Much That Is Hidden

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I had not heard the song "Keep Me In Your Heart" for some time when my brother reminded me about it the day Dad died. It was written by Warren Zevon after he knew he was dying from cancer. He wrote it primarily for his wife, but I'm sure he must have known what a beautiful masterpiece it was that Muse gave him for all who suffer loss.


Here is a cover of the song by LiliAna Rose, lovely of voice, face and name:

Labels: music, photography, remembrance

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Lots of good remembrances on the blogs today. The theme I am relating to best is not so much remembering what we've lost but rather what we've given away. Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart wrote one of the best essays, copied here from HuffPo:

Six years ago three thousand Americans lost their lives. They need not have. Their deaths could have been prevented. Their lives could have been saved.

The Bush administration was warned months before 9/11 that terrorists were going to attack America. They did nothing. They have yet to be held accountable for the preventable loss of American lives. Yet the administration blames its critics for not understanding the terrorist threat.

The perpetrator of those American deaths is still at large and the war to eliminate those who harbored him threatens to drag on inconclusively for many years. Instead, administration operatives, with the approval of their masters, find it convenient to use him to create fear, and therefore justify their positions of power.

The United States has suffered more than 30,000 casualties in another war that had nothing to do with those attacks. This folly is producing more haters of America than it can ever possibly eliminate.

The backbone of domestic security, the National Guard, is deployed in that war and is thus not at home being trained, equipped, and deployed to protect America.

The consolidation of federal border protection and attack response in a single agency did not begin until at least 18 months after it was proposed and, six years later, it has proved to be woefully inadequate, in large part because those responsible for its administration possess a political philosophy that does not believe government can or should be effective. And they use every occasion to prove it.

The U.S. is currently pursuing a foreign policy in the Middle East and throughout the Arab world that is dementedly designed to promote a clash of civilizations. When this policy produces further attacks, our current policy makers will respond that this is what to expect from those who hate America and only tough-minded conservatives know how to deal with them.

Those who claim to understand terrorism and the use of force, meanwhile, have so exhausted our combat forces that our true national security is greatly at risk and our nation is weakened.

This administration stands indicted for incompetence and mendacity. That it still commands the loyalty of even a quarter of our fellow citizens is testament to the persistence of willful ignorance. Against all the facts assembled in this indictment, that the administration's operatives can still make claims on strength, security, and determination is chutzpah on stilts.

That the media still treat these operatives and spokespersons, and indeed the president himself, seriously is witness to their desire for "access" and "sources" rather than their commitment to the truth.

America is today under the steady gaze of billions of the world's citizens and even more under the examining lens of history. Nothing is more difficult than to admit that we made a tragic mistake in selecting our leaders. But that is the first step toward redemption. Absolute rejection of those who lay claim to ownership of security is the next.

We are too old to behave as adolescents any longer. That includes particularly our president. America must grow up. We must redeem ourselves in the name of those who lost their lives unnecessarily six years ago. We must reclaim our dignity and our honor from those who have neither.

And here is my annual perspective check from that watershed time (cut me some slack on my over-the-top newscaster tone).
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Labels: death, facts, histoire, justice, life, madness, martyrdom, milestones, politix, religion, remembrance, terms of enragement, tragedy, turrists, war, weaponry, words

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What five dead people would you want to have as dinner guests? The whole of that discussion is for another day, but with convergent emotions I can now say with confidence that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has made the list.

Vonnegut is one of those writers that writers like me (fanciful dreamers, I surmise) read and think, “Oh great genie in the bottle, give me this!” For a hippie wannabe born about 10 years too late, Slaughterhouse Five continued the subversive assault that my youthful skepticism, pessimism and cynicism had brought feebly against the Establishment. The man had what I would (admittedly, oxymoronically) call an even-tempered rage. Combined with a switchblade wit, he penned what are undoubtedly some of the most excellent novels of the late twentieth century (Modern Library ranks S5 18th on its list of the hundred best novels of 20th-century American literature). But in the midst of his irreverent skewering of hypocrites, he maintained a friendliness in his writing, expressing his own nuanced humanist views through sympathetic characters, as with two of my favorites, Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater.

I have more Vonnegut to read, that is certain. And I regret not having taken the opportunity to attend a lecture he gave within driving distance years ago. His craft was the second major influence in my life. The first puts me in total agreement with the cosmic view he expressed as his epitaph. “The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”

Congratulations old man, you have become unstuck in time. You had a good run even if, as with countless others, the finish line seemed to come up a little too quick. Oh, and set a place for me, if you please, right next to our compadre Mr. Twain.

“If you really want to disappoint your parents, and don't have the nerve to be gay, go into the arts.”

“The good Earth, we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.”

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”

“Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

Labels: remembrance, writing

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"Wait! Where are you going? I was going to make Espresso!"

I continue posting with an unfortunate nexus, that being the death of Peter Boyle, one of my favorite actors - the connection being that John Lennon was best man at Peter’s wedding. “We were both seekers after a truth, looking for a quick way to enlightenment,” Peter once said of Lennon.

Peter, 71, died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

His most famous film role is arguably that of the monster in Mel Brooks’ 1974 Young Frankenstein, with it’s classic scene of Peter and Gene Wilder decked out in tails, tapping (and bellowing) out their wacky version of Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ On The Ritz.

The story of how he met his wife Loraine Alterman is somewhat famous. As a reporter for Rolling Stone, she was visiting on the set of Young Frankenstein and Boyle, still in monster makeup, asked her for a date.

His last role, that of the churlish and vinegary Frank Barone in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, a role he played for 10 years, is also widely known.

“He's just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs,” Peter once said of Frank, through whom he inserted the signature phrase “Holy Crap!” at the most comically opportune times.

When Peter tried out for the role, however, he was kept waiting for his audition - and he was not happy. “He came in all hot and angry,” recalled the show's creator, Phil Rosenthal, “and I hired him because I was afraid of him. But I knew right away that he had a comic presence.”

Co-star Doris Roberts, who played his wife Marie on Raymond said Peter was not at all like the character he played on television. “He was a brilliant actor, a gentleman, incredibly intelligent, wonderfully well read and a loving friend.”

The son of a local TV personality in Philadelphia, Peter was educated in Roman Catholic schools and spent three years in a monastery before abandoning his religious studies. He later described the experience as similar to living in the Middle Ages. He left to become an actor when he “felt the normal pull of the world and the flesh.”

He traveled to New York to study with famed actress/teacher Uta Hagen, supporting himself for five years with various jobs, including postal worker, waiter, maitre d' and office temp. Finally, he was cast in a road company version of The Odd Couple. When the play reached Chicago he quit to study with that city's famed improvisational troupe Second City. Upon returning to New York, he began to land roles in TV commercials, off-Broadway plays and finally films.

His early roles had him typecast in tough, irascible roles, but he began to escape that image as Robert Redford's campaign manager in The Candidate and left it behind entirely after Young Frankenstein. He won an Emmy in 1996 for his guest-starring role as a morose clairvoyant in an episode of The X Files, in which he uttered the hilarious line, “Sometimes it seems like everyone is having sex but me.” He also received Emmy nominations Everybody Loves Raymond and for the 1977 TV film Tail Gunner Joe, in which he played Sen. Joseph McCarthy. In Martin Scorcese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver he played philosopher cabbie Wizard, who counseled Robert DeNiro’s violent Travis Bickle with the sage advice, “You get a job. You become the job.” He did dozens of other films, including the two classic comedies Johnny Dangerously and Yellowbeard.

In 1990 Peter had a stroke and couldn't talk for six months. In 1999, he had a heart attack on the Raymond set. He soon regained his health, however, and returned to the series.

Despite his work in Everybody Loves Raymond and other Hollywood productions, Peter made New York City his home. He and his wife had two daughters, Lucy and Amy.

Thanks to the Associated Press and Internet Movie Database for contributing nearly all of this post. I love you guys.

Labels: arts, comedy, film, Holy Crap, remembrance, TV

While I'm on he subject of anniversaries, today marks an inauspicious one, that of the murder of John Lennon. In today's HuffPo RJ Eskow reminded me of just why I miss my favorite ex-Beatle so much. Eskow, having lived in New York and having actually seen the Beatles, gives a full 26 reasons why he does - one for each year since Lennon was gunned down in yet another senseless assassination in modern America. Here are some I can relate to:

That screaming wail that opens "Mr. Moonlight"

The way his primal album anticipated punk music

Not being afraid to appear ridiculous in pursuit of a good cause

Always being willing to care too much, rather than too little

Embodying the very opposite of "ironic detachment," which has been the definition of what it means to be "hip" for far too long

Being publicly insecure ("I'm a good guitar player," he said in an interview. "I know I'm not technically that great, but Clapton says I'm good")

Writing simple sounding but deceptively complicated melodies

The fact that "Sexy Sadie" was originally called "Maharishi" (explains a lot, doesn't it?)

Using Asian scales in songs like "Oh My Love"

Writing a song about karma - and then having Phil Spector produce it

Having the greatest voice in rock and roll

That 3/4-size Rickenbacker (if anybody wants to buy me one, I'll send you my address)

That single-cutaway Les Paul Junior (see #18, above)

His dedication to honesty

Being prepared to go to Memphis and march with the laundry and restaurant workers who were out on strike (as he was reportedly about to do at the time of his death)

The last line in "Working Class Hero," which was something of a "Twilight Zone" ending: "If you want to be a hero, then just follow me" ...

Embracing each new passion without hesitation, even if it contradicted the one that preceded it. "The way to know God," said Van Gogh, "is to love many things." (sorry, John!)

Eskow caps off his post with a great anecdote about seeing Lennon at Max's Kansas City.

Thanks RJ, even though it wasn't enough for me.

(check out RJ Eskow's blog A Night Light)
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Labels: arts, guitar, Maharishi, music, Nothing about Yoko, remembrance