The Shadow

There I lay on my bed, enjoying a rare afternoon's rest, and now, some tunes. I could see the ceiling reflected in the back of my iPod as its resting place, my chest, rose and fell. I remained there, refusing to engage. My mind, in this idle state, brought to the fore things not often thought about in the midst of turbulent living.

I recalled a conversation I had with the daughter of a "customer". I was helping her to access a picture of her father on her family website that would be used in his obituary. The background on the homepage was a rather striking photo of a picket fence, lush green grass and shrubs, and the shadow of three people, shoulder to shoulder. This lady volunteered that the photo had been taken on their first vacation without her daughter. I asked what happened to her daughter. She continued to stare at the monitor; I thought at first that she hadn't heard me. She had.

"She took her own life," she said, poorly holding back her emotion on this subject. At the same time, I was sorrowful and also glad to have asked the question. I like to know these things, not for some sadistic pleasure, but just to know what experiences make the people I meet who they are. I don't enjoy making someone feel uncomfortable or dredging up old sorrows, yet at times it needs to be done. There's the Swedish proverb: “Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.”

"She was fifteen."

What could be so pressing, so sorrowful in the life of a beautiful teenage girl that she would do this? I don't know. I can't fathom what might have been going on in her life. Some type of failure or denial? Spurned love? Rejection or ridicule? All temporary problems.

Sadly enough, it wasn't the first time I had experienced this scenario professionally. I recall a young woman, early twenties, who did the same thing. The report was that it was a work-related situation that pushed her to the point of killing herself. Again, a temporary problem.

What I thought about was this: Could the positive influence of one person injecting worth into their life have drawn them back from the precipice? Could one friendship, one word of encouragement from someone, friend or stranger, have made the difference? Possibly not, yet very possibly so.

If so, then I want that word to come from me. At least once in my life, I want to be that person. I don't want to know about it either; I don't want to know that my attentions have had such an effect. I just want to live my life in such a way that those things naturally come out. I want it to be borne out of a sensitivity and love for people who need to know unconditional love in some way, at least once in their life.

"We love because he first loved us."  ~  I John 4:19

Charlie Rich: 1932 - 1995

As I write this, I am listening to one of my lifetime favorite artists, Charlie Rich. Charlie and I go way back to the earliest days of my musical awakening.

I'm guessing I was around 10 or 11 years of age, and the year was 1972-73. My parents were devoted country music fans. The media of the day was the 8-track tape or the LP record, both of which have gone the way of the dinosaur. I began to show interest in their music collection, which happened to contain a good-sized helping of Charlie Rich. In 1973, Charlie was climbing to the zenith of his popularity. "Behind Closed Doors" was released in '73. He won a Grammy in 1974 for the single, "Behind Closed Doors", as well as three different awards that year from the Country Music Association for that same album.

Charlie quickly rose to the top as one of my favorites. Many have agreed about how his music is difficult to classify. Granted, his popularity was in the country realm, but he could have, at times, just as easily been classified as jazz, blues or even rock. His popular songs tended to cross charts, appealing to a broad section of folks. It was around this same time, I saw Charlie Rich perform at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (either '74 or '75--he was there both years). Within a couple of years, Charlie had fallen from the top of my play list. I discovered rock music at about this time, precisely in the form of the Beatles and later Paul McCartney's solo work and his follow-up group, Wings.

Fast forward about 25 years: I read an article about Charlie in a magazine that I cannot recall by name at this time. The message I remember though. The writer talked glowingly about Charlie's career. He talked about how that Charlie, in spite of his season of popularity, was for the most part under appreciated for the talent he had. He also told about how he died in 1995 from a blood clot in his lung, having lived the latter years of his life out of the public eye for the most part. I remember being smitten with grief  when I learned of Charlie's passing.

It's hard for me to believe how intense an emotional reaction can be at the death of someone you never really knew and only appreciated from a distance. I have also felt the same for Warren Zevon, Bob Hope and Linda McCartney. I suppose it's just sorrow at the death of someone you admired for their talent or someone who played a part in your formative years. Surprisingly enough, I didn't feel this sense of loss when John Lennon died.
 
In recent years, I've reacquainted myself with Charlie's work. I have one "Greatest Hits" CD, but the best is the anthology referenced above, "Feel Like Going Home: The Essential Charlie Rich." It's chock full of great stuff and really showcases how talented a musician, vocalist and songwriter Charlie Rich was.

Humor from the Future

CLEMENS:  So there are a privileged few...who serve on these ships, living in luxury, wanting for nothing. But what about everyone else? What about the poor? You ignore them...

TROI:  Poverty was eliminated a long time ago. And a lot of things disappeared with it: hopelessness... despair... cruelty... war...

He regards her solemnly. He's beginning to realize that his dark view is misplaced.

CLEMENS: I come from a time when men achieve wealth and power by standing on the backs of the poor... when prejudice and intolerance are commonplace... when power is an end unto itself...

(beat)

And you're telling me... that isn't how it is anymore?

TROI: That's right.

CLEMENS: (with a sigh)  Maybe it is worth giving up cigars for, after all...

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 6, Episode 1, "Time's Arrow, Part 2"

---

I find it funny when the misguided masses speculate on how the future can only get better. Yet those who have been disconnected from the Matrix see that things don't get better; they get worse. Things that we assume are improving society are bringing it down, down, down into the depths of depravity, despair and debauchery (how about that alliteration--impressive, eh?). What seems so obvious is that freedom without responsibility and decency improves nothing.

Call me a moralist. I'll take that as a compliment. Call me narrow-minded and I'll disagree with you. Believing that actual alternatives are many and viable alternatives are few is realistic, not narrow-minded. I believe you have many choices available, most of which are bad. Don't blame me though when I refuse to follow you down that dark, broad path.

Go ahead. Make your bad choices. Be prepared to reap the consequences. Call me a prophet of doom. I'll say, "You're right." Doom is what waits for you at the end of that dark, broad path. Just don't go to your doom thinking your way was the only way.

...Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. ~ Matthew 7:14

The Photo Montage/Collage/Mosaic as an Artform

A number of years ago, almost 20 now, I worked downtown in one of the few corporate obelisks here in Ft. Worth. The top floors were occupied by the property owners. They were people of immense wealth and good taste. The walls were dotted with art, usually tending toward the contemporary side. Some of it slipped into the modern category: wild sculptures and paintings of either unbridled splashery or very neatly done geometric shapes. At this point, art stops speaking to me. "The Emperor has no clothes!", I want to shout.

There was one piece, however, that cast a spell on me. I never knew (until now) the name of the artist or the title of the piece. It was a photographic collage, very large (109" x 58" I now find). I find the terms collage, montage and mosaic difficult to differentiate as they relate to photography. Whichever term applies, allow me to describe it...

Imagine a hundred or so prints, apparently borderless 8 x 10s. These images are arranged so as to overlap with their overall shape approximating an ovalish sort of shape. The composite image is of the footpath across the Brooklyn Bridge. At the bottom of the collage, you see the photographers feet. At the top of the image is the superstructure of the bridge. It widens in the middle, incorporating more prints, filling out the image of the footpath and the bridge.

I went for this near-20 years not knowing who did this or what it was called, but I remembered it and was inspired by it in some of my own creations. In wanting to write about it here, it tried again and again, with limited success, to divine this information using the magic of Google. Finally, I found an artist in New York, David McGlynn, who had created similar photo collages. It looked like it could be his work, so I e-mailed him, asking if it was his or if he knew whose it was.

While waiting to hear back from Mr. McGlynn, I discovered what I had been searching for: an image of a photo collage called "Brooklyn Bridge" created by an English artist named David Hockney in 1982. Not long after I had made this discovery, I received a very gracious response from David McGlynn, a very successful artist in his own right. Having only given him a coarse description of what I recalled, he said this:

It could have been mine... or David Hockney's(!)

I created this piece in 1982 [his "Brooklyn Bridge"].

It has been exhibited here & there, and is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. At around the same time, the painter David Hockney began experimenting with Polaroid & snapshot collages. And though there could have been no connection between us, he happened to do a collage from the same perspective, virtually from the same spot on the bridge:

You probably saw Hockney's 1982 image, with the feet on the bottom. Interestingly I had been doing collages like this since 1979, and have included my feet in the bottom of some of them(!) Here is one from 1981: [the boat]

One day, the art historians will sort it all out!

Cheers,

David McGlynn

Mr. McGlynn was right. It was the Hockney that I remembered. This collage had a limited production of 20 copies. Who knows which of those I saw.

If you get a chance and want to see some more of Mr. McGlynn's work, go to his website. I recommend it; some pretty cool stuff.

The Ultimate Act of Selfishness

I can understand how desperation can grab you and smother you, feeling as real as if a 300-pound gorilla were sitting on your chest. I've been there. It's probably safe to say that we all have. Small issues can look really big if that's all you dwell on from day to day.

I've known a few people who have committed suicide killed themselves, though none have been close friends. In my work, I see it all to frequently. I see the wreckage left in the wake of a suicide. People who kill themselves either aren't thinking about what it will do to their families, or they know what it will do and proceed anyway. Whatever the case, it's a selfish act.

Before you fly into a fit of sanctimonious rage, hear this: I am well aware of people out there who, because of their depression, aren't seeing things realistically. "The world would be better off without me" is something most self-killers have probably thought or said, and this observation is always untrue. Self murder is still murder, just without a separate victim, and murder is clearly prohibited in the Big Ten. I offer sympathy for the condition, but no quarter for the act.

People who kill themselves would probably stand down from that last desperate act if they spent some of their energy on other people. Look at somone else's problems for a change. Whether they are bigger or smaller than ours doesn't matter. The obvious truth is this:  It's tough all over, Bub. We all have problems, and some of them are bigger than yours. Just dig in and keep moving.

In this spirit, I offer the following, a cure for suicidal thoughts. Go volunteer at a soup kitchen or a children's cancer ward. Go visit those old, lonely people at a nursing home, forgotten by their families. Love someone other than yourself. Doing for others is what makes life worth the living.

All of us get lost in the darkness
Dreamers learn to steer by the stars
All of us do time in the gutter
Dreamers turn to look at the cars
Turn around and turn around and turn around
Turn around and walk the razor's edge
Dont turn your back
And slam the door on me.

Rush - "The Pass"

Rush - The Pass
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I Touched History

  I'm not one to obsess over my profession in an unhealthy fashion. I try and turn it off completely when I leave the office. Sometimes I'm forced to leave it in Standby Mode, as I am on-call regularly. Summing up, it is not a part of my person beyond its role as a bacon-bringing enterprise.

Every now and again though, I have an experience that relates to my profession in an interesting way. I've visited the Texas State Cemetery in Austin and have seen the grave of Fred Gipson, author of "Old Yeller" and "Savage Sam", the literature of my Texas youth. I've recently seen the graves of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere and Benjamin Franklin's parents. I've also visited the infamous, such as Lee Harvey Oswald. I see these as incedental to my profession, as I would have been interested in them as a non-funeral director.

A co-worker and I took a loved one to her final rest at the Old Palestine Cemetery in Alto, Texas the other day. In preparing for the trip, I discovered that a gentleman named Holloway Daniel Murphy was buried there. H. D. Murphy's claim to fame was one of misfortune and was a textbook example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On April 1, 1934, Easter Sunday, Mr. Murphy had been in the employ of the State of Texas as a Highway Patrolman for about 6 months (his career with DPS began on September 18, 1933). He and his partner, Edward Bryan Wheeler, a 4-year veteran, were on their motorcycles patrolling Highway 114 in Grapevine, TX, at that time a simple dirt road. They happened upon a black Ford parked on the side of the road. Thinking it to be a motorist in need of assistance, they turned around to render aid.

One account I found online told the story of what happened next.

Clyde [Barrow] grabbed a sawed-off shotgun and hid behind the car, while Henry Methvin [another member of their gang] grabbed a Browning automatic rifle. Meaning to kidnap the officers and take them for a "joyride", Clyde said to Methvin,"Let's take 'em". Methvin, took this to mean "kill 'em".

Not knowing of the impending danger and with guns still holstered, Wheeler who was in front, approached the car, Clyde prepared to jump him and was surprised when Methvin fired his weapon, striking Wheeler in the chest.

Murphy attempted to grab his shotgun from his motorcycle.  Clyde, now faced with a different situation, fired three blasts at patrolman Murphy.

While all this happened, Bonnie Parker reportedly slept in the Ford's back seat. A farmer who supposedly saw the exchange take place said that Bonnie, awakened in the back seat, exited the car and shot both troopers again in the head with her 20-gauge shotgun. This part of the story, however,  is deemed as unreliable and probably never happened. "Reportedly" and "supposedly" are words frequently used in the retelling of this story, as different versions abound. This multiplicity of versions and the sands of time have muddled the actual details of the event.

On May 23 of the same year, not two months after this event, Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed by lawmen outside of Sailes, Louisiana. They were both killed, reportedly having been shot at least 25 times apiece. Sympathy was in short supply with the lawmen, as the outlaws had killed numerous law-enforcement officials at every level. Sympathy and sorrow was found instead in the undiscerning eyes of the public. Charmed by Bonnie and Clyde's "glamourous" exploits, they protested the "cruel" way in which the couple met their end.

I visited Officer Murphy's grave while I was there at Old Palestine. For some reason, I also honored the Jewish tradition by placing a small rock on the marker. This is apparently a symbolic act, symbolizing that the person is still remembered by those who visit the marker today. I plan on making it a personal practice. My favorite person, after all, was a full-blooded Jew.

Requescat in pace, Officer Murphy. For the outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde, I offer nothing.