Leonard Cohen Is Not Dead - Yet
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
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| Leonard Cohen - still alive but my index finger is poised for that homage |
Hi Papi, you must have something to say of Lauren Bacall.
The above came to me today
via facebook (note it must be written in lower case) from my eldest daughter
Alexandra. Below is a rare rant. Best stop reading now.
I am a photographer but unlike Arthur Fellig (aka Weegee), a much better photographer than I will ever be, I am not an ambulance chaser.
In this 21st century
in which the amateur (not in the good meaning of the word as reflected by
English gentlemen of the 19th who loved whatever they were interested in, be it archaeology, growing pineapples in greenhouses
or warfare, and thus called themselves amateurs) reigns supreme. They are
journalists, photographers, designers but not yet doctors of medicine, civil
engineers, funeral directors or masters of law. Those latter professions require study
and perseverance. It is better, and far easier to publish a blog as I do, or "like" a
statement or “pic” in facebook.
And so we face our
flat-screen monitors and write with our left hand while our right hand’s index
finger is poised to send our sentence of homage to Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan,
Sophia Loren or Liv Ullmann (if anybody remembers her still) as any are bound
to die soon.
We will then grieve
and mention in trite sentences how it was that any of those great people
somehow entered our lives. Perhaps it was a sighting at an LA restaurant, or as
a stills photographer in the making of one of their movies. Perhaps it was
falling in love while reading a poem by one of them.
In all truth I cannot
find any fault in that, in the same way, that I cannot damn a man who might be playing
air guitar while watching Art Bergmann play a real one on stage. If we cannot
be St. Peter we must buy a bit of his upside-down cross.
Ex Premier Dave
Barrett is still alive. In the back window of my Malibu
I have an Australian
Snowy River
hat that I once photographed on him. My right hand index finger
is poised to reveal to any who might have gotten this far in my rant the story
of the Akubra hat as soon as Barrett succumbs to his personal but universal inevitability.
But seriously, I think
that our relationship to a treasured actor, actress, poet, singer, novelist,
historian, basketball player, is no different in a most personal intimacy that
we might experience with the loss of a loved one or a best friend.
Why would I want to
share my grief with 300 or 500 or 1000 or 25 friends I may have never met in
Twitter or facebook?
Is there a first prize
to be given to the first to post homage to such a loss?
If and when I see my
eldest daughter I might share with her my memories of films I have seen that
starred Lauren Bacall. But I do not feel a need to share any of that with anybody else.
Meanwhile, to me, all those
tributes to recently dead actors seem no different from that American
invention that is the roast. In a roast the roastee has to take long attacks on
his or her character with composure because that is the rule of the game. But
there is one important difference; the roastee is most always alive while the
dead actor is definitely dead. The more famous, the more talented, the more
perverse, the most infamous, like us must all die. And once dead, what happens after
is of no consequence to he or she who is dead.
