Why Six Feet Under?

Why Six Feet Under?

A very good friend of mine, Patrick, started an experiment last summer. He decided to watch the entire Dark Shadows television series and create a blog and series of videos based on his experience. I dropped in on him once while he was doing the experiment and would check out his daily blogs and videos when I had the time. He is doing another Dark Shadows experiment this summer. This one will be focused on Barnabas and his experiences with love in the series, and Patrick’s writing will be written from the perspective of Barnabas. I'm curious how this will go for him. 

What does this have to do with Six Feet Under? 

The summer of 2006 I worked for the City of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, doing Smoky Mountain Tunes and Tales, a performance-based entertainment featuring players in period dress portraying characters of various eras from the 1800s to today. I had opted to live in a cabin with two other women from the cast. This cabin was so far out in the country we had a difficult time getting a cell phone signal. We had no landline phone, cable, or internet connection. We did have a record player and some of the finest ’70s Southern and soft rock albums you have ever heard, plus a DVD player one of my roommates purchased at Wal-Mart. The same roommate had borrowed the entire five seasons of Six Feet Under. At this point the show had been off the air for a year, and I had never seen a single episode. 

I was in my final year of college as a non-traditional student studying psychology. I had wanted to become a psychologist, even though I found 90% of the people who practice in the field to be egotistical, non-empathic, unemotional know-it-alls who probably need to deal with their own issues instead of projecting them onto a group of clients at 75 to 300 bucks per hour per person. The idea of doing this with my life made my soul ache. 

Okay, again, what does this have to do with Six Feet Under? 

Halfway through that summer, my roommate Mo and I began watching Six Feet Under from the top of the series. Within a week it became a ritual for us. We would get home from work, fix something to eat, shower, and watch 6FU until the early hours of the morning. This was not an issue because our shifts with Tunes and Tales didn't have us on call until 5 PM. Six Feet Under became my entire life. I understood these characters. Mo felt such kinship with Claire. I, however, am so Brenda it frightens me...Brenda with shades of Keith. Every night Mo and I sat in our jammies with blankets and some vodka drinks as we laughed and cried to events revolving around the Fisher family and Fisher and Sons Funeral Home. 

Okay, here's where I'm going: 

Last night Patrick gifted me my second set of the entire five season box set of Six Feet Under. On my way home from Patrick’s house it hit me how much Six Feet Under changed my life. While working that summer for Smoky Mountain Tunes and Tales, I began an affair that changed how I understood people and how I view love and sex. I also realized that I truly did not want to be a therapist and that I love writing as much as I love acting. I learned that I am a writer, actor, and storyteller and that I need people in order to be the best I can be at the things I love doing. I learned that I was not as old as I felt.  But most of all, although I’d always believed I was the most screwed up person in any room, I learned that, in fact, I usually am not. Every person on this planet is more damaged than the collective can imagine. 

Yes, I hate using the word ‘damaged’ because of the connotation of an entity of lesser value, one not being worthy of full love. However, I do not believe damaged things or people decrease in worth. Quite the contrary: I believe it is the damaged people who keep us interesting as a collective and will eventually save us as a society. I think of the damaged in the same way I think of found-object art. I have a friend who works in the form, creating some of the most beautiful art I have ever seen, and when I consider that she produces beauty out of things someone else threw away, it gives me such hope for humanity. I wish more people could behave in this manner and this fashion with the human beings they encounter. What would it take for us as a whole to pick up another person from the trash bin of life and find her or his beauty...especially when such damaged individuals often cannot seem to find it in themselves? 

Six Feet Under made me remember what I love about people. It helped me open my eyes to trusting my own place in the human race. It also helped me understand that I did not have to be a psychologist to help someone in pain to see that he or she is much more than just the individual suffering alone. I can do that just as well with my writing, my acting, and my overall ability to tell a story. 

To establish grounds for my own future appeals, I should say here that each of you kids yourself if you think you are not damaged in some way. We all carry our deep wounds and fears that keep us up at night praying or scheming for justice.  In this collective truth we all suffer, and the only way we can truly overcome what is collectively sending us to the abyss is to challenge the loneliness, to open up to our fears of the truths inside each individual. As a whole we must embrace these truths without shame or judgement. People are flawed. People are in all kinds of pain. Suffering alone or in silence is what is destroying us. When we admit that we are not alone in our suffering, then and perhaps only then is it possible to find a true sense of community. We shall each die alone, so why should any of us live alone? And why should we only be worthy of companionship in the context of our positive achievements? We should be accompanied throughout all of it: The good, the bad, and even the hideous events of our lives. 

This doesn’t mean we have to luxuriate in our misery, together or alone. It means we have to look honestly at other people and really see them. It means that when you ask people how they are feeling, you better damn well mean the question and be prepared for honest answers. It also means that when someone asks you if you’re okay, you don’t just smile and give whatever bullshit reply that society has taught you is acceptable...because for me, that is not acceptable anymore. I will seek people who will be honest with me, and I will be loyal to those people. 

All of this is what I got from Six Feet Under. 

This blog will be an exorcism of my emotions about the show and the memories from my life it will bring up. It will be highly personal. But most of all, it will be honest. 

Deity of your choice help us all.