Keeping my grief at arm's length
First of all, I don't think Jim Carroll was 60 when he died (see my non-snake-related post from yesterday). He was always almost exactly ten years older than me, and now suddenly, he was eleven years older.
I googled his age and there are conflicting answers. Some people seem to feel that his being born in August 1950, qualifies him for being 60 now... while others proclaim that he was actually born in 1949. Hmm.
Anyway, gang, he went in the best possible way: he had a heart attack while sitting at his desk, writing -- and on a Friday, no less. I have put in my request with the powers that be that I, too, would like to go in that exact way. They said they are giving my request "careful consideration" but no one could really tell me more than that at this time.
On Friday, I was having one of the most memorable days/nights of my life. The Palmer House was everything I'd hoped it would be and then some. It is such a grand old hotel. Mark and I had cocktails & dinner at the hotel on Friday evening and the martini was perfect, the wine was perfect, the food was perfect, and the atmosphere & the service could not have been better. For some unknown reason, though, I was thinking about Johnny Depp all day & all evening. Intensely -- he kept popping into my head and I couldn't imagine why. And I thought, "oh crap, I hope he didn't die; that would so suck." The popping-Depp thoughts were so prevalent, that I actually scanned the newspaper headlines, thinking something horrible was going to be there. But no; it turns out that he was off in California, sailing around on some doo-hickey in a fog machine, dressed as the pirate for the Disney D23 thingy.
I'm guessing that somewhere in this profound universe the reason why my very soul would be a sort of magnet for something as insignificant and commerce-oriented as that has a simple explanation, but for now, it escapes me. Because instead what happened was that Jim died.
It's funny, but back when Willy DeVille died, I was thinking of Jim Carroll because Jim made some less than kind remarks once in class about Mink DeVille's record deal and Willy's heroin problems (pot calling the kettle black and all). This was way back in early 1984, when both of them were at the heights of their NYC fame & recording careers.
Anyway, so. Willy dying made me think of Jim Carroll and, like a month later, Jim Carroll dies, too.
I honestly do believe that death -- for the person who dies -- is a glorious, rapturous kind of soul-expanding event where this outpost of physical consciousness that we are as we live here on Earth, snaps back to the full glory of love and profound complexity whence it came. I don't think it's a sad event for the "departed." I believe that the sorrow is a selfish thing -- we are left behind. That kind of feeling. I have been trying really hard to be okay about Jim dying because, a.) there's not a fucking thing I can do about it; and b.) he's gone to a place of completeness. But gosh. I am so fucking incredibly sad about this. I just want to go to bed and cry. But that is so selfish & unproductive, right?
If I want to be selfish, I should try to at least be productive about it and not think about loss, but remind myself instead of the absolute joy of those months of unbridled poetry when I had that chance to study writing with him at the West Side Y in Manhattan when I was 23 -24 years old. What an amazing time -- and even after the class was over, there was still so much poetry in New York in those days that he was involved in. Especially downtown, where I lived. St. Mark's Church, of course, and then numerous other venues, too numerous to count, really.
I don't want to say that all of it is gone. Obviously, there is still poetry all over the place in NYC, but the particular voices of it, and the color and the feel & smell of the very air back then -- that part is gone because the souls that came together to help create that reality have dispersed and many of them are dead. But what's beautiful to me, and what's sacred and incredibly poignant are those memories of poetry in New York exactly at that time and exactly the way it filled me and inspired me; even though I was a songwriter then -- it's not so very different from poetry. It was life to me; it was the excitement of everything that Ohio was not and could never be (and won't ever be).
Well, I am trying not to grieve; I am trying to celebrate it in some quiet, thankful way. At least he didn't stick a gun in his mouth and shoot himself like other writers we've loved... or choke to death on a bottle cap because he was so out to lunch on booze & pills, like other other writers we've loved. He simply sat down to write on a Friday and died. I've got to figure a way not to be sad and then stick with it, you know? What a treasure, what a gift; what a whole lot of happiness he gave me -- and all of it in words, the thing I love most about life on Earth. Vaya con dios, amigo. I loved you to pieces. See you next time around, I hope.
[Jim Carroll 1949/1950 - 2009]
I googled his age and there are conflicting answers. Some people seem to feel that his being born in August 1950, qualifies him for being 60 now... while others proclaim that he was actually born in 1949. Hmm.
Anyway, gang, he went in the best possible way: he had a heart attack while sitting at his desk, writing -- and on a Friday, no less. I have put in my request with the powers that be that I, too, would like to go in that exact way. They said they are giving my request "careful consideration" but no one could really tell me more than that at this time.
On Friday, I was having one of the most memorable days/nights of my life. The Palmer House was everything I'd hoped it would be and then some. It is such a grand old hotel. Mark and I had cocktails & dinner at the hotel on Friday evening and the martini was perfect, the wine was perfect, the food was perfect, and the atmosphere & the service could not have been better. For some unknown reason, though, I was thinking about Johnny Depp all day & all evening. Intensely -- he kept popping into my head and I couldn't imagine why. And I thought, "oh crap, I hope he didn't die; that would so suck." The popping-Depp thoughts were so prevalent, that I actually scanned the newspaper headlines, thinking something horrible was going to be there. But no; it turns out that he was off in California, sailing around on some doo-hickey in a fog machine, dressed as the pirate for the Disney D23 thingy.
I'm guessing that somewhere in this profound universe the reason why my very soul would be a sort of magnet for something as insignificant and commerce-oriented as that has a simple explanation, but for now, it escapes me. Because instead what happened was that Jim died.
It's funny, but back when Willy DeVille died, I was thinking of Jim Carroll because Jim made some less than kind remarks once in class about Mink DeVille's record deal and Willy's heroin problems (pot calling the kettle black and all). This was way back in early 1984, when both of them were at the heights of their NYC fame & recording careers.
Anyway, so. Willy dying made me think of Jim Carroll and, like a month later, Jim Carroll dies, too.
I honestly do believe that death -- for the person who dies -- is a glorious, rapturous kind of soul-expanding event where this outpost of physical consciousness that we are as we live here on Earth, snaps back to the full glory of love and profound complexity whence it came. I don't think it's a sad event for the "departed." I believe that the sorrow is a selfish thing -- we are left behind. That kind of feeling. I have been trying really hard to be okay about Jim dying because, a.) there's not a fucking thing I can do about it; and b.) he's gone to a place of completeness. But gosh. I am so fucking incredibly sad about this. I just want to go to bed and cry. But that is so selfish & unproductive, right?
If I want to be selfish, I should try to at least be productive about it and not think about loss, but remind myself instead of the absolute joy of those months of unbridled poetry when I had that chance to study writing with him at the West Side Y in Manhattan when I was 23 -24 years old. What an amazing time -- and even after the class was over, there was still so much poetry in New York in those days that he was involved in. Especially downtown, where I lived. St. Mark's Church, of course, and then numerous other venues, too numerous to count, really.
I don't want to say that all of it is gone. Obviously, there is still poetry all over the place in NYC, but the particular voices of it, and the color and the feel & smell of the very air back then -- that part is gone because the souls that came together to help create that reality have dispersed and many of them are dead. But what's beautiful to me, and what's sacred and incredibly poignant are those memories of poetry in New York exactly at that time and exactly the way it filled me and inspired me; even though I was a songwriter then -- it's not so very different from poetry. It was life to me; it was the excitement of everything that Ohio was not and could never be (and won't ever be).
Well, I am trying not to grieve; I am trying to celebrate it in some quiet, thankful way. At least he didn't stick a gun in his mouth and shoot himself like other writers we've loved... or choke to death on a bottle cap because he was so out to lunch on booze & pills, like other other writers we've loved. He simply sat down to write on a Friday and died. I've got to figure a way not to be sad and then stick with it, you know? What a treasure, what a gift; what a whole lot of happiness he gave me -- and all of it in words, the thing I love most about life on Earth. Vaya con dios, amigo. I loved you to pieces. See you next time around, I hope.
[Jim Carroll 1949/1950 - 2009]
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