Brenda Carradine, whom I met in John Uecker's apartment in late 2009 -- John's walk-up apartment VIGOROUSLY CLEANED FOR HER VISIT!!! -- and whose Southern Bouffant seemed in Uecker's apartment (inaccurately, I'd bet), a "late tossed-on wig" that day right before Tennessee Williams' installation in the Poet's Corner.
(Brenda had just come from a New York City HAIRHOUSE of unknown repute -- and her setting had not yet relaxed just a tetch.)
The POET'S CORNER is, of course, in Episcopal Cathedral St. John the Divine, aka St. John the Unfinished (it having been begun in 1892 in an effort for the Episcopal Diocese of New York to BEST St. Patrick's Catholic Cathedral), with ALSO my personal friend, Dr. Kenneth Holditch, the Williams Scholar who is fourth or fifth cousin of Tennessee Williams.
Me, under Tennessee Williams' "Poet's Laurel Wreath" in John Uecker's W. 88th Street apartment, shortly before John presented it to Brenda Carradine to take back to Columbus, MS.
John had appropriately SAVED the wreath from being buried with Tennessee.
Pity that this Cathedral (with bronze plaque in its floor CELEBRATING the idea of RELIGION IMPRISONING CIVIL GOVERNMENT -- and JEWS all being GOD-DAMNED), is ACTUALLY the Seat of the Episcopal Diocese -- I thought it was some kind of separate CULT (especially since I found so much evidence that the Bishops there are TOTALLY COMPLICIT in narco-trafficking with the NSA/CIA Republicans -- who were ALSO their partners in the CONSPIRACY successfully carried out of John Uecker to SMOTHER Tennessee Williams with a pillow to QUICKLY UNDO the codicil to his Will that Jackie Kennedy Onassis first suggested in my presence at Jean Stein and George Plimpton's party to honor Tennessee after Mayor Koch presented him with an award the same day, January 11, 1982.
It has been WELL REPORTED (but little disseminated), that the New York Coroner CHANGED the original "cause of death"-- which John Uecker told me he SUGGESTED to the Coroner, but later was PROVED IMPOSSIBLE: the asphyxiation on a medicine bottle cap, to "sudden intolerance to medication Tennessee Williams had taken all his adult life (Seconal)".
This TOO, is a lie.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Saint_John_the_Divine and more on OTHER THINGS: http://scottkenan.blogspot.mx/2011/12/letter-to-scott-rudins-personal.html .
>>> AND HERE is what Kenneth Holditch wrote about my memoir (and STRANGE-BUT-TRUE, just now, Internet Explorer would not show these comments -- but Google Chrome DID and also allowed me to copy -- when in testing its STUBBORNNESS, Internet Explorer would NOT allow me to even HIGHLIGHT -- let alone COPY!!!):
Dr. Kenneth Holditch: Williams scholar and Professor Emeritus at the University of New Orleans:
"Having finished your manuscript, I am confirmed in my initial judgment that this is a very fine work indeed. Tennessee really comes alive in your narrative, as do other personages, a few of whom I knew.
"Let me be truthful and say that I put off reading your work because I have read so many–both published and in manuscript–that were handed to me and been much too often disappointed in what I read. That was not the case with your book.
"I found it spell-binding and raced on through it at the expense of my chores."
If interested, you can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/WALKING-ON-GLASS-TENNESSEE-ebook/dp/B0053480S2 .
>>> AND QUITE FRANKLY, I had always ASSUMED that the Cathedral St. John the Divine Crowd was SEPARATE FROM and ONLY PUT UP WITH by the ACTUAL Episcopal Church in America -- like THIS PLACE in my adult hometown of Atlanta CONFUSES Pagan, Christian, African, and maybe even Muslim and Jewish traditions -- ending up with EMOTIONAL TRUTH and nary a TRACE of LOGICAL TRUTH!!!
(An absolute TAR BABY -- yes, Joel Chandler Harris and the UNCLE REMUS STORIES are from Atlanta too!!! -- to anyone trying to successfully practice POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!!)
Baba Atu plays during the drum call at the beginning of Kwanzaa during the celebration of Umoja (or Unity)at the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Atlanta on Wednesday, December 26, 2012.
* * *
>>> WHAT I HAD MEANT TO ALERT READERS TO:
1. THIS JUST IN!!!:
Mom (Jan Meyer Larsen) is making me drink an ensure- like the nutritional drink for the senior citizens of the world. At least she added bailey's. You can't make this stuff up. #nutritionwithatwist #wordtojan #luckydaughter
Susan Grant (credited with FOUNDING the genre "OUTER-SPACE ROMANCE" ), wrote this book about her FOR MANY, MANY YEARS "boyfriend", George Meyer, my FIRST COUSIN!!!
Or was it THIS one???:
Or was it THIS ONE???:
And having gotten to KNOW Susan Grant over a LONG MEYER FAMILY REUNION at Greg Lernihan FOUNDER of www.convergint.com 's INDIANA LAKE HOUSE in summer, 2009, I can tell you that her books are likely EXCELLENT READS for those of "such Taste & Temperament".
She ALSO was the 4th woman to attend the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs -- then STAYED ON THEIR PAYROLL for eight years doing little "on record", but CHRISTIANIZING the Air Force Academy for the CHURCH OF SATAN (Republican Jingo-Christians -- associated with the NAZI SWASTIKA).
AND Susan Grant WENT ON to be United Airline's FIRST FULL FEMALE PILOT (or vice-versa) of 747's -- flying West Coast to Asia, last I heard.
2. But getting back to MY ORIGINAL PURPOSE, TODAY, I would like to call your attention to what Ms. Brenda Carradine -- WITH THE HONEST SUPPORT OF LOCAL EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND CLERGY are doing with their somewhat diminutive Tennessee Williams Festival in Columbus, MS:
TOTALLY COOL!!!
http://www.muw.edu/tennesseewilliams/event_news.html
And HERE is an actual EPISCOPAL SERMON on my favorite play/movie, THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA!!!:
The Night of the Iguana
The Rev. James F. Carlyle, Rector
Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, Mississippi
A Sermon preached in Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, Mississippi, on September 7, 2008, during the Seventh Annual Tennessee Williams Tribute.
On March 1st, 1950, Tennessee Williams wrote in a letter to Gore Vidal from Key West: Yesterday the social leaders of the town dropped in to see us. Grandfather was eating his rice krispies in the dining room. I told him, Grandfather, the Newman Porters are here! He could not see the other end of the room and thought I was merely making some remark about them (it was quite early for a call) and he said, Goodness gracious, what pests those people are!- An awkward moment ensued, as even at 92 there is a limit to what you can get away with.1
Tennessee Williams’s grandfather was Walter Dakin, sometime rector of Saint Paul’s, Columbus. Born in 1857, married to Rosina Otte Dakin, graduated from the School of Theology at the University of the South, a parish priest for many years; he died in 1955 at the age of ninety-eight.
The middle stained-glass window in the west wall of the church is dedicated to the memory of Walter Dakin and two other former rectors of the parish. The Reverend Mr. Dakin was anything but a stained-glass figure, however, as his grandson’s anecdote suggests. He loved Shakespeare, Manhattan cocktails, silk handkerchiefs, and high church. "He was higher church than the pope," Tennessee Williams said of him. 2 And he loved to travel. When young Tom Williams was seventeen, his grandfather took him along on a tour of Europe that he led. Years later, his grandson would return the favor.
In an interview with Mike Wallace in 1958, three years after his grandfather’s death, TW said, "The two most wonderful people in my life were my grandfather, who was an Episcopal clergyman, and his wife, my grandmother. I was born in the Episcopal rectory and I grew up in the shadow of the Episcopal church. We were brought up in an atmosphere of Southern Puritanism. It’s like Northern Puritanism, except that it’s more fractious. Also more old-fashioned." 3
Another time, he said, "I was devoted to my grandfather. When I was a little boy, he’d be making parish calls and I’d always beg to go with him, so I could hear what everybody said. After I grew up and had a place of my own, I kept him with me at least half the time. He loved Key West. We even went to
1 Tennessee Williams. Blanche and Beyond, adapted by Steve Lawson from The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Vol. II, 1945-1957. ed. Albert J. Devlin & Nancy M. Tischler. 2007: Samuel French, Inc. p. 44
2 Tennessee Williams, ed. Albert J. Devlin. Conversations with Tennessee Williams. University Press of Mississippi: 1986. p. 333
3 Conversations, p.16
***
Europe together. Such a joy to be with, he was, not the rough sort of man, but gentle and sensitive, like Nonno in Night of the Iguana, who he was, of course."4
Which brings us to The Night of the Iguana. Several of you have confessed that you haven’t seen or read this play, and you’ve asked what it’s about. I would say that the play is about "a wildly agitated creature",5 "not an attractive creature",6 nevertheless "one of God’s creatures at the end of his rope", and about how the creature is "cut loose" and "set free" to "scramble home safe and free." "A little act of grace."7
Come to think of it, in this play, more than one creature at the end of his rope is set free: a lizard, a priest, a poet, a painter, and, as it seems to me, a hotel proprietor.
Then again, one could say that the play is about a poet’s finishing one last poem and being thus set free—just as, and in just the same moment that, the iguana is set free. It is the poet in the play who is modeled on Walter Dakin, so the play can also be seen as a tribute by Tennessee Williams to his late grandfather.
It’s curious that it’s the poet who is modeled on Walter Dakin and not the Episcopal priest in the play. Of course, Larry Shannon, the priest, is "a man of God on vacation", as Hannah puts it,8 shut out of the church, accused of a crime, sacked from his job as a tour guide in the middle of a tour—a man at the end of his rope.
Hannah, the painter and granddaughter of Nonno the poet, penniless and homeless, is also at an end.
In their desperation, they try to reach each other, and in reaching they succeed in setting each other free.
In an interview with Studs Terkel, Tennessee Williams said, "The drama in my plays, I think, is nearly always people trying to reach each other. In Night of the Iguana…Hannah and Larry Shannon meet on the veranda outside their cubicles, which is of course an allegorical touch of what people must try to do….the only truly satisfying moments in life are those in which you are in contact, and I don’t mean just physical contact, I mean in deep, a deeper contact than physical, with some other human being….I think it’s the only comfort that we have, of a lasting kind….And I have seen it happen between
4 Conversations, p. 153
5 Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana. Dramatists Pay Services:1990. p. 36
6 Night, p. 75
7 Night, p. 77
8 Night, p.40
***
two people. I can’t think of any better example than my grandparents who were so close together they were like one person."9
Walter is reflected in Nonno. Walter and Rosina together are reflected in Larry and Hannah. No doubt, more than a little of Tennessee Williams is reflected in them as well. And yet another reflected in all of them.
"My work," the author said, "is full of Christian symbols. Deeply, deeply Christian. But. It’s the image of Christ, His beauty and purity, and His teachings…."10
Surely we see the image of Christ in the gentle grandfather, in the compassionate granddaughter. We see Christ in the fallen clergyman who, in the end, gives up his 22-carat gold cross for the relief of the painter and gives up himself to the domesticity of Maxine, the hotel proprietor. And, I believe, we see the image of Christ in Maxine who, despite her rough manner, gives shelter and sustenance to the poet, the painter, and the priest.
Of course, Tennessee Williams was a PK, a preacher’s kid, and, like most PK’s I’ve known, he has a dislike for hypocrisy and Phariseeism. And so he shows us the image of Christ in Shannon’s challenge to the hypocritical and pharisaical in his congregations, whether of Virginians on a Sunday morning, or of tourists on a bus.
Saint Paul urges us, in this morning’s lesson, to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ." We can see in the work of Tennessee Williams something of what it means to put on Christ. It means gentleness, compassion, self-sacrifice, generosity, and more. To put on Christ is to reach out to one another, and in reaching one another, to enable one another "to scramble home safe and free."
9 Conversations, pp. 86-87
10 Conversations, p. 334
***
Tennessee Williams' BIRTH HOME, moved to escape the Wrecker's Ball, SHOULD be painted all WHITE, like everyone HAD TO DO when they were POOR, like was the case back then. Everyone in the South was "too poor to paint -- and too PROUD to WHITE-WASH"!!!
* * *
>>> EXTRA BONUS!!!:
Best line from the PET SHOP BOYS' latest release:
"Who will be the LAST TO DIE from OUR MISTAKES???"
As performed (recently en Chile), here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Mb9d1kX4Y
"THE LAST TO DIE"
(Verse)
We took the highway till the road went black
We marked Truth Or Consequences on our map
A voice drifted up from the radio
We saw the voice from long ago
(Chorus)
Who'll be the last to die for our mistakes?
The last to die for our mistakes
Whose blood will spill? Whose heart will break?
Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?
(Verse)
The kids asleep in the backseat
We're just countin' the miles, you and me
We don't measure the blood we've drawn anymore
We just stack the bodies outside the door
(Chorus)
Who'll be the last to die for our mistakes?
The last to die for our mistakes
Whose blood will spill? Whose heart will break?
Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?
(Verse)
The sun sets in flames as the city burns
Another day gone down as the evening turns
And I hold you here in my heart
As things fall apart
(Bridge)
A downtown window flushed with light
And faces of the dead at five
I see a martyr's silent eyes
Petition the drivers as we pass by
(Chorus)
Who'll be the last to die for our mistakes?
The last to die for our mistakes
Whose blood will spill? Whose heart will break?
Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?
(Verse)
Who'll be the last to die for our mistakes?
The last to die for our mistakes
Tyrants and kings both live the same fate
Strung up at your city gates
And you're the last to die for our mistakes
.
No comments:
Post a Comment