Derek Cecil

[fluff]

Jim Prufrock




From the official site:

Derek Cecil's television credits include Pasadena, The $treet, Law & Order: SVU and The Beat.

A founding member of The Rude Mechanicals Theater Company in New York, Cecil has recently been appointed associate artistic director and will help guide the company's artistic output. With RMTC, he appeared in Plug, and also directed Largo Desolato.

Cecil has also appeared in numerous other productions on stage, including How I Fell in Love, Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls, The Lorca Play, Man and Superman, 1918 and Equus.

Born and raised in Texas, Cecil graduated from the University of Houston, as well as the American Conservatory Theater's Advanced Training Program in San Francisco.

[Google]

 

[LG.]

Ok, you guys are all going to think this is insane, but I really think that this character is named after J. Alfred Prufrock, a literary character from T. S. Elliot's poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I will laugh myself silly when they reveal on this show that his middle name is Alfred.

The first stanza may be familiar to other student of English lit:

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

The Bartleby website has the full text and also offers this explanation, which I think really ties this poem to Jim Prufrock's character in Push, NV:

This collection of poems contains one of Eliot’s first and most well-known poems, namely, the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, in which he examines, through the introspections of the narrator, the emptiness and soulless quality of the bleak social world surrounding him.

Here's a link to the text of the poem, which I read many moons ago in college:

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

We can solve this show's mystery if we really want to on this site. Then, baby, we would have scads of mad cash for tech upgrades and tons of free publicity for the site. Of course we'd have to change the catch phrase to "intelligent talk about unintelligent television shows".

[LG.]

Why didn't my link work? Hmm, how about this: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

The ending of the poem, by the way, also a serious downer:

I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me. 125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

It's a fabulous poem guys, so if nothing else, watching this show last night got me to read this poem again and hopefully by posting this I'll get a couple other people to read it too.

[fluff]

Hmmm, the ending is a bit of a downer.
I'm going to read the whole thing through and see if I can come up with anything.

Thanks for the link LG