For some reason woke up with a list forming in my mind of my ten top favorite authors sixty years ago when I was 21 in 1963! Here they are in no particular order:
Diane di Prima
Bob Kaufman
James Baldwin
LeRoi Jones (later became Amira Baraka)
Walt Whitman
James Joyce
Fydor Dostoevsky
William Goldman
Jack Kerouac
Lilllian Smith
When I first saw this film a few years ago I dug it, with some reservations. But watching it this holiday season, I was totally won over, so much so that it is, for now, my favorite Christmas movie. I teared up, I laughed out loud, I felt overwhelmed with love and melancholy together. And had some profound revelations. Not bad for a small flick with an entirely George Michael soundtrack.
Photographer/poet Kevin McCollister's haunting image created on Hollywood Boulevard on Halloween 2023
Not a great photo, but a memorable holiday moment in the living room of the Santa Monica home I was renting in 1983. Me surrounded by three great musicians: jazz saxophonist Buddy Arnold in black, my son and budding bassist, Miles, and the iconic guitarist Sandy Bull with one of his kids. I'm wearing a seasonal sweater from the 1930s passed down from one of my older brothers, and Beatle boots I bought in 1962 pre-Beatles so called then Spanish boots. I still have the sweater and the boots and live again with Miles, Buddy and Sandy no longer with us.
I eat dark chocolate every day, and I'm not stopping. But, I found this internet meme hilarious.
The Night John Lennon Died
___________________________________
One warm night, when I was a kid,
we were all playing ringalario in
the high school field at the bottom
of my street when Mrs. Murphy, known
mostly for the time her hair turned
purple when she tried to dye it, stuck
her head out the door and yelled across
the street to us, “Go on home now and be
quiet, Babe Ruth just died.” And we all
did go home where everything was somber
and serious and adult and strange,
worse than when one of the family died,
because then there were outbursts of
emotion as well as jokes and stories
and good drunken parties, but
the night Babe Ruth died, everyone
felt as sad as if it was a close close
friend or a sister or a brother,
but no one was really related so
there was no call for an actual Irish
wake or funeral party. I couldn’t help
remembering that night again, the
night John Lennon died. Nobody
threw a wake or a party where we
could all get drunk and high and
have a good cry together. We all
went home and wandered around our
rooms and heads looking for answers,
unable to sleep or forget or accept
or understand what had happened.
It had to be a mistake and it was,
a fucking senseless, horrible,
deadening mistake.
It’s hard to
recognize even the most familiar
things. I don’t know where I am
half the time, the other half I’m
flashing on some song or line or look
or attitude so close to my own
personal history I thought it was
mine. But it ain’t, cause it’s gone
with John and I feel like I got to
go do something now to spread a
little joy and loving and honest
fucking answers and questions about
the world I live in and the only times
we ever have, our own. I hope I’m
not alone.
(C) 1980 Michael Lally
[from my book Another Way To Play]
Woke up this morning to a text from a fiend with a photo of Father Mike Judge, the Franciscan chaplain to a NYC fire brigade who died at Ground Zero on 9/11 and who we knew. I replied with the single word SAINT. Which then led my mind to generate an alphabetical list of dead folk who are personal saints in any world, or heaven, I have a say over (i.e. in my heart):
SAINT ANNE FRANK
SAINT ANTHONY (DINOVI)
SAINT AUNT MARY (LALLY)
SAINT BASQUIAT (JEAN-MICHEL)
SAINT BERRY (BERENSON)
SAINT BILLIE (HOLIDAY)
SAINT BIRD (CHARLIE PARKER)
SAINT CAL (JOHNSON)
SAINT CANDY (DARLING)
SAINT CAMPION "TOMMY" LALLY
SAINT CLIFFORD ("CLYDE" HEARD)
SAINT COOKIE (MUELLER)
SAINT DIANE (DI PRIMA)
SAINT DOLPHY (ERIC)
SAINT DOROTHY (DAY)
SAINT DOUG (LANG)
SAINT DOUGIE (STEINDORFF)
SAINT ED (COX)
SAINT ELIO (SCHNEEMAN)
SAINT EMILY (DICKINSON)
SAINT EVA (HESSE)
SAINT FANNIE (LOU HAMER)
SAINT FRANK (O'HARA)
SAINT FRED (HAMPTON)
SAINT GRACIE (ALLEN)
SAINT HARPO (MARX)
SAINT IRENE (DEMPSEY LALLY)
SAINT JACK (KEROUAC)
SAINT JIMMI (HENDRIX)
SAINT JIMMY (SCHUYLER)
SAINT JOAN B. (BARIBEAULT)
SAINT JOAN G. (LALLY GLOSHINSKI)
SAINT JOAN R. ("BAMBI" ROBINSON)
SAINT JOE (BRAINARD)
SAINT KENNY (GRAHAM)
SAINT LEE (FISHER LALLY)
SAINT LEWIS (WARSH)
SAIINT LOUIS (ARMSTRONG)
SAINT MALCOLM (X)
SAINT MARILYN (MONROE)
SAINT MARSHA (P. JOHNSON)
SAINT MARTIN (LUTHER KING)
SAINT MCCARTHY (JOHN)
SAINT MEL (JOHNSON)
SAINT MIKE (JUDGE)
SAINT NATALIE (WOOD)
SAINT NORMAN (LEAR)
SAINT OTIS (REDDING)
SAINT "PRES" (LESTER YOUNG)
SAINT ROSE (MCBRIDE LALLY)
SAINT SELBY (HUBERT JR.)
SAINT SIMONE (SIGNORET)
SAINT SISSY (JOHNSON)
SAINT TED (BERRIGAN)
SAINT TIM (DLUGOS)
SAINT 'TRANE (JOHN COLTRANE)
SAINT UNCLE JOHN (LALLY)
SAINT VERONICA (LAKE)
SAINT WALT (WHITMAN)
SAINT WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
SAINT WILLY (FARRELL)
SAINT YVONNE (DE LA VEGA)
There are more in my head but I can't get them out. How 'bout yours?
Photo taken by my housemate Hannah Bracken after she and her partner, my son Miles, and I moved in together in 2021. The lights have changed colors (all blue now) but remain up and lit year round, as does the message.
Woke up this morning with a new list brewing in my mind of artists I like who are, or once were, friends of mine. As it grew, I had to alphabetize to remember. I’m sure there are many more who didn’t immediately come to mind:
AHM AKRAM
DON BACHARDY
ALIX BAILEY
JENNIFER BAXANDALE
GLEN BAXTER
SUSAN BEE
JOE BRAINARD
RUDY BURCKHARDT
SUSAN CAMPBELL
MIGUEL CONDE
DONNA DENNIS
CHIO FLORES
JANE FREILICHER
LESLIE GREENE
DUNCANN HANNAH
JOAN HANOR
JOHN HANOR
PAUL HARRYN
ERIC HOLZMAN
CAITLIN LALLY HOTALING
WALTER HOYT
ALEX KATZ
MIKE KELLEY
PATRICIA LOUISIANNA KNOP
LEE LALLY
DIANNE LAWRENCE
DON MCLAUGHLIN
RITA STERN MILCH
PAULA NORTH
BRENDAN O’CONNELL
DARRAGH PARK
RICK PARKER
JUDY RIFKA
ERIKA ROTHENBERG
SUSAN ROTHENBERG
ED RUSCHA
GEORGE SCHNEEMAN
CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN
SYLVIA SCHUSTER
MINDY SEEGER
BILL SULLIVAN
MARY WORONOV
TREVOR WINKFIELD
GEOFFREY YOUNG
Here's the video of Lallypalooza, the event earlier this year where some family and friends read some of my poems (their choices). Some glitches and unflattering angles, but grateful to have a record of the evening.
Cinematographer John Bailey (Ordinary People, Groundhog Day et. al.) was one of the first people I met and became friends with when I moved from NYC to LA in 1982. He was already well established in the movie business, along with his Oscar-winning film editor wife Carol Littleton. Both were movie aficionados like me, only calmer and more humble, less arrogant and self aggrandizing than I was.
Though a few months younger than me, I relied on John for advice and honest assessments of my various attempts to conquer Hollywood. He never made me feel anything but an equal. I had written my first screenplay back in New York based on my experiences in 1962 being stationed in the then last legally completely segregated state, South Carolina, when I was in love with a "black girl".
The script found lots of admirers who wanted me to write screenplays based on their ideas and projects, but no one would do a mixd-race lovers story then. So I tried to get it made myself, and John generously offered to shoot it for free. Others offered their services as well, and I was approached by the agents of the then little known Sean Penn and Kiefer Sutherland but didn't see them playing my 20-year-old self.
I never did get it made and became busy raising my two then only kids as a single parent and trying to make the rent and other life dramas and saw less of John over the years, but never forgot his kindness and gentleness with me. Unlike me, his artistic goal was to be invisible, for his work to serve the director's vision so seamlessly that you couldn't see a John Bailey signature style.
I can say though that he was most proud of his work on Paul Schrader's Mishima, the biopic about the controversial Japanese novelist that mixed day-of-his-death documentary style scenes with scenes from his earlier life and scenes from his fiction. John shot each of the three intersecting stories on three different film stocks and insisted I come to a screening of the film with the spliced film stocks before it all was distilled into one rendition. One of the greatest movie-going experiences of my life.
Condolences to Carol and all who knew and admired John.
Me at 19 in February of 1962 with Murph, my buddy during basic training in Texas. I spent four years as a low rank enlisted man in the USAF (with one Court Martial and a ton of Article 15s (court martials without courts)). I write about it in my just about to be published new book: SAY IT AGAIN.
Always liked this photo of Randolph Scott, who I had a boyhood crush on (and still do), and Cary Grant in old Hollywood where they were roommates (and yes, there were rumors, still are).
"I think about the alternative lives of my characters all the time. But, as I did not live in fiction, I decided, soon after Vincent's death, to stop pondering the alternatives. What if belongs to fiction; what now, to this real life." —Yiyun Li (The New Yorker 10/30/23)
There will be a virtual reading of poems from the BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2023 by the poets, including me, this Thursday, check out the details here: https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/event/best-american-poetry-2023
Been meaning to post that this year's BEST AMERICAN POETRY yearly anthology is out and well worth getting, and not (just) because I have a poem in it ("I Meant To"). But because there are a lot of instant classics in it that will provoke you, entertain you, maybe inspire you, and make you laugh (and/or possibly shed a tear), and more. Thanks to this year's editor Elaine Equi and the series over all editor David Lehman for including me.
Woke up this morning with my mind working on a new list which became my top fifteen favorite films with a single first name as the title:
AMELIE (2001)
ANNA (2019)
BELLE (2013)
GILDA (1946)
GLORIA (1980)
JUNO (2007)
LAURA (1944)
LUCY (2014)
MARTY (1955)
NINOTCHKA (1939)
PHILOMENA (2013)
ORLANDO (1992)
RAY (2004)
RUDY (1993)
SABRINA (1954)
I copped this image from Eve Brandstein who was my partner in founding and running the eight-year initial run of the weekly poetry reading series Poetry In Motion that Terry Kirkman often took part in in the late 1980s and early '90s. But I first met Terry shortly after I moved from NYC to LA in 1982. We were sitting around a table of mostly then famous movie people and I thought I was being gracious by engaging him in small talk as he was I thought unknown to me. I only learned later that he and his music had been leaving its mark on me since the 1960s.
Terry was not only a great musician, singer, and songwriter with The Association back when (Cherish being maybe his most famous song), but also a fine poet, artist (he made the most striking drawings on his smart phone e.g.), and friend. A gentle giant who towered over most people, he was best described in a post (sorry I can't remember whose) as "a humble genius" with, I might add, a giant heart.
Because I was dealing with a bout of Covid when he passed, I didn't get to post this til now, so Rest In Harmony old friend, with condolences to your equally big-hearted wife Heidi, and all your family, friends, and fans.
I'm grateful and happy to be included in Pejk Malinovski's BBC radio broadcast I REMEMBER JOE BRAINARD, a terrifically shaped and edited interview/conversation about artist/poet/writer and friend (and in some of the interviewees cases, like me, lover) Joe Brainard and his now classic, genius autobiographical list poem I REMEMBER. Check it out here.
Been sidelined by Covid, but recovering nicely thank you. Meanwhile lots has happened that I wanted to share. I'll start with a podcast I was interviewed by Eric Greenberg on about my poetry and acting and my hometown when I was coming up in the 1940s and '50s. Just my perspective and memories. Check it out if you feel like it, here: www.mapsopodso.com.
Me and my son Miles early in my being a single parent (the 1970s) in Manhattan.
Three generations of graybeards. My son Miles Lally, my dear old friend Peter Case, and me. Hadn't seen Peter in person in years so was delighted when he came through yesterday and Miles got a selfie of us. Deep love all around. Peter brought his latest record album (on vinyl): DOCTOR MOAN, which has a song on it based on a poem of mine "Give Me Five Minutes More" (inspired by a song popular in my 1940s boyhood).
Posted this before. Me and best friend poet and traditional Irish musician and songwriter Terence Winch and Joe Biden (on the cover of Irish America) I guess in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Joe and I were born in the same year, 1942, but didn't look it then.
One of my favorite artists (and friend) Susan Bee's take on a scene from the film "Passion" which caught my eye and continues to.
My youngest child, Flynn, when he was five and his mother and I had just separated and he was splitting his time between us in Jersey, and in his twenties, goofing at the camera in our local Jersey coffee shop as I was beginning to have as yet undiagnosed Parkinson's symptoms and he was beginning to be my part-time caretaker (his mother and others lending a hand too) until I moved to the Berkshires in '21. He still comes up on visits and helps out. I sure have a lot to be grateful for.
Miles and Caitlin, my only children back in the '80s in LA when this photo was taken. I was a single parent for Miles since he was five, and Cait since she was twelve. Now Miles and his partner Hannah live with me in upstate NY where they are my caretakers, while Cait lives nearby in Western Mass with her family and helps me too. I'm a very lucky person.
"I would like to live in a world where you didn't have to be ashamed of shame."
"If you can acknowledge the complexity of your own heart, then you're not going to look for scapegoats."
—Jacqueline Rose (from "Presence of Mind" in The New Yorker, Aug. 21, 2023)
Jimmy Remar, me, and Bill Mosley in the summer of 1990 on the set of WHITE FANG in Alaska. I chose to make my one-scene character, Sykes, a wannabe dandy, and the replacement director, Lewis Teague, let me. Made a lot of friends there, including these guys.
(Because there was another actor named Michael Lally in The Screen Actors Guild long before me, I had to add my middle name for SAG, so I'm Michael David Lally in film and TV credits. But in googling this to check the date, I found that on Wikipedia they have me as Michael Davis Lally. Kinda like it.)
I first met Robbie Robertson at a private memorial service for the singer/songwriter David Blue not long after I moved from NYC to LA in 1982. Whenever I ran into him after that at Hollywood parties or any gathering we would usually end up in a corner talking. He was always nice, even sweet with me.
I think because I wasn't a celebrity myself, or anyone with any power to open doors or even any competition, movie and music stars used me at these gatherings for relief from the pressure to be on or to impress or to charm etc. and so we could just have an honest conversation with nothing at stake.
Anyway I liked him, I'm sorry he's gone. Condolences to his family, friends, and fans.
I always loved this photo of my older siblings before I was born. It must be summer of 1938, during The Great Depression. There was another brother between me and them who died as an infant. I came along in the spring of 1942, five months after the USA entered World War Two, which my two oldest brothers would join the military for before it was over.
My only personal story about him is when I was asked to audition at the last minute for the small role of Sykes in WHITE FANG. I was told that I was up against Paul "Pee-wee" Reubens who had also auditioned for it. It would just be a cameo role for him, but would help show he was versatile enough to do other characters besides Pee-wee.
Needless to say, I got the role and immediately flew to Alaska where it was being shot. I chose to make the character a wannabe dandy of the time but because of problems on the shoot felt I didn't do my best work. When I saw it at the premiere, and the few times since, all I could think of was: I sure would have loved to see what Reubens would have done with this role.
Rest In Pee-wee Paul, and condolences to family, friends, and fans.
A new addition to my all-time favorite books list. The title page says it's "a memoir in poems, stories & fragments" but it could easily say "a memoir in poems and poetic prose." It flows so naturally it was more like the book was reading me than vice versa. Fascinating, poignant, funny, at times, breathtakingly honest, totally engaging, and literally charming.
And yes the author is a longtime dear friend, and I'm briefly mentioned in a list of LA poets, but anyone who knows me knows I don't hesitate to criticize my friends' work if I feel it's deserved. Not NOW I AM A MISSING PERSON. Read it and see for yourself.
"While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light."
—Jack Kerouac (from The Scripture of The Golden Eternity)
Wish I could have invited everyone I love to the event, but for that they would have needed Madison Square Garden and it was limited to 60 people and most were invited by the organizers and readers. Here's a few photos from it:
This past Sunday an amazing (to me) event occurred at The Center for Peace Through Culture in Housatonic Mass. My longtime friends (over 50 years) photographer/poet Bobby Miller and actor/director Karen Allen organized "Lallypalooza" (as the program called it) "A Celebration of the Life and Poetry of Michael Lally".
If you're anything like I used to be, you may be asking why the feck you weren't invited, but they didn't promote it cause of limited capacity (the art gallery only fit 60 and with family and their guests alone it was already half full). With almost 30 readers, some on video, many dear friends weren't included. But that was the only aspect of the event that wasn't overwhelmingly joyous.
The love in the room was enough to sustain and delight me for the rest of my story. From the minute I walked in and saw blown up photographic portraits of me through the decades taken by Bobbly (like the one in the photo here) I felt like the luckiest person alive. It was all filmed and should be available online soon.
(photo of Bobby and Karen hosting the event, by Jane DeLynn)
This photo of poet Robert Slater and me was taken on the porch of the commune I lived in in DC in 1972, not long after I "came out" (notice my color choices). I was having sexual and romantic relationships with men and women but rejected the "bi-" label as too limiting—my experience was that there are many more sexual and gender options than just two, and also the "bi-" designation would privilege me with the rewards of being "gay" without the penalties so much).
Slater was visiting from Kansas City where he lived and taught in a suburban community college. We'd been friends since we met at the U of Iowa in 1966 and bonded over music and literary taste and remained friends forever after. He was a minimalist in most things, his poetry, his conversation. Succinct and insightful in his comments on life, including mine.
I had taken him and his then wife Laresa to a party at a gay liberation commune called Greta Garbage the night before at which I had dressed partially in drag (we called it "gender-bending') and afterward kept him up for hours (Laresa had gone to bed) proselytizing about how everyone should experience what I was going through.
In 1972 you could be locked up for being gay, which was officially a mental illness and a crime. So my coming out led to many friends and family members cutting off all contact, As well as me losing my job teaching at Trinity, a Catholic women's college. Having behaved as a mostly manly tough guy up til then, my new behavior confused everyone, even me. But when I finally finished my diatribe, Slater stood up and said, "I'm glad our friendship transcends all this," and went to bed.
Condolences to his widow Maureen and to all who knew and loved him, may he rest in poetry.
My 75th birthday party, six years ago, with my oldest son Miles and (next to him) Sue Brennan and Jeanne Donohue, part of my other family.
Favorite photo with me and my dad in it because of the tender way his left hand is touching my brother Robert, the troublemaker of the family at that time, and though out of frame his right hand seems to be touching me tenderly at a time just before I was to become the chief troublemaker. Plus I love that his long sleeve shirt is buttoned all the way up on a warm summer day down the Jersey shore.
Me, my mom, and my dad, in front of my Jersey childhood home, Easter 1966. I was 23, married, and recently discharged after four years in the military, living in Brooklyn trying to make a living as a writer. My mother would pass only weeks later on Mother's Day, making this the last photo of me with her.
Here's two books of poetry I highly recommend by two uniquely original wordsmiths (and, full disclosure, dear friends).
Sala has a PHD in American Studies but to me he's the genius philosopher of ethnic punk urban working-class poetry that employs the language of consumer culture and blue-and-white-collar workplaces to expose the most deceptive misdirections of advertising and exploitation and the deeper truths beneath them. And I don't mean to say his poetry is turgid but in fact the opposite, stripped down and sparkling with clarity. HOW MUCH? is a "New and Selected" collection of his classic hits from his earliest (1980s) to the present. Should be an essential part of any discerning reader's library.
As should the late Doug Lang's IN THE WORKS. Doug was a self-taught immigrant from Wales novelist when I first encountered his work in the 1970s, but he became the master of innovative poetic technique and this book contains old and newer jewels from his language experiments, some more music than logic, some seemingly straightforward in meaning though resonant with more subtle meanings e.g. "This Poem" that states:
This poem doesn't like you
Doesn't like you at all and
Likes me
even less
Doesn't like other poems either and
Regards the whole literary world with pain and disdain
And the non-literary world likewise
or...
moreso
This poem despises itself above all
But takes some pleasure in its own pretentiousness,
superficiality and vanity
These are qualities that it appreciates
And most particularly it enjoys it's own miserable need for
attention
