On May 13, 1979 (Mother’s Day that year) I took off on a cross-country bicycle trip by myself from Providence, Rhode Island to San Francisco, California. I mapped out an up-and-down, zig-zag route so I’d be able to visit friends and relatives as well as see theatre and sights from Canada to the deep south to the far west. The places I stayed varied from bedrooms to my tent, trailers, hostels, empty model homes, the floor of a grain mill, and a university dorm couch. Along the way I would spend time with family and friends, sometimes interrupting my trip for a few days to a week. I even took a tangential trip to Illinois in the midst of the ride to be Best Man in the wedding of the first man I ever slept with. More of that anon. Though there were certain parts of the country I had no intention of riding across -- Texas, for example, as well as the desert from Arizona to California – I did end up riding 3,400 miles. It was a grand and varied adventure and I cannot get my mind around the idea that 30 years have passed since then.
In addition to other blog writing in the coming months, I intend to include a daily check-in from the small journal I kept on that trip. I reserve the right to edit, but I’ll try to keep the editting to a minimum with some background information when needed. Following is the first installment I made in the small beige steno pad which I tucked into the side pack hitched to my dependable Fuji cross country bike through rain and wind and sun:
“Prologue May 12, 1979
Providence – rainy, heavy, off & on humid & cool. Rain forecast for tomorrow & no bed in Northhampton, but I’m going. Good test, I suppose. Caution advised though fortune & Tarot are seemingly on my side. Feel fat, jittery – want to get going. Set for rain, packed efficiently.
Nice day with Greg – breakfast, paddle boat, “Manhattan”, Chinese food & preparations. Now beers & the future. I love him, but thoughts are basicly on tomorrow & days to come. God bless Greg – (have) a good summer & don’t forget me.”
I was 24 and in my first gay relationship with a beautiful, kind hearted black man named Greg, also from Indiana. We’d met in Trinity Square’s production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that past autumn; Trinity was the regional theatre in which I was a member. In addition to acting, Greg was a fantastic singer, an expert tailor (picked up from his father), and a trained instructor for disabled patients at the local hospital. I was pretty frisky sexually that first autumn in Rhode Island and couldn’t imagine being with just one man, but we decided to move in with one another and give it a go. Over the course of the ride, we had decided to have an “agreement” and open the relationship somewhat. I’m sure I had some say in that matter.
What brought about this idea to ride cross country? It was a confluence of things. I’d always loved bicycle riding. Growing up, I used to tool all over the place on our family’s gold Schwinn tandem bike, rarely with another rider. I’d take off to my dad’s drugstore, 10 miles out in the “country” on highway 3. (“country” that doesn’t exist anymore replaced by non-stop developments.) Or I’d go across to the south side of town to visit my friend Jeff Silverman and then call my mom to tell her what I’d done. She was none too pleased.
The idea of a cross country trip had been swimming around in my mind for awhile. I forget what had set that in motion, but an extra fanning to that ember came from Ken Cheeseman, a student at the Trinity Conservatory, who had made several cross country trips himself and who became a kind of mentor/factotum and began suggesting different routes. That winter, I just decided to do it and bought a bike and sent off for the needed packs and tent and sleeping bag. I was in good shape, but once the equipment arrived, Ken urged me to get used to the difference in weight disbursement on the bike by taking rides fully packed. The month before I took off, despite a full schedule at the theatre rehearsing and performing, I would get up early every morning and do a 20 mile trip, fully weighted and packed. The weekend before, again at Ken’s suggestion, I got a 100 mile day under my belt. I was psyched and ready.
On top of the air of adventure surrounding the trip, the main reasons I was doing it was to break up my rigid habit of planning everything. I knew that on a trip like this, weather would change, tires would blow, spokes would break, life would happen and I would have to deal with it as it happened. Of course there would be a route mapped out and a time table of sorts, but plans would definitely change.
The journal entry above refers to “fortune & Tarot” cards. I’m a believer in most everything, sometimes a skeptical believer, but a believer nonetheless. A member of the Trinity company and dear friend, Amy Van Nostrand, offered to read my cards before the trip. She laid them out and was beginning my reading when she discovered that she had inadvertently left one of the cards out of the deck, so she reshuffled and laid the cards out once again and to our surprise and delight with the exception of 1, maybe 2 cards, the chosen cards and placement was almost identical to the first layout. We decided this boded very well.
The trip was definitely on.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
A Flurry of Activity
We are in a war with our Canadian Geese. Like most wars, this began with a misunderstanding: they think that since we have 2 goslings we must be an invading goose family. This was all fine and good when the goslings were inside and their cries for attention were muffled by house wood and insulation, but now that we’ve begun to bring them outside to a makeshift pen to chomp on grass and enjoy the sunshine for an hour or so, things have taken a dramatic turn. Up until recently the Canadian’s have been friendly neighbors, glad for our company and for the corn we deposit on a slate rock by the pond shore. The male has been very watchful and chivalrous toward his mate who sits most of the day on her nest. But once they heard our goslings’ sounds, what began as curiosity quickly escalated into low flying harassment. Richard and I are both very strongly imprinted on Ginger and Mary Ann (yes, those are our goslings' names) and whenever we leave them alone in their pen and walk away EVEN FOR A MOMENT they begin squawking and keening and crying bloody murder. This tends to attract the attention of parent aged Canadian Geese and thus the back and forth Pearl Harbor maneuvers from our (THEIR) pond to the top of our (THEIR) hill. Our neighbor Royce commented that they either want to adopt our gosling or kill them. To exacerbate the issue, Richard and I have chosen this time as the perfect opportunity to build a 10’ by 4’ wooden pier that we’re erecting by the pond shore. I think the male thinks this is some kind of big nest; I saw him raise his wings at it and flap away last night while his wife was dining at the rock. Ah well. We shall weather this storm. Once the goslings go inside, all seems to revert to détente.
There’s been a lot of activity here this week and little time to write. Richard and I, along with our contractor/friend Keith, spent the past few days beginning to insulate and frame part of the upstairs of what had once been the hayloft to a rather large stable. All the various inhabitants of this house have never thought of turning over that space which seems like a huge waste. It’s a great feeling having our ideas, which have gone through many changes, begin to take shape as reality. Most of the week was forming a 2 X 4 frame structure inside the existing barn beams which we’d like to keep partially exposed and then filling that framing with 16” pieces of 3” solid foam insulation. Once Richard and I got the knack of it, we flew like a well-honed machine. I have a love/hate relationship to construction work. There are times when I’m amazed and grateful at this new talent I’m learning; “Me a carpenter?” I think. But then there are other times when this elation of reinvention holds no sway and my impatience sets in or my focus goes to the mess, the fiber glass dust and sawdust in the air that permeates not only the space we’re working in but the entire house, and a darkness descends over the land. In those times I think Lizzy Borden had a very good thing going. But this phase of construction and mess is over, not to begin again for a week or 2. That will entail electrical work and sheet rocking. Joy! Rapture!
Richard’s off for a real estate weekend and I’m watching over the various flocks. I’m also about to launch into a heavy cleaning of the house to make our abode ready for a guest this weekend. I’m sitting out on our screened in porch serenaded by birdsong, being watched over by our cats, and watching the skies change from clear to cloudy.
I walked up the hill for the first time in a week last night at dusk with Richard and the change in the countryside is astounding. The meadow is green, the trees are leafed, all is full and stretching out and showing off. I felt like transchanneling Walt Whitman. The earth was ALIVE!!
UPDATE: I was in the midst of cleaning the upstairs, popping my head out the window to see how the goslings were doing and they would be at the edge of the pen, beckoning me back, while the Canadians soared by overhead. I’d coo something out to the kids and go back to cleaning. Then on the third look, I was greeted bu the site of the 2 Canadian Geese landed, striding about next to the pen, surveying the surroundings. Oh great, I thought, what now? My heart’s pace ratcheted up a skosh as I grabbed a broom, arming myself for a skirmish, a skirmish I’d just as soon avoid. When I came out our back door the 2 adult geese turned to face me, and out of the pond, out of that docile, idyllic, floaty atmosphere, they looked pretty intimidating - big and beautiful. God, they’re beautiful. As I neared, the gosling spotted me and squealed their delight, the adults began hissing. No flapping wings, no attack mode, just a low hiss from both of them, like vipers. Oh great. I put the broom out in front of me which brought on more hisses, but slowly I was able to maneuver so the gosling’s pen was between me and them. They positioned themselves to either side of it in a kind of “V” action. With me in such proximity, the goslings had now calmed themselves and began swimming around in their little pool, oblivious to all the drama taking place. I OK Corralled the geese a bit and all 3 of us waited for the other’s next move. What now? Feeling in a poultry mood, I ducked down behind the pen and took a deep breath. I’m sort of a spiritual grab bag when it comes to some idea of Higher Power or Creator, but I just turned the whole thing over to God. “I don’t know what to do with this situation,” I said to whomever was listening, “so you take it.” I stayed squatted down and focused on the bobbing, splashing antics of the wee ones. Finally, one of the adults, I’d guess the female, turned and began slowly walking away, every once and awhile checking back over “her” shoulder. The remaining adult, let’s call it “him”, watched her go, perplexed it seemed. He turned back to me, gave a last half-hearted hiss, and followed her. And that’s when the Jehovah Witnesses showed up. A carload of them. And as the geese walked away back to the pond, I was invited to an “End of the World” symposium up in Burlington. The “witnesses” would have gone into a lot more detail about the upcoming event, but I put the kibosh on the proceedings when I informed them that I was gay and happy about that and that Richard and I had been together for 15 years. After that the subject shifted back to geese and they soon went off to save someone else.
When I recounted the goose showdown to Richard later, he felt that the sound of keening young instinctively sets something off in the adults, and that when the keening calms and quiets, the adults are in turn calmed and assured. I came to the conclusion that the geese were acting as representatives of their version of child’s services, come to check out reports of gosling abuse. Satisfied that there was nothing of the sort going on, they went back to nesting, after giving a firm warning of their seriousness surrounding the issue. It was a close call. I’m grateful for the cease-fire. I look forward to the negotiations we have planned over cracked corn at dusk near the slate rock on the pond’s shore. It’s so beautiful at that time of day. All the things that seemed so important during the day, that you got yourself so worked up about, seem to fade away with the fading of the light. I’m going to risk being optimistic in this instance and look forward to the day when we can gather together there, 2 different species, and laugh over tales about our respective young. I’m sure we’ll be able to agree that they grow up so fast.
There’s been a lot of activity here this week and little time to write. Richard and I, along with our contractor/friend Keith, spent the past few days beginning to insulate and frame part of the upstairs of what had once been the hayloft to a rather large stable. All the various inhabitants of this house have never thought of turning over that space which seems like a huge waste. It’s a great feeling having our ideas, which have gone through many changes, begin to take shape as reality. Most of the week was forming a 2 X 4 frame structure inside the existing barn beams which we’d like to keep partially exposed and then filling that framing with 16” pieces of 3” solid foam insulation. Once Richard and I got the knack of it, we flew like a well-honed machine. I have a love/hate relationship to construction work. There are times when I’m amazed and grateful at this new talent I’m learning; “Me a carpenter?” I think. But then there are other times when this elation of reinvention holds no sway and my impatience sets in or my focus goes to the mess, the fiber glass dust and sawdust in the air that permeates not only the space we’re working in but the entire house, and a darkness descends over the land. In those times I think Lizzy Borden had a very good thing going. But this phase of construction and mess is over, not to begin again for a week or 2. That will entail electrical work and sheet rocking. Joy! Rapture!
Richard’s off for a real estate weekend and I’m watching over the various flocks. I’m also about to launch into a heavy cleaning of the house to make our abode ready for a guest this weekend. I’m sitting out on our screened in porch serenaded by birdsong, being watched over by our cats, and watching the skies change from clear to cloudy.
I walked up the hill for the first time in a week last night at dusk with Richard and the change in the countryside is astounding. The meadow is green, the trees are leafed, all is full and stretching out and showing off. I felt like transchanneling Walt Whitman. The earth was ALIVE!!
UPDATE: I was in the midst of cleaning the upstairs, popping my head out the window to see how the goslings were doing and they would be at the edge of the pen, beckoning me back, while the Canadians soared by overhead. I’d coo something out to the kids and go back to cleaning. Then on the third look, I was greeted bu the site of the 2 Canadian Geese landed, striding about next to the pen, surveying the surroundings. Oh great, I thought, what now? My heart’s pace ratcheted up a skosh as I grabbed a broom, arming myself for a skirmish, a skirmish I’d just as soon avoid. When I came out our back door the 2 adult geese turned to face me, and out of the pond, out of that docile, idyllic, floaty atmosphere, they looked pretty intimidating - big and beautiful. God, they’re beautiful. As I neared, the gosling spotted me and squealed their delight, the adults began hissing. No flapping wings, no attack mode, just a low hiss from both of them, like vipers. Oh great. I put the broom out in front of me which brought on more hisses, but slowly I was able to maneuver so the gosling’s pen was between me and them. They positioned themselves to either side of it in a kind of “V” action. With me in such proximity, the goslings had now calmed themselves and began swimming around in their little pool, oblivious to all the drama taking place. I OK Corralled the geese a bit and all 3 of us waited for the other’s next move. What now? Feeling in a poultry mood, I ducked down behind the pen and took a deep breath. I’m sort of a spiritual grab bag when it comes to some idea of Higher Power or Creator, but I just turned the whole thing over to God. “I don’t know what to do with this situation,” I said to whomever was listening, “so you take it.” I stayed squatted down and focused on the bobbing, splashing antics of the wee ones. Finally, one of the adults, I’d guess the female, turned and began slowly walking away, every once and awhile checking back over “her” shoulder. The remaining adult, let’s call it “him”, watched her go, perplexed it seemed. He turned back to me, gave a last half-hearted hiss, and followed her. And that’s when the Jehovah Witnesses showed up. A carload of them. And as the geese walked away back to the pond, I was invited to an “End of the World” symposium up in Burlington. The “witnesses” would have gone into a lot more detail about the upcoming event, but I put the kibosh on the proceedings when I informed them that I was gay and happy about that and that Richard and I had been together for 15 years. After that the subject shifted back to geese and they soon went off to save someone else.
When I recounted the goose showdown to Richard later, he felt that the sound of keening young instinctively sets something off in the adults, and that when the keening calms and quiets, the adults are in turn calmed and assured. I came to the conclusion that the geese were acting as representatives of their version of child’s services, come to check out reports of gosling abuse. Satisfied that there was nothing of the sort going on, they went back to nesting, after giving a firm warning of their seriousness surrounding the issue. It was a close call. I’m grateful for the cease-fire. I look forward to the negotiations we have planned over cracked corn at dusk near the slate rock on the pond’s shore. It’s so beautiful at that time of day. All the things that seemed so important during the day, that you got yourself so worked up about, seem to fade away with the fading of the light. I’m going to risk being optimistic in this instance and look forward to the day when we can gather together there, 2 different species, and laugh over tales about our respective young. I’m sure we’ll be able to agree that they grow up so fast.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Derek Meader
It was September 1978, a rainy day, at least it had been most of the drive up from New York City. Tom, the diminutive Irish guy who had waited tables with me at Leo’s at 72nd and Lexington and whose railroad apartment at York and East 90-something I had lived in for the past few months, had been kind enough to offer me a ride up to Trinity Square Repertory, the regional theatre in Rhode Island where I had landed a job. We’d piled into his beat up and LARGE station wagon that grey morning, and splattered our way north to Providence which was to be my new home for awhile. “The armpit of the east coast” many people I had asked dubbed it. I’d also heard “the junk jewelry capitol” or “major mafia stronghold.” All I knew was the theatre had a great reputation, I had an acting job, and I was venturing into New England for the first time. I was still recovering from having had all of my wisdom teeth extracted a few weeks before, but my flu-like symptoms seemed to lift and loft away as the rain eased then disappeared, replaced by an autumn chill in the air. I liked that, there was a familiar beckoning to it - autumn, September, going back to school, a call for new learning. It reminded me of a passage from a long forgotten short story I’d read: “the wonderful magic of the beginning of things, when work is unsullied by effort.” That’s what I felt when I stepped out of the station wagon across the street from the theatre and thanked and bid goodbye to Tom, someone I would never see again. I had stepped out of one chapter of my life and another was about to begin.
There had been a few heralds to this upcoming change. A few weeks before I’d treated a friend of mine to the production of “Dracula” at the (then) Martin Beck Theatre in New York and afterwards we had gone to Barrymores (now gone) for an after-dinner bite. (Because of my wisdom tooth operation, my “bite” was confined to a bowl of mushroom soup.) My friend and I began rehashing the show and as we did I had the curious feeling that we were being watched and studied by a lively group at the next table and when I turned to see if my hunch was true, they gushed introductions. All of them were Trinity Rep members and had heard of my being hired. This news was incredibly flattering because I doubted that anyone knew who I was. They too had just seen “Dracula” because a noted member of the Trinity company, Richard Kavenaugh, had played the part of “Renfield” the insect-eating captive of the count. They spoke in glowing terms of the upcoming season, of Adrian Hall - the eccentric and “genius” artistic director, and of the strong acting tradition there. I glowed inside and out with anticipation.
One member of this group would become a dear friend of mine and would soon instill a deep love for New England, a zest that probably helped pull me back here from Los Angeles. He was uncharacteristically untalkative that night, he simply smiled broadly from the other side of the table, erect and forward in his chair, his somewhat long hair framing a patrician face, hair that he would toss back out of his eyes from time to time with a distinguishing flair. His name was Derek Meader and if you didn’t know him, it’s your loss.
Where to begin with Derek? He was an actor, yes, but Derek “acted” in real life and it was by far a better performance than any he ever gave on stage. All the world was his stage. Not to say he was fake, no, he was simply being Derek. I always felt he’d been born in the wrong century for his mellifluous tones, his sentences which roundabouted themselves with elevated language, his carriage, his dress, his demeanor, his laugh, his stance, his grand gesture were all pure nineteenth. He had been a child prodigy on the violin, a gift which was snatched away due to a debilitating muscle disorder. He had been able to reteach himself and would play violin whenever needed in Trinity productions, but never at his former level. He had also been a dancer and that talent too had disappeared and had to be reclaimed. He had been Nureyev’s lover (I can imagine him swaddled in furs, riding across the snowy Russian steppes in a horse drawn troika.) He had traveled extensively. He dressed in a combination of expensive clothing and thrift store gay chic which always looked fantastic.
Derek had a terrific loft apartment in New York City at University Place and 12th Street, if memory serves. (Again, this recurring theme of a back-and-forth balance between New England and New York City.) The doorbell never worked; Derek would have to know you were coming. Either that or you could yell your voice box dry trying to get his attention. He’d usually be playing some classical piece of music at fever pitch. Eventually he'd stick his head out one of his windows from above (in all seasons) and toss a heavy ring of keys down. Then you’d wobble up a canted set of stairs up to his bank vault-like door. His was the first door of that kind I’d ever seen where the lock wound from the center, engaging several dead bolts in the door frame with the finishing touch being a metal pole that triangled from the center of the back of the door down to a metal grommet in the floor. Security! The loft was an eclectic and inviting space with high tin ceilings, comfortable tables and chairs and cushiony couches. Most often we’d drink a bottle of Folinari and wax away at whatever was striking our fancies. Oh, it makes me pine for youth and those glorious times in New York.
But back to New England!
In Rhode Island, Derek shared a fantastic place with his dear friend Richard Kneeland, an older stalwart of the Trinity Square Repertory who I had earlier met during my apprenticeship at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California. Richard and Derek lived in Narragansett, Rhode Island, about 30 minutes outside Providence, right on the Atlantic Ocean. Where they lived had once been a string of mansions to rival the opulence across the bay in Newport, but most were all gone now due to fire and age. They were living in what had been servant’s quarters of one of those long gone mansions and it was a splendid place with 4 or 5 bedrooms on the second story and an open living room and kitchen on the first floor chalk full of theatre memorabilia and pictures. You really felt as if you’d climbed into an old actor’s traveling trunk. It was so cozy and inviting, perfect for get togethers. And the back windows and doors opened onto a long sloping lawn down to the rocky seashore where waves continually crashed and geysered up. We would dive off those rocks into the smashing waves and the danger was exhilirating. Richard knew just when to dive in as the last wave was receding and by the time you’d surface the next wave would be gently swelling you up to the natural rock steps to ascend back up for your next daredevil dive. Thrilling!
But the piece de resistance was Derek’s family cottage up in New Hampshire. Derek was an only child. His father had died years ago of complications connected to alcoholism, but his mother – a tough, red-head with a thick New Hampshire accent – lived most of the year in a cottage on a petite peninsula on Merrymeeting Lake in southern New Hampshire. This more than Trinity, more than Providence or Narragansett or trips to beautiful Boston, marks my true first love embrace from New England. It was idyllic, those trips up Derek’s lake. The first was in September of 1979 with my first lover Greg, also living in Providence, also in Trinity productions. Everything about that memory hums in a timeless place. The photos from that trip – Derek reclining on a lawnchair, reading; views across the lake, me diving off the huge boulders into the crystal clear water, clear all the way to the bottom – transport me back. It was unseasonably warm during the day, cool at night. We’d play croquet on the front lawn, kayak around the point, drink bloody marys, concoct wonderful meals, and swim, swim, swim. I could not stop diving off those rocks! I felt like I was 10 years old again. I would return there with 2 other lovers over the years – Tim and Robert – and I think they shared a similar joy being there. I especially remember a rope tied to a tree off in another cove of the lake that you had to row to get to where we would swing out high above the water and let go with Tarzan-like yelps before crashing down into the bracing drink. At night the loons would call across the lake, that lonely eerie call. I’d conjure up Derek’s place whenever I’d watch "A Place in the Sun" and hear the loons call in the background of the scene where Montgomery Clift is out to drown Shelley Winters or "On Golden Pond" with Katherine Hepburn standing, warbling out to her favorite loon.
I wish Richard had been able to visit that cottage. I wish Richard had met Derek. They just missed one another in New York City when I was performing my one-man show “The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me …” in 1995. In one of the sections of the play, I commemorated an evening I’d had with Derek years ago in which he called me on my latent homophobia. Within the scene I played Derek befriending then lambasting an invisible me over my uncomfortability about being around someone so “effeminate.” I’m very proud of the scene, it’s probably one of the most political scenes of the piece, and I think I do Derek justice. And I’m grateful for the memory of that embarrassing and enlightening comeuppance. I’m also grateful and proud that Derek got to see it. I think he liked it a lot.
At the end of the run of the show before returning to California where I was living at the time, I traveled back up to Merrymeeting Lake for what turned out to be my last time there. I went there by myself this time. I’m wondering if his lover George was there? Or his mother? By that time she was beginning to fade with Alzeheimers, but in that funny way that memory freezes images of people as well as places, I imagined her still getting up every morning with her light pink bathing cap snugly on and tromping down to the lake’s shore for her early morning swim – very Katherine Hepburn indomitable. There were no special occurrences during that trip, just an easy time together, filled with strolls and swimming and the sound of water lapping. It was the perfect wrapping up of one chapter of my life – my play in New York City – and the coming of another, all in the embrace of the end of a New England summer.
Derek passed away in 1997 from complications due to AIDS. The last time he spoke to me he was up at the cottage, resting. I think I’ll always imagine him there. He’d just had a shunt put into his chest which he described with characteristic curiosity and aplomb. He sounded the same, carrying on with style with whatever life was bringing on. That’s what I remember most about Derek - the way he talked and the sound of his voice. That’s what I wish I could share with you right now. And so I’ll give you the next best thing. I think I captured the way he talked pretty well in my play, so I’ll give you a printed sampling from the very beginning of the Derek scene where my writer’s imagination weaves in with bits from a tape recording I had made of Derek years before:
“Once again, the food was terrible and I hate you, so … I’m off!”
[Derek crosses to a closet, hand held high ballet-like. He sets down his wine glass and retrieves a coat and dons it in preparation for his exit into the New York City winter outside.]
“So we’re meeting each other Saturday by the fountain. Good. I still can’t believe you’ve never seen “Tristan and Isolde.” Oh! Four hours of sturm und drang that will fly right by. It’s about two people whose love is so great that they die. They die. That’s what they do, they die. What they really do is die. You’ll love it.”
They included a reading of the “Derek” scene from my play in a memorial service held in honor of Derek at Trinity Square. It made me very proud.
The service was a celebration of Derek’s life.
There was a lot to celebrate.
There had been a few heralds to this upcoming change. A few weeks before I’d treated a friend of mine to the production of “Dracula” at the (then) Martin Beck Theatre in New York and afterwards we had gone to Barrymores (now gone) for an after-dinner bite. (Because of my wisdom tooth operation, my “bite” was confined to a bowl of mushroom soup.) My friend and I began rehashing the show and as we did I had the curious feeling that we were being watched and studied by a lively group at the next table and when I turned to see if my hunch was true, they gushed introductions. All of them were Trinity Rep members and had heard of my being hired. This news was incredibly flattering because I doubted that anyone knew who I was. They too had just seen “Dracula” because a noted member of the Trinity company, Richard Kavenaugh, had played the part of “Renfield” the insect-eating captive of the count. They spoke in glowing terms of the upcoming season, of Adrian Hall - the eccentric and “genius” artistic director, and of the strong acting tradition there. I glowed inside and out with anticipation.
One member of this group would become a dear friend of mine and would soon instill a deep love for New England, a zest that probably helped pull me back here from Los Angeles. He was uncharacteristically untalkative that night, he simply smiled broadly from the other side of the table, erect and forward in his chair, his somewhat long hair framing a patrician face, hair that he would toss back out of his eyes from time to time with a distinguishing flair. His name was Derek Meader and if you didn’t know him, it’s your loss.
Where to begin with Derek? He was an actor, yes, but Derek “acted” in real life and it was by far a better performance than any he ever gave on stage. All the world was his stage. Not to say he was fake, no, he was simply being Derek. I always felt he’d been born in the wrong century for his mellifluous tones, his sentences which roundabouted themselves with elevated language, his carriage, his dress, his demeanor, his laugh, his stance, his grand gesture were all pure nineteenth. He had been a child prodigy on the violin, a gift which was snatched away due to a debilitating muscle disorder. He had been able to reteach himself and would play violin whenever needed in Trinity productions, but never at his former level. He had also been a dancer and that talent too had disappeared and had to be reclaimed. He had been Nureyev’s lover (I can imagine him swaddled in furs, riding across the snowy Russian steppes in a horse drawn troika.) He had traveled extensively. He dressed in a combination of expensive clothing and thrift store gay chic which always looked fantastic.
Derek had a terrific loft apartment in New York City at University Place and 12th Street, if memory serves. (Again, this recurring theme of a back-and-forth balance between New England and New York City.) The doorbell never worked; Derek would have to know you were coming. Either that or you could yell your voice box dry trying to get his attention. He’d usually be playing some classical piece of music at fever pitch. Eventually he'd stick his head out one of his windows from above (in all seasons) and toss a heavy ring of keys down. Then you’d wobble up a canted set of stairs up to his bank vault-like door. His was the first door of that kind I’d ever seen where the lock wound from the center, engaging several dead bolts in the door frame with the finishing touch being a metal pole that triangled from the center of the back of the door down to a metal grommet in the floor. Security! The loft was an eclectic and inviting space with high tin ceilings, comfortable tables and chairs and cushiony couches. Most often we’d drink a bottle of Folinari and wax away at whatever was striking our fancies. Oh, it makes me pine for youth and those glorious times in New York.
But back to New England!
In Rhode Island, Derek shared a fantastic place with his dear friend Richard Kneeland, an older stalwart of the Trinity Square Repertory who I had earlier met during my apprenticeship at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California. Richard and Derek lived in Narragansett, Rhode Island, about 30 minutes outside Providence, right on the Atlantic Ocean. Where they lived had once been a string of mansions to rival the opulence across the bay in Newport, but most were all gone now due to fire and age. They were living in what had been servant’s quarters of one of those long gone mansions and it was a splendid place with 4 or 5 bedrooms on the second story and an open living room and kitchen on the first floor chalk full of theatre memorabilia and pictures. You really felt as if you’d climbed into an old actor’s traveling trunk. It was so cozy and inviting, perfect for get togethers. And the back windows and doors opened onto a long sloping lawn down to the rocky seashore where waves continually crashed and geysered up. We would dive off those rocks into the smashing waves and the danger was exhilirating. Richard knew just when to dive in as the last wave was receding and by the time you’d surface the next wave would be gently swelling you up to the natural rock steps to ascend back up for your next daredevil dive. Thrilling!
But the piece de resistance was Derek’s family cottage up in New Hampshire. Derek was an only child. His father had died years ago of complications connected to alcoholism, but his mother – a tough, red-head with a thick New Hampshire accent – lived most of the year in a cottage on a petite peninsula on Merrymeeting Lake in southern New Hampshire. This more than Trinity, more than Providence or Narragansett or trips to beautiful Boston, marks my true first love embrace from New England. It was idyllic, those trips up Derek’s lake. The first was in September of 1979 with my first lover Greg, also living in Providence, also in Trinity productions. Everything about that memory hums in a timeless place. The photos from that trip – Derek reclining on a lawnchair, reading; views across the lake, me diving off the huge boulders into the crystal clear water, clear all the way to the bottom – transport me back. It was unseasonably warm during the day, cool at night. We’d play croquet on the front lawn, kayak around the point, drink bloody marys, concoct wonderful meals, and swim, swim, swim. I could not stop diving off those rocks! I felt like I was 10 years old again. I would return there with 2 other lovers over the years – Tim and Robert – and I think they shared a similar joy being there. I especially remember a rope tied to a tree off in another cove of the lake that you had to row to get to where we would swing out high above the water and let go with Tarzan-like yelps before crashing down into the bracing drink. At night the loons would call across the lake, that lonely eerie call. I’d conjure up Derek’s place whenever I’d watch "A Place in the Sun" and hear the loons call in the background of the scene where Montgomery Clift is out to drown Shelley Winters or "On Golden Pond" with Katherine Hepburn standing, warbling out to her favorite loon.
I wish Richard had been able to visit that cottage. I wish Richard had met Derek. They just missed one another in New York City when I was performing my one-man show “The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me …” in 1995. In one of the sections of the play, I commemorated an evening I’d had with Derek years ago in which he called me on my latent homophobia. Within the scene I played Derek befriending then lambasting an invisible me over my uncomfortability about being around someone so “effeminate.” I’m very proud of the scene, it’s probably one of the most political scenes of the piece, and I think I do Derek justice. And I’m grateful for the memory of that embarrassing and enlightening comeuppance. I’m also grateful and proud that Derek got to see it. I think he liked it a lot.
At the end of the run of the show before returning to California where I was living at the time, I traveled back up to Merrymeeting Lake for what turned out to be my last time there. I went there by myself this time. I’m wondering if his lover George was there? Or his mother? By that time she was beginning to fade with Alzeheimers, but in that funny way that memory freezes images of people as well as places, I imagined her still getting up every morning with her light pink bathing cap snugly on and tromping down to the lake’s shore for her early morning swim – very Katherine Hepburn indomitable. There were no special occurrences during that trip, just an easy time together, filled with strolls and swimming and the sound of water lapping. It was the perfect wrapping up of one chapter of my life – my play in New York City – and the coming of another, all in the embrace of the end of a New England summer.
Derek passed away in 1997 from complications due to AIDS. The last time he spoke to me he was up at the cottage, resting. I think I’ll always imagine him there. He’d just had a shunt put into his chest which he described with characteristic curiosity and aplomb. He sounded the same, carrying on with style with whatever life was bringing on. That’s what I remember most about Derek - the way he talked and the sound of his voice. That’s what I wish I could share with you right now. And so I’ll give you the next best thing. I think I captured the way he talked pretty well in my play, so I’ll give you a printed sampling from the very beginning of the Derek scene where my writer’s imagination weaves in with bits from a tape recording I had made of Derek years before:
“Once again, the food was terrible and I hate you, so … I’m off!”
[Derek crosses to a closet, hand held high ballet-like. He sets down his wine glass and retrieves a coat and dons it in preparation for his exit into the New York City winter outside.]
“So we’re meeting each other Saturday by the fountain. Good. I still can’t believe you’ve never seen “Tristan and Isolde.” Oh! Four hours of sturm und drang that will fly right by. It’s about two people whose love is so great that they die. They die. That’s what they do, they die. What they really do is die. You’ll love it.”
They included a reading of the “Derek” scene from my play in a memorial service held in honor of Derek at Trinity Square. It made me very proud.
The service was a celebration of Derek’s life.
There was a lot to celebrate.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Change of Season
It’s stunning out today. Sunny, clear, temperature edging toward the 80’s, buds coming out on the trees, green coming out on the fields. We’ve earned it! My God! Richard’s outside finishing up hemlock siding to the new chicken coop - the coop I shingled I’ll have you know; I can hear his hammer blows echoing out up the hill. All our poultry are thriving. Tops on the list are our 2 baby Geese, Ginger and Mary Ann, who are so delighted by the sight of either Richard or me whenever we walk into their room. They’re immediately up, talking, craning up to be held. Oh my God, they’re adorable with their tiny yet enormous webbed feet and their wee wings flapping uselessly at their sides. We’ve read that they will gain a pound a week for the first ten weeks and then taper off, so we’re enjoying them while they’re young and handheld size. Amazing, amazing, amazing how cute they are. When they were first hatched, Richard was shoving me away from the incubator window making sure they were imprinting on him and not me. I think we have equal imprinting here.
This morning I feel equal parts Garrison Keillor and Dr. Doolittle. Surrounded by, tended to and taught by animals? Yes. Woebegone? Not I, not here, not today. I do find, though, that when I check in to give the news from here, oftentimes a spiritual storm front has just passed through and cleared the air. It’s been an interesting few days of internal bumps and bronco rides. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s caused them. Maybe I don’t need to know. Maybe upheaval of any sort is simply a sign of the times. All the energy of change going on in the world, all the resistance, all the willingness and fearfulness mixed up in equal measure, all the old ways and new ways slamming up against one another. I think we can’t help soaking it up from the air, even when you’re “away from it all.” Yeah, who says? I think I’m never away from it all. I may choose to try to think or live that way, but I’m always near it all, in it all. And no matter where I am, however I’m living, whatever I’m working on within or without, whatever I’m thinking and feeling is felt, matters, has consequences. Fascinating times, inside and out.
Last evening around 6 or so with plenty of light left to the day, Richard and I went across the road and began clearing a wooded area around our pond badly in need of sprucing up. It was fun. We chain sawed dead branches and teams of new maple sprouts; we snapped and scissored undergrowth; we dragged and toted and tossed logs. The exertion felt great. There’s something appealing to me to jobs that have a spiritual symbolism to them, where I’m doing something on the outside that mirrors or parallels a process I may be going through inside. Clearing the land so we can see what’s there, so we can sculpt it the way we intend, so we can blend our intents harmoniously with nature’s pure and potent growth. I think it’s the first time I fully understood the phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees.” I had “gotten it” before to a certain extent, but there was always a part of me asking ‘What do you mean forest for the trees? Isn’t a forest made up of trees? Aren’t they both trees? You can’t see the trees for the trees?! What so you mean?!!’ Last night it was different; last night I felt I was living “can’t see the forest for the trees”, I was inside it, in the midst of it. And this morning to be treated to a view of the once hidden old stone wall across the way and see the beginnings of the shape that piece of our land will have was so satisfying. I can’t wait to work on it some more.
Speaking of this morning, I woke at 6 am to the dissonant sound of a dog bark honking up the air. It was muffled, but strident, out-of-place. I got up and went out onto our front screened porch where I was instantly enveloped by bird song, enwrapped by it. The male Canadian Goose was out on the pond checking out the dog bark too. It turned out to be Ron and Tabitha’s dog from down the road, stirred up by something, it doesn’t matter what, I just found it funny that a dog bark down the road in the country served as a clamorous equivilant as a car alarm going off in the city. What a different world it is out here.
We had a group of actors and designers up from Project Playwright on Sunday and what a grand group it was. So fun feeling our place filled with new energy. It’s been a dream of mine to have this place be an artist’s retreat of sorts, a place where friends, actors, directors, writers, painters, what-have-you can come up here to work on a new piece or just recharge, retreat, refortify. It was good feeling that energetic take some sort of form, even in the form of a party. One of the group was a young writer/teacher, Carla, born in Puerto Rico, raised in Chicago, an expansively confident, jovially creative presence, and being a city girl she spoke of her split at being out here in the boonies. In one respect, she loves it and is so grateful for the new experience, while in the other, she goes stir crazy with the lack of SOUND. She said she e-mailed a friend of hers recently, a sound technician, and BEGGED him to make her a tape of traffic and send it to her so she could play it when she went to bed and finally GET SOME SLEEP.
We’re looking forward to a lot of visits from friends and family this summer. We love sharing this place with others and seeing the affect it has over them. We’ve created a beautiful place and we’re looking forward to planting our garden, to planting new trees, to post-hole digging a new fenced area for Richard’s new chickens, to building and insulating a new room up in a portion of our attic/old hayloft, to constructing a little pier to go out into our pond. We’re feeling Spring.
This morning I feel equal parts Garrison Keillor and Dr. Doolittle. Surrounded by, tended to and taught by animals? Yes. Woebegone? Not I, not here, not today. I do find, though, that when I check in to give the news from here, oftentimes a spiritual storm front has just passed through and cleared the air. It’s been an interesting few days of internal bumps and bronco rides. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s caused them. Maybe I don’t need to know. Maybe upheaval of any sort is simply a sign of the times. All the energy of change going on in the world, all the resistance, all the willingness and fearfulness mixed up in equal measure, all the old ways and new ways slamming up against one another. I think we can’t help soaking it up from the air, even when you’re “away from it all.” Yeah, who says? I think I’m never away from it all. I may choose to try to think or live that way, but I’m always near it all, in it all. And no matter where I am, however I’m living, whatever I’m working on within or without, whatever I’m thinking and feeling is felt, matters, has consequences. Fascinating times, inside and out.
Last evening around 6 or so with plenty of light left to the day, Richard and I went across the road and began clearing a wooded area around our pond badly in need of sprucing up. It was fun. We chain sawed dead branches and teams of new maple sprouts; we snapped and scissored undergrowth; we dragged and toted and tossed logs. The exertion felt great. There’s something appealing to me to jobs that have a spiritual symbolism to them, where I’m doing something on the outside that mirrors or parallels a process I may be going through inside. Clearing the land so we can see what’s there, so we can sculpt it the way we intend, so we can blend our intents harmoniously with nature’s pure and potent growth. I think it’s the first time I fully understood the phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees.” I had “gotten it” before to a certain extent, but there was always a part of me asking ‘What do you mean forest for the trees? Isn’t a forest made up of trees? Aren’t they both trees? You can’t see the trees for the trees?! What so you mean?!!’ Last night it was different; last night I felt I was living “can’t see the forest for the trees”, I was inside it, in the midst of it. And this morning to be treated to a view of the once hidden old stone wall across the way and see the beginnings of the shape that piece of our land will have was so satisfying. I can’t wait to work on it some more.
Speaking of this morning, I woke at 6 am to the dissonant sound of a dog bark honking up the air. It was muffled, but strident, out-of-place. I got up and went out onto our front screened porch where I was instantly enveloped by bird song, enwrapped by it. The male Canadian Goose was out on the pond checking out the dog bark too. It turned out to be Ron and Tabitha’s dog from down the road, stirred up by something, it doesn’t matter what, I just found it funny that a dog bark down the road in the country served as a clamorous equivilant as a car alarm going off in the city. What a different world it is out here.
We had a group of actors and designers up from Project Playwright on Sunday and what a grand group it was. So fun feeling our place filled with new energy. It’s been a dream of mine to have this place be an artist’s retreat of sorts, a place where friends, actors, directors, writers, painters, what-have-you can come up here to work on a new piece or just recharge, retreat, refortify. It was good feeling that energetic take some sort of form, even in the form of a party. One of the group was a young writer/teacher, Carla, born in Puerto Rico, raised in Chicago, an expansively confident, jovially creative presence, and being a city girl she spoke of her split at being out here in the boonies. In one respect, she loves it and is so grateful for the new experience, while in the other, she goes stir crazy with the lack of SOUND. She said she e-mailed a friend of hers recently, a sound technician, and BEGGED him to make her a tape of traffic and send it to her so she could play it when she went to bed and finally GET SOME SLEEP.
We’re looking forward to a lot of visits from friends and family this summer. We love sharing this place with others and seeing the affect it has over them. We’ve created a beautiful place and we’re looking forward to planting our garden, to planting new trees, to post-hole digging a new fenced area for Richard’s new chickens, to building and insulating a new room up in a portion of our attic/old hayloft, to constructing a little pier to go out into our pond. We’re feeling Spring.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
For Beverly and Shirley Imogene
This entry has a specific purpose - to guide my friend Beverly and my mom Shirley through the confusing entanglements of the web to my blog. It sounds a bit like a fairy tale and I'm the enchanted frog. Hmmm. Well, here it is. I've set it so every installment I make, every new blog, shall go to your e-mail where you will be notified officially. So Bev and Mom you can read this bit and go back in the library of past bits. Also of reading pleasure would be Richard's blog at poultrychronicles.blogspot.com His site has many more pictures than mine does and gives the nuts and bolts of a chicken obsession. It's sad.
A busy night here! 2 goslings hatched into the world, Sofia's fever broke, and Richard was able to come up from White River and rehearsal to experience them both ... and More! Yay! We've been up a goodly part of the night, but are both exhilarated and grateful by the lively turn of events. Hooray for LIFE in all its forms. I'm hoping the turn in Sofia's health will make a trip this morning to the Burlington Hospital unnecessary. We shall see.
Have a fantastic day!
A busy night here! 2 goslings hatched into the world, Sofia's fever broke, and Richard was able to come up from White River and rehearsal to experience them both ... and More! Yay! We've been up a goodly part of the night, but are both exhilarated and grateful by the lively turn of events. Hooray for LIFE in all its forms. I'm hoping the turn in Sofia's health will make a trip this morning to the Burlington Hospital unnecessary. We shall see.
Have a fantastic day!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
EB White
I’ve been wanting to write about EB White for quite some time now, but felt as if I needed a special reason or occasion to frame the endeavor. But I’m not putting it off any longer. Today is the day. The special reason is simply that I want to; I love the way EB White writes.
Recently, I read a short biography of White at the back of a collection of his essays which began with something he had written on the occasion of his 58th birthday: “The theme of my life is complexity-through-joy.” Like most of what Mr. White writes, “complexity-through-joy” stayed with me. I’m pretty much a sucker for anything that has “joy” woven into it for it’s a state to which I aspire and a state to which I, sadly and bafflingly, set up numerous roadblocks against. There’s also something about the phrase that reminds me of acting class where one is urged to make one’s actions toward achieving a goal “simple and strong” so that the “complexities” of who you are are allowed to shine through. Simplicity first, complexity second. Joy first and complexity follows. (Funny to think of joy as being simple.) I’m also impressed with the idea of someone being able to come up with a theme for their life. Granted EB has four years on me and I have no doubt that when I’m 58 I’ll have life themes galore, but I have a hard enough time coming up with the theme of something I’m writing let alone the theme of my life. And “complexity-through-joy” sounds so pithy and wise. If I were hard-pressed to come up with a life theme right now it would hover between “spirituality-through-restlessness” or “tolerance through chickens.”
I’ve felt a deep kinship with EB over the past few years. One of the reasons is my recent move to New England and realizing how much this place speaks to me, which parallels a similar move and realization he made in the 1930’s. I find myself traveling back and forth often between Vermont and New York City, as he did between Maine and New York, many times because of work, but more importantly to seek a balance between the country and the city, both of which I love and long for; I know the same rang true for him. I can’t help smiling as I read his work from sheer delight. I find myself sharing passages to Richard, or I'll read an entire essay out loud to him or to other friends, for sharing EB White with others is a sharing of affection to me. His writing is true, thought out. There’s a mastery of his craft that’s never showy, always accessible, and a wisdom mixed with vulnerability, a low hum of self doubt behind it all. He reveals himself through his writing and I love him for it.
Though my affection for Mr. White and his work has deepened considerably in recent years, I realize that our “acquaintance” spans back over most of my life. My first experience probably mirrors most people’s - the reading of “Charlotte’s Web.” The book was still fairly new when I attended kindergarten at Northcrest Elementary School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Every afternoon in that long ago autumn I would sit cross-legged on the floor as Miss McNamara would read the next chapter of the saga. I'd stare up at that book cover as she read, a cover I'm glad to report has become iconic and hasn't changed in all its reprintings. There's something assuring in that. I have a feeling that the reading was intended to lull all of us into a post-graham crackers and milk naptime stupor, but I sat up alert, wide-eyed, mesmerized, eating up every word. Nothing like a good story to keep the sandman at bay. So many gifts came from that book. I certainly looked at spiders differently from then on, which is no small feat when one’s mother is terrified by the very mention of them. And when Charlotte died I was SHOCKED and DEEPLY STRICKEN!! I FELT IT, people. I think “Charlotte’s Web” was the first time that the concept of death was introduced into my life. I thought about it, talked about it. It stuck with me. And what more can a writer ask – or any artist, actor, sculptor, creator – then to have something of theirs “stick.”
My second encounter would’ve been in high school in the early 1970’s with the reprinting of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”, that thin blue paperback version, a well-worn copy of which I’ve carried with me for years. I bought the updated, red hardbound “gift” version with all those kicky new pictures a few Christmases back and loved the added remembrances of EB and Will Strunk, White’s English instructor from his days at Cornell and the author of the original book. I still read and reread “Elements of Style”, hoping it too will stick. Practice, practice. It did hearten me when I read recenlty that White first expected the task of editing Strunk’s original work for re-publication in the early 50’s to be a breeze and that he was surprised and increasingly daunted not only by the immensity of the task itself, but on discovering that he didn’t feel he’d adhered to a lot Strunk’s rules himself; he (White) had written without rules in mind, working it out in his own way, along the way, until he felt and knew it was right.
After “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Elements of Style” in high school, it was about 30 years before White walked into my life again, in a used book store in Los Angeles. It was another worn blue paperback that called to me from the stacks, a collection of his essays entitled “One Man’s Meat.” It sounded slightly salacious, and maybe that was the original impulse to reach for the book, but in short order I found that “One Man’s Meat” had been the title of a monthly column White had written for Harold Ross at the New Yorker, sending his installments in from his North Brookline house on the Maine coast where he’d moved with his family. I realized I knew next to nothing about him and these essays would serve as my first introduction to his life and I took to them immediately. An added plus was that they’d been written from the mid-thirties through the early-forties, my favorite period of American history (next to the Civil War). The history nerd in me rose from the ashes and relished every mention of FDR, the New Deal, and the coming war, reliving it as if it were happening for the first time (ie “I wonder if Hitler’s going to win this time?!”). I am convinced I lived back then, but that's a topic for a later entry.
Reading "One Man's Meat" was akin to welcoming an old friend back into my life and feeling as if no time had passed. And in hindsight choosing that unassuming book from all the books in the stacks almost seems preordained, part of some plan. I'd just begun toying with the idea of moving back east, but “The East” meant NYC, not New England or Vermont. True, I’d had a soft spot for that part of the country for a long time, but still moving there made no sense. Maybe EB knew something I didn’t know. Something about his stories spoke to something in me, something beyond simply enjoying them. And I found that I wanted to read more about him and by him. I got his Collected Correspondences and devoured it, I listened to him narrating his children’s books – a flat, nasally, and uninflected voice, slightly New England, just this side of uninteresting, but I relished hearing a voice to go with the pictures of him I'd seen. I came across his “Here is New York” essay in an original printing at my friend’s while visiting the city and it felt so right to take the book along as a friend on my subway rides and walks throughout the city that day (By the way, I read while I walk. Again, another possible future blog entry). I found that people on the subway would notice me reading the book and ask me about it, engage in conversations about him. It was grand. I think that EB had the same love I have for New York. It vitalizes me, it opens and enlivens me, I can feel all its ages and times pulse through me, such a grand and sordid history it has. And such a grand place to work. A similar love and kinship for New York booms out of that essay. Well, “boom” isn’t really a word I’d associate with EB. No. The book enwraps you, embraces you, insinuates itself into you so you feel those feelings and thoughts are yours.
I mentioned earlier in another blog entry of EB’s love for “Walden” and Thoreau that is spoken of so beautifully in his essay “A Slight Sound at Evening.” Within it he imagines conjuring Thoreau to the present time and accompanying him about. I can imagine doing the same with EB. I would’ve loved to have met him. Of course, I would’ve loved to have visited him and Katherine at their Maine home, go down to the small boat house and see where he wrote, but having them over to our place would’ve been just fine with me too. I can picture having a drink together, sitting around and talking. I’d be nervous thinking what I was going to talk about with a renowned author, a hero of mine AND his fiction editor wife. How would I ever hold up my side of the conversation? But I have a feeling that he’d put me at my ease. And now that I think for a moment, there’d be plenty to talk about: Richard’s newly arrived chicks, the goose eggs - I think EB would especially be interested in them. Then we’d walk across the road to our pond, feed the trout and the Canadian Geese, enjoy the slow coming of evening. We’d manage. He might even be interested in the theatre and films we’d been in. I don’t know. I’d try to make him laugh. I imagine him being a bit stoic, like Jimmy Burrows, the great television director. But Jimmy has a great laugh that jolts counter to his seemingly sour puss. Everyone has their own unique laugh. I wonder what EB’s would’ve been like? A chortle? A soft giggle? There’s a picture of he and Katherine sitting on a couch beside one another in later life sharing a big guffaw together. It’s quite wonderful.
A friend of mine in New York recently suggested over lunch that I should do a one-man show about White, I speak so highly of him all the time and one-man shows are in my blood. What an intriguing idea for an undertaking. So I've been doing extra research, wondering about what one would have to do to get the rights to passages from his pieces, imagining the structure of the piece. I have a dear friend in California who worked under White at the New Yorker when my friend was young and he had a few memories of White that I relished. He shared that he and White were never chums, White was too hallowed a personage for him to approach in that fashion, but he remembered being so surprised at Mr. White’s slightness, both in manner and appearance. A faint, bristly moustache, but other than that, no distinguishing features. He feared a high wind “might blow him down.” Whereas by contrast he felt that Katherine would’ve broken him if she’d sat on him. White was in the background alot. He didn't like speaking in public, rarely did, even when he was given prestigious awards. So why would someone like that want to talk to an audience about their life's work? It’s already tricky trying to dramatize the life of a writer, especially in a one-man venue. What’s the premise? Why is he talking to us? What moved him to do so? Did he come back from the grave bothered because nobody knows who he is anymore? I can’t imagine EB coming back from the grave to toot his own horn. That’s an intriguing obstacle to overcome in a one-man show when the main character is a man who’d rather not talk, but write, that's where he showed up, that's where he spoke. Maybe the lights could come up on a desk with all his books and essays strewn about on it and that’s it for 2 hours. It's all an intriguing idea. More to follow I'm sure.
In the same brief bio of EB that I quoted at the beginning, there’s another quote of his that I cherish. It’s from a 1961 New York Times interview where he says, “All that I ever hope to say in books is that I love the world.” How wonderful again to distill down the aim, the goal of one's life. Through your gift, your talent, you aspire to share with the world your love for it. You take joy - maybe quiet joy - in living, and you share what you come up with with others, in all its complexity.
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
The Trumpet of the Swan
Death of a Pig
Is Sex Necessary? (with James Thurber)
Here is New York
A Slight Sound at Evening
Elements of Style (with Will Strunk)
One Man's Meat
and on and on and on
Thanks for a complexity of joys, EB.
Recently, I read a short biography of White at the back of a collection of his essays which began with something he had written on the occasion of his 58th birthday: “The theme of my life is complexity-through-joy.” Like most of what Mr. White writes, “complexity-through-joy” stayed with me. I’m pretty much a sucker for anything that has “joy” woven into it for it’s a state to which I aspire and a state to which I, sadly and bafflingly, set up numerous roadblocks against. There’s also something about the phrase that reminds me of acting class where one is urged to make one’s actions toward achieving a goal “simple and strong” so that the “complexities” of who you are are allowed to shine through. Simplicity first, complexity second. Joy first and complexity follows. (Funny to think of joy as being simple.) I’m also impressed with the idea of someone being able to come up with a theme for their life. Granted EB has four years on me and I have no doubt that when I’m 58 I’ll have life themes galore, but I have a hard enough time coming up with the theme of something I’m writing let alone the theme of my life. And “complexity-through-joy” sounds so pithy and wise. If I were hard-pressed to come up with a life theme right now it would hover between “spirituality-through-restlessness” or “tolerance through chickens.”
I’ve felt a deep kinship with EB over the past few years. One of the reasons is my recent move to New England and realizing how much this place speaks to me, which parallels a similar move and realization he made in the 1930’s. I find myself traveling back and forth often between Vermont and New York City, as he did between Maine and New York, many times because of work, but more importantly to seek a balance between the country and the city, both of which I love and long for; I know the same rang true for him. I can’t help smiling as I read his work from sheer delight. I find myself sharing passages to Richard, or I'll read an entire essay out loud to him or to other friends, for sharing EB White with others is a sharing of affection to me. His writing is true, thought out. There’s a mastery of his craft that’s never showy, always accessible, and a wisdom mixed with vulnerability, a low hum of self doubt behind it all. He reveals himself through his writing and I love him for it.
Though my affection for Mr. White and his work has deepened considerably in recent years, I realize that our “acquaintance” spans back over most of my life. My first experience probably mirrors most people’s - the reading of “Charlotte’s Web.” The book was still fairly new when I attended kindergarten at Northcrest Elementary School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Every afternoon in that long ago autumn I would sit cross-legged on the floor as Miss McNamara would read the next chapter of the saga. I'd stare up at that book cover as she read, a cover I'm glad to report has become iconic and hasn't changed in all its reprintings. There's something assuring in that. I have a feeling that the reading was intended to lull all of us into a post-graham crackers and milk naptime stupor, but I sat up alert, wide-eyed, mesmerized, eating up every word. Nothing like a good story to keep the sandman at bay. So many gifts came from that book. I certainly looked at spiders differently from then on, which is no small feat when one’s mother is terrified by the very mention of them. And when Charlotte died I was SHOCKED and DEEPLY STRICKEN!! I FELT IT, people. I think “Charlotte’s Web” was the first time that the concept of death was introduced into my life. I thought about it, talked about it. It stuck with me. And what more can a writer ask – or any artist, actor, sculptor, creator – then to have something of theirs “stick.”
My second encounter would’ve been in high school in the early 1970’s with the reprinting of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”, that thin blue paperback version, a well-worn copy of which I’ve carried with me for years. I bought the updated, red hardbound “gift” version with all those kicky new pictures a few Christmases back and loved the added remembrances of EB and Will Strunk, White’s English instructor from his days at Cornell and the author of the original book. I still read and reread “Elements of Style”, hoping it too will stick. Practice, practice. It did hearten me when I read recenlty that White first expected the task of editing Strunk’s original work for re-publication in the early 50’s to be a breeze and that he was surprised and increasingly daunted not only by the immensity of the task itself, but on discovering that he didn’t feel he’d adhered to a lot Strunk’s rules himself; he (White) had written without rules in mind, working it out in his own way, along the way, until he felt and knew it was right.
After “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Elements of Style” in high school, it was about 30 years before White walked into my life again, in a used book store in Los Angeles. It was another worn blue paperback that called to me from the stacks, a collection of his essays entitled “One Man’s Meat.” It sounded slightly salacious, and maybe that was the original impulse to reach for the book, but in short order I found that “One Man’s Meat” had been the title of a monthly column White had written for Harold Ross at the New Yorker, sending his installments in from his North Brookline house on the Maine coast where he’d moved with his family. I realized I knew next to nothing about him and these essays would serve as my first introduction to his life and I took to them immediately. An added plus was that they’d been written from the mid-thirties through the early-forties, my favorite period of American history (next to the Civil War). The history nerd in me rose from the ashes and relished every mention of FDR, the New Deal, and the coming war, reliving it as if it were happening for the first time (ie “I wonder if Hitler’s going to win this time?!”). I am convinced I lived back then, but that's a topic for a later entry.
Reading "One Man's Meat" was akin to welcoming an old friend back into my life and feeling as if no time had passed. And in hindsight choosing that unassuming book from all the books in the stacks almost seems preordained, part of some plan. I'd just begun toying with the idea of moving back east, but “The East” meant NYC, not New England or Vermont. True, I’d had a soft spot for that part of the country for a long time, but still moving there made no sense. Maybe EB knew something I didn’t know. Something about his stories spoke to something in me, something beyond simply enjoying them. And I found that I wanted to read more about him and by him. I got his Collected Correspondences and devoured it, I listened to him narrating his children’s books – a flat, nasally, and uninflected voice, slightly New England, just this side of uninteresting, but I relished hearing a voice to go with the pictures of him I'd seen. I came across his “Here is New York” essay in an original printing at my friend’s while visiting the city and it felt so right to take the book along as a friend on my subway rides and walks throughout the city that day (By the way, I read while I walk. Again, another possible future blog entry). I found that people on the subway would notice me reading the book and ask me about it, engage in conversations about him. It was grand. I think that EB had the same love I have for New York. It vitalizes me, it opens and enlivens me, I can feel all its ages and times pulse through me, such a grand and sordid history it has. And such a grand place to work. A similar love and kinship for New York booms out of that essay. Well, “boom” isn’t really a word I’d associate with EB. No. The book enwraps you, embraces you, insinuates itself into you so you feel those feelings and thoughts are yours.
I mentioned earlier in another blog entry of EB’s love for “Walden” and Thoreau that is spoken of so beautifully in his essay “A Slight Sound at Evening.” Within it he imagines conjuring Thoreau to the present time and accompanying him about. I can imagine doing the same with EB. I would’ve loved to have met him. Of course, I would’ve loved to have visited him and Katherine at their Maine home, go down to the small boat house and see where he wrote, but having them over to our place would’ve been just fine with me too. I can picture having a drink together, sitting around and talking. I’d be nervous thinking what I was going to talk about with a renowned author, a hero of mine AND his fiction editor wife. How would I ever hold up my side of the conversation? But I have a feeling that he’d put me at my ease. And now that I think for a moment, there’d be plenty to talk about: Richard’s newly arrived chicks, the goose eggs - I think EB would especially be interested in them. Then we’d walk across the road to our pond, feed the trout and the Canadian Geese, enjoy the slow coming of evening. We’d manage. He might even be interested in the theatre and films we’d been in. I don’t know. I’d try to make him laugh. I imagine him being a bit stoic, like Jimmy Burrows, the great television director. But Jimmy has a great laugh that jolts counter to his seemingly sour puss. Everyone has their own unique laugh. I wonder what EB’s would’ve been like? A chortle? A soft giggle? There’s a picture of he and Katherine sitting on a couch beside one another in later life sharing a big guffaw together. It’s quite wonderful.
A friend of mine in New York recently suggested over lunch that I should do a one-man show about White, I speak so highly of him all the time and one-man shows are in my blood. What an intriguing idea for an undertaking. So I've been doing extra research, wondering about what one would have to do to get the rights to passages from his pieces, imagining the structure of the piece. I have a dear friend in California who worked under White at the New Yorker when my friend was young and he had a few memories of White that I relished. He shared that he and White were never chums, White was too hallowed a personage for him to approach in that fashion, but he remembered being so surprised at Mr. White’s slightness, both in manner and appearance. A faint, bristly moustache, but other than that, no distinguishing features. He feared a high wind “might blow him down.” Whereas by contrast he felt that Katherine would’ve broken him if she’d sat on him. White was in the background alot. He didn't like speaking in public, rarely did, even when he was given prestigious awards. So why would someone like that want to talk to an audience about their life's work? It’s already tricky trying to dramatize the life of a writer, especially in a one-man venue. What’s the premise? Why is he talking to us? What moved him to do so? Did he come back from the grave bothered because nobody knows who he is anymore? I can’t imagine EB coming back from the grave to toot his own horn. That’s an intriguing obstacle to overcome in a one-man show when the main character is a man who’d rather not talk, but write, that's where he showed up, that's where he spoke. Maybe the lights could come up on a desk with all his books and essays strewn about on it and that’s it for 2 hours. It's all an intriguing idea. More to follow I'm sure.
In the same brief bio of EB that I quoted at the beginning, there’s another quote of his that I cherish. It’s from a 1961 New York Times interview where he says, “All that I ever hope to say in books is that I love the world.” How wonderful again to distill down the aim, the goal of one's life. Through your gift, your talent, you aspire to share with the world your love for it. You take joy - maybe quiet joy - in living, and you share what you come up with with others, in all its complexity.
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
The Trumpet of the Swan
Death of a Pig
Is Sex Necessary? (with James Thurber)
Here is New York
A Slight Sound at Evening
Elements of Style (with Will Strunk)
One Man's Meat
and on and on and on
Thanks for a complexity of joys, EB.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Song Shuffle
Miles Davis is on the I-Pod speakers. I'm sitting in our kitchen, a cup of coffee by my side. Might be a little late for a cup o' jo (it's 9 pm) only time will tell. I have a feeling a few Valerian drops to counteract the caffeine will do the trick.
Tony Bennett's on now singing "Smile", Charlie Chaplin's song. I'm here with the cats and the birds. 4 cats - 3 healthy and 1 a bit punk. Sophia got into something outside and for the past few days has been throwing up, not eating. She just looks up with these woeful "what's going on with me?" eyes. Hope whatever it is is working its way through with a little help from our vet.
Moody Blues "Story in Your Eyes." The birds are all in for the night -- 25 5-week olds out in the new coop, 5 grown hens in the old coop laying 3-5 eggs a day and freely roaming around all day, 1 spunky little chick named "Spike" in his plastic container pining for a little company ---
Mills Bros. "Opus One." --- and 3 geese about to peck out of their shells back in the gopher-bator. Sometime over the next 3 days they'll be pipping out -- and Richard's not here again. We also have our 2 Canadian Geese on the pond across the road, the female spending most of the time on her nest these days while the male stands guard and roams around, checking things out. The nest is in an excellently protected "island" mound in the midst of our swamp.
"Momma Look Sharp" from "1776." Also on the pond are a pair of mallards, the male looking all dapper and dressed up in his green and brown while his mate smocks around in a dullish beige brown; its as if he went out to the clothes store, spent all his duck buck on his own duds, and then said "Oh, sorry honey" and stopped by a thrift store on the way home for her lovely ensemble.
Dixie Chicks "Favorite Year." I love song shuffle. And I love The Dixie Chicks. Good combination. If you've never seen the documentary about their odyssey following the "we're from Texas and we're embarrassed about President Bush" at a concert, get it. What an amazing journey and artistic breakthrough. There whole sound changed, something they had yearned for, but which probably wouldn't have happened without a cataclysm like that. They rock.
"Promise of Living" Aaron Copeland - I mentioned recently that I start most every day listening to this piece of music. There's something about Aaron Copeland that speaks America to me, deep down, root deep, the idea and promise of it, the sadness of it underneath everything else, the fortitude, the pioneering spirit, the hokum and the heart, tender and lovely and moving and shimmeringly uplifting. It starts one's day off well, swelling to a climax and then bringing you back down for a gentle landing in your morning.
John Williams "The March from 1941" from "1941" Great overture, shitty movie, enough said. Well, no. Even in shitty movies there are wonderful bits that make you mourn why the rest of the movie didn't work. Robert Stack is so terrific in this as I recall, the only real heart in most of the movie. And John Williams score is fantastic. This march and his music for the jitterbug contest: Swing, Swing, Swing. Excellent. Since I was a kid I've LOVED movie soundtracks, loved to collect them. I toted around vinyl for years, now all gone.
"On Broadway" by Greg DeBelles from "Karl Rove, I Love You" My movie, great jazz score by Greg DeBelles, so proud of and delighted by the soundtrack. Cool, cool, cool.
"My One and Only Love" Oscar Peterson Funny, Greg DeBelles played this for me when he was interesting me in his idea for the score to my movie, when the idea was still in his cells, in his head, in his gut. It's fun hearing the seeds of it here. Also this makes me think of Richard who's down in White River Junction tonight - this whole week really - directing 2 plays in Project Playwright, a program under the auspices of Northern Stage Company where 10 plays are chosen from many written throughout the year by area 5th graders and are then mounted fully by professional designers, directors and actors on both the main stage and the area schools the playwrights attend.
There followed "Fragile" by Sting; "Woman" by the James Gang (oh, sophmore year in high school!); some Carole King; more Greg DeBelles; songs from "Working" and L'il Abner" and now I'm fading. Oh "How the West Was Won!" - next to "Big Country" its my favorite Western soundtrack. Such a great score to such a star-studded, stilted, politically-incorrect flick.
This may not need explanation, but my music taste is an eclectic, hodge-podge and I love it. I depend upon Richard for most anything contemporary and he is utterly dismayed that within that arena I can't recall the names of groups or individual singers, even when I love their song. Ah well.
Just a ramble tonight. Hope you enjoyed it.
Create something good for the world! And have fun doing it!
Ciao!
Tony Bennett's on now singing "Smile", Charlie Chaplin's song. I'm here with the cats and the birds. 4 cats - 3 healthy and 1 a bit punk. Sophia got into something outside and for the past few days has been throwing up, not eating. She just looks up with these woeful "what's going on with me?" eyes. Hope whatever it is is working its way through with a little help from our vet.
Moody Blues "Story in Your Eyes." The birds are all in for the night -- 25 5-week olds out in the new coop, 5 grown hens in the old coop laying 3-5 eggs a day and freely roaming around all day, 1 spunky little chick named "Spike" in his plastic container pining for a little company ---
Mills Bros. "Opus One." --- and 3 geese about to peck out of their shells back in the gopher-bator. Sometime over the next 3 days they'll be pipping out -- and Richard's not here again. We also have our 2 Canadian Geese on the pond across the road, the female spending most of the time on her nest these days while the male stands guard and roams around, checking things out. The nest is in an excellently protected "island" mound in the midst of our swamp.
"Momma Look Sharp" from "1776." Also on the pond are a pair of mallards, the male looking all dapper and dressed up in his green and brown while his mate smocks around in a dullish beige brown; its as if he went out to the clothes store, spent all his duck buck on his own duds, and then said "Oh, sorry honey" and stopped by a thrift store on the way home for her lovely ensemble.
Dixie Chicks "Favorite Year." I love song shuffle. And I love The Dixie Chicks. Good combination. If you've never seen the documentary about their odyssey following the "we're from Texas and we're embarrassed about President Bush" at a concert, get it. What an amazing journey and artistic breakthrough. There whole sound changed, something they had yearned for, but which probably wouldn't have happened without a cataclysm like that. They rock.
"Promise of Living" Aaron Copeland - I mentioned recently that I start most every day listening to this piece of music. There's something about Aaron Copeland that speaks America to me, deep down, root deep, the idea and promise of it, the sadness of it underneath everything else, the fortitude, the pioneering spirit, the hokum and the heart, tender and lovely and moving and shimmeringly uplifting. It starts one's day off well, swelling to a climax and then bringing you back down for a gentle landing in your morning.
John Williams "The March from 1941" from "1941" Great overture, shitty movie, enough said. Well, no. Even in shitty movies there are wonderful bits that make you mourn why the rest of the movie didn't work. Robert Stack is so terrific in this as I recall, the only real heart in most of the movie. And John Williams score is fantastic. This march and his music for the jitterbug contest: Swing, Swing, Swing. Excellent. Since I was a kid I've LOVED movie soundtracks, loved to collect them. I toted around vinyl for years, now all gone.
"On Broadway" by Greg DeBelles from "Karl Rove, I Love You" My movie, great jazz score by Greg DeBelles, so proud of and delighted by the soundtrack. Cool, cool, cool.
"My One and Only Love" Oscar Peterson Funny, Greg DeBelles played this for me when he was interesting me in his idea for the score to my movie, when the idea was still in his cells, in his head, in his gut. It's fun hearing the seeds of it here. Also this makes me think of Richard who's down in White River Junction tonight - this whole week really - directing 2 plays in Project Playwright, a program under the auspices of Northern Stage Company where 10 plays are chosen from many written throughout the year by area 5th graders and are then mounted fully by professional designers, directors and actors on both the main stage and the area schools the playwrights attend.
There followed "Fragile" by Sting; "Woman" by the James Gang (oh, sophmore year in high school!); some Carole King; more Greg DeBelles; songs from "Working" and L'il Abner" and now I'm fading. Oh "How the West Was Won!" - next to "Big Country" its my favorite Western soundtrack. Such a great score to such a star-studded, stilted, politically-incorrect flick.
This may not need explanation, but my music taste is an eclectic, hodge-podge and I love it. I depend upon Richard for most anything contemporary and he is utterly dismayed that within that arena I can't recall the names of groups or individual singers, even when I love their song. Ah well.
Just a ramble tonight. Hope you enjoyed it.
Create something good for the world! And have fun doing it!
Ciao!
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