SAM SHEPARD R.I.P.

Total shame. Sad for his family and friends and fans. Too soon.

You can look up Sam Shepard's achievements if you don't already know them, and learn that he had a great impact on the worlds of theater and film, and the broader culture in general. But I limit my posts about other people to their impact on me and my life, since that's what I can add to the discussion for whatever it's worth.

Sam Shepard loomed large in my life for a few years back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I knew who he was before then and our paths crossed a few times, but it wasn't until he started getting wider recognition, national and international recognition, for his plays and his acting, and then just for his star charisma (which often, but not always, simply means good looks) that he started impacting me.

Like a lot of folks I've known, when I hit my later thirties and forties I spent way too much time comparing myself to others in my generation who had similar talents and pursuits but seemed to get more of the rewards. I wrote poetry mostly and was mostly known for that, and was associated during those years, at least to many in the poetry world, with The St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York. Sam wrote plays mostly and was associated, at least in his early years, with St. Mark's also, but their theater project.

We had both started out as musicians, or at least that's what I was told about him, and were both about the same height and slim and were husbands and shared other traits. And then we both started acting in films, and for second wives we both married Oscar-nominated film actors. But his success (and hers) was so much bigger and looked more like what I had wanted for myself (I was never interested in money, except to feed and house my kids and me, but back then I wanted that wider recognition for what I saw as my unique talents and life). 

My envy of Shepard got so bad, that friends who wanted to tease me would send magazine photos and stories about Sam's fame and success. And it would get a reaction from me. And then my friend Hubert Selby Jr., whose novels hadn't been made into movies yet, and had been forgotten by most people (he was working in an office in a clerical capacity to make the rent on his tiny pad) advised me to pray that Sam get everything he wanted and everything I wanted. I didn't get it, but other advice he'd given me had worked, so I tried it.

It took six months of intense praying morning and night to be rid of my envy. I didn't realize it was gone until I got another article about Sam in the mail from some old buddy and on opening it I wondered why he would send it to me. And then remembered, Oh I used to be so envious of him. By then I just wanted the best for him.

A few years later I took part in the weekly poetry reading I'd started and ran with my friend Eve Brandstein at the East-L. A. club, Helena's, with our usual line up of about ten or a dozen people reading for five minutes each. After it ended Helena came over to me and said, "Sam wants you to join him at his table." I asked, "Sam who?" And she said, "Shepard." So I did.

He told me I was the only real poet who read that evening, which I disagreed with but was flattered by, and how much he liked what I'd read, which we talked about some and then we shared some stories and laughs and hung out for the rest of the evening.

When I left, I thanked the universe that I got to be as open and kind as I knew how in my way to this man I used to envy, and that he turned out to be open and kind in his own way right back. It is a sweet memory and I know there is a world full of similar sweet memories of Sam Shepard. May he Rest In Plays and Poetry.

[I don't know when these photos of Shepard were taken or by whom, unfortunately, just found the on the Internet, but they represent what I see in my mind from that evening encounter.]

SUNDAY AFTERNOON MINI-RANT

"A Better Deal"?!
Really?
This is the best slogan for the policies the Democrats plan to work for as their political program going forward?
How many times have I written and spoken about the lameness of the Democratic Party's word folks?
Still riffing on FDR's "New Deal" as if the majority of voters were alive in the 1930s or wish they were?
Would the Republican Party's word masters use "Better" or "Best"?
How many seconds did it take to answer that?
Yeah, let's use the weakest language we can find, or better yet the most nuanced and subtle and layered and in need of footnotes or sounding like a political echo chamber to go forward into the next election cycle....so we can concede the tough and clear language to the opposition?
And the policies?
Or keep the slogans simple and easy to explain like "Medicare For All"?
Et-endlessly-cetera.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FIREFLIES GONE

When I first moved into my apartment in this old house and my youngest, Flynn, was still a boy, we'd sometimes spend evenings on the front lawn watching what we called when I was a boy "lightning bugs"—there were always what seemed like hundreds of them. But in recent years there seem to be fewer and fewer. I only saw two this year.

Instead, there seems to be more dragonflies—this summer more than ever—zooming around the lawn like miniature helicopters. Is there a connection? Then I saw this on the Internet and thought that maybe that's a positive sign:

ONE OF MY FAVORITE PASSAGES FROM POET JOHN ASHBERY'S PROSE (ON THE OCCASION OF HIS 90TH BIRTHDAY)

"A painter like Pollock for instance was gambling everything on the fact that he was the greatest painter in America, for if he wasn't, he was nothing, and the drips would turn out to be random splashes from the brush of a careless housepainter. It must often have occurred to Pollock that there was just a possibility that he wasn't an artist at all, that he had spent his life 'toiling up the wrong road to art' as Flaubert said of Zola. But this very real possibility is paradoxically just what makes the tremendous excitement in his work. It is a gamble against terrific odds. Most reckless things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibility that they are founded on nothing. We would all believe in God if we knew He existed, but would this be much fun?"

—John Ashbery (from "The Invisible Avant-Garde")

[I consider John a dear friend, though we haven't spoken in years due to my own moves and challenges and forgetfulness etc. But in the years when we spent time hanging out, I found him to be one of the most original thinkers I'd ever encountered, and it's that that this excerpt exemplifies to my mind, his way of seeing things and articulating it. It also seems like an analysis of his own art (poetry and collages) and approach to it.]

HOLLYWOOD DUOS (MY FIRST DECADE THERE: 1982-92)

me & Beverly D'Angelo at a party in my first home (rented) in Santa Monica c. 1982

Bob Chartoff & me c. 1984?

me & Hart Bochner at the Santa Monica "Farmer's Market" c. 1984

Joan Baribeault & me in someone else's living room (we lived together for a few years in the later 1980s)

Jamie Rose & me at her birthday party c. 1988

me & Eve Brandstein c. 1988

Helena Kallianiotes & me at her club, Helena's, c. 1989

Linda Kerridge & me at Helena's c. 1989

me & Sidney Walsh c. 1989

Mimi Lieber & me c. 1989

me & Katy Sagal c. 1990

Lynn Manning & me c. 1990

Rhonda Talbot & me at my 50th birthday party in Santa Monica (the painting is by my daughter Caitlin) 1992

Sharon Stone & me at my 50th birthday party (though I seem to be wearing a different shirt!) 1992

FAVORITE MEME TODAY

DUNKIRK

I went into DUNKIRK with high expectations, not always the best way to see a flick. I knew it would be visually engaging, even if I didn't see it on an iMax screen. According to some things I've read Christopher Nolan who wrote, directed, and was one of the producers on the film, shot it in 70mm, a rare treat these recent decades (you gotta go back to movies like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in its original form). But whatever format you see it in, and the bigger the screen the better, Nolan puts you in the middle of the action.

So it's grand to see and experience visually and sonically (the usual theater sound systems turned up high make you feel even more in the middle of the action) and there's a great cast. But, sometimes Nolan can be too clever for my taste, and at times in DUNKIRK his plot with three different time signatures (to use a musical term) and character development challenges (too many with too little development in some cases) felt almost like he was testing the audience to see if we were paying the right amount of attention.

I was hoping to see more of Mark Rylance, one of my favorite actors and never disappointing, as well as other old faves, but it was mostly the lesser known (to me) younger actors who carried the weight of the film and did it perfectly most of the time. I'd just love to have seen more historical context and political perspective, as well as less clever plotting and less focus on so many characters and more on a few with more depth (though Rylance's character's son was brilliantly nuanced by the actor playing him).

As the friend I saw it with said, when I pointed out that Nolan had written, directed, and produced DUNKIRK: "He should have gotten some help." Worth seeing, with a grain of salt.