder, as were Don Quixote, and Count of Monte Cristo.
Closer to our modern, visual imaginations, John Wayne was an intruder into those corrupt towns of his early Western films, the towns he would save from themselves. Gary Cooper, playing the luckless, if brave, sheriff Will Kane in High Noon, turned out to be an intruder in his own town. (John Wayne, by the way, was said to have hated High Noon, and the happy John Ford Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was supposed to be his answer to the bleakness of High Noon.) So was J.J.Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, who ended up contributing to the drama's tragedy, as he had done sometime in the past, we learned. Intruder John Wayne might have won in all those fairy tales, but Will Kane and J.J.Gittes clearly lost in their own dark, arguably, more realistic, dramas. One of the most interesting and disturbing films about an intruder was Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema with Terrence Stamp playing a mysterious stranger who intrudes on the lives of a wealthy Milanese family. Here's a link to a 1969 interview with the director.
The thought of the intruder came back to me recently, as I reviewed some past intrusions, as it were, into my life, and my own intrusions into others' lives. There were times when I was, was seen, or was treated as a nuisance, a disruptor, an intruder. Just in case you were wondering, by some miracle, everyone survived all those intrusions.
I spoke about it to a friend one recent evening after six, and this is what he said: "The problem is that the people we meet at our age, that is people no longer in their teens or twenties, the people that we find interesting, worth knowing, all have complicated present lives and life histories, and however delicately, carefully we approach them, get involved with them, we cannot help but become intruders into those lives, if we ever hope to establish deeper relationships with them, whether friends or lovers. However complicated or simple their lives are, we are intruding into them."
"Intrusion is the word to remember", he added, emphatically, "This is especially true of women. You and I, men in general, can wipe our slates clean and start all over again, the past being little more than a prologue. For one reason or another, women can't do that."
"In kindergarten", I said, "everyone is your friend. Every kid, there or out on the street or playground, is your friend. Once out of the kindergarten, or perhaps grade school, things become complicated. Once you've reached the middle age, it's no easier to make friends out here than it is in prison. People start making rules for themselves: can't (or can) make friends at work, can (or can't) make friends in neighbourhood, at a cafe, and so on."
"Exactly," he agreed, "and then, anyone who's overly friendly outside of those arbitrary rules you've established for yourself, becomes an unwelcome intruder. It takes an extraordinary skill to steer those waters, and I am unable to advise you. The baggage, the obligations, the habits, the past experiences, the delusions that people carry, all make you want to go back to the kindergarten and start all over again. I know you haven't given up, but your heartbreaks and disappointments only help to prove my words."
"I hope you won't give up, but you'd better hope you'll catch that young Monica Vitti on the train home again", he added, finishing his strong drink.
