Do you feel that you have not achieved as much as you would have liked in your time on earth?
Maybe you could have put in a bit more effort at school, got the grades to make it to a high ranking university that would have lead to the dynamic career which, if you had dedicated yourself, would have given you greater resources to find a more comfortable lifestyle with a mate who is both more attractive and kind. A mate who would have provided you with a slightly more loving family than the one that now shares that less than perfect life, in that less than perfect house, in that less than perfect neighborhood that you now reside in.
Or...
Maybe you could have revised your eating, drinking and exercise habits so that you would not now be too afraid to look in the mirror at the decaying wreck of a human being that you cannot believe you have become.
Maybe you have regrets.
Dorothy Parker didn’t.
Could she have achieved more than she did?
Of course.
She never put in that extra bit of effort to write that truly great novel that she certainly was capable of. She never bettered her script for the 1937 Oscar winning version of “A Star Is Born”. Many have called her a hack who left her best work at the bottom of the bottle.
She would have been one of those kids who’s school report would have been full of “could do better’s” and “does not fulfill promise”.
Did she care?
Not a jot.
She had that thing that other hard workers often miss out on - A Life.
A life full of fun, desire, booze, disappointment and unexpected turns. A life that got her put on The Hollywood Blacklist for her political work and views. A life that when it ended she willed her estate to Martin Luther King Jnr.
“Observations” celebrates that life for all its costs.
Cheers Dorothy, may you never “Give a damn”.
OBSERVATIONS
Poem by Dorothy Parker
Performed by Yellow Note ft Parker Shipp
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again,
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much,
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn