How to Be Bill Murray’s Herman Blume

The basic condition of mortality is imminent humiliation. However you stand and move, it must be preparation for a fall. In the interest of style, it is obligatory to practice the habits of highly effective people. But do not confuse style or competence with success, or even hope. Fastidious grooming of facial hair, consistent use of personalized letterhead, the proper stationing of the pocket kerchief, at times the Captain of Industry boardroom voice: all these are merely the confident stride towards the next catastrophe; the smarter your step onto the teeth of the rake, the more crisply the handle can whack you in the face. A caution: tension and fear will ruin the effect, turn the comedy into sadness. Hold these precariously at bay. However you stand and move, it must be in the pursuit of resignation.
Shoulders must remain mobile. Do not tense shoulders. Shoulders must be able to shift back to hold a pin-striped suit stick-straight upright, and then hunch forward to cup and light cigarette or sustain a rebuke. Arms must be allowed to flop like puppet arms. What are your arms up to, Herman? Surely nothing good. Or hold your arms a bit rigidly to your sides, hands conspicuously tense and poised, as if caught stealing a cookie or lifting a sleeping woman’s skirt.
Once the shoulders have become Herman Blume, the gaze is easy. The gaze is either directed upward in resignation or downward in shame. When looking side to side, keep the gaze indirect, furtive, embarrassed—as if anything you might see could only bring shame upon yourself or others. Where does this leave to look? Not clear. Looking is a difficult topic. Other people are mainly to be stared down or looked past. Staring down will only work short term. Looking past will only work short term. The basic condition of looking is imminent humiliation.
Now we will run. Running is interesting because it’s such an uncharacteristic release of hope and energy. Run with embarrassing verve. Running is directed towards some object that nears so quickly, brought stride by stride closer to possession or realization. Or satisfaction? Success? No, that can never be. Take long strides that risk too much, that couldn’t possibly know just where they’re planted or where they could alight. Head upright, gaze directed too far into the future. Arms very stiff, close to the body and moving out of synch with the legs. The arms reach too far forward, too, propelling the body with a headlong, dangerous quality that could be mastery or could be cluelessness. But of course these two postures—exaggerated dignity and helpless shame—these are really two sides of the same coin. Dignity is, always and only, preparation for a fall. Here comes a fence. You will half-vault/half-hump it, you will leap explosively and then somehow only slide weirdly over it on you crotch, like a pat of butter slides melting across a hot griddle. Good. Fall painfully on your shoulder but then bounce to your feet. Glance around and return to your exclusive focus on the impossible goal of love. Yes.
Listen to me, Herman. Soon you will be loved. You will stand by her, and you will realize that you can do everything that you have learned all at once: the caught-in-the-act arms, the gawky shoulders, the confounded gaze, the roosterish posturing and Chaplinesque collapse. She will look at you over her cigarette, and for a moment all these will become a kind of impossible stillness. Know absolutely that this moment can only end in ruin. Bear the weight of her gaze.