I'm listening to "People Who Died." I'm listening to it now, about half an hour after finding out Jim Carroll died.
I'm not going to pretend Jim Carroll's death cut me to the quick, like we had a special relationship where I called him Jimmy and he called me Superdude or some other affectionate nickname. I'm no closer to Jim Carroll than any other of his fans.
In fact, I'm probably less close. I thought the movie "The Basketball Diaries" was, at best, pretty OK. It was just good enough to get me to read the book, which I mostly remember for the references to a young Lew Alcinor. As for Carroll's music career, I love the song "People Who Died" with a white-hot passion, but after listening to the song "I Want the Angel," I decided I should ease off the man lest I be disappointed again. I can't find a decent link to it, so find it yourself.
Funny. I'm listening to "I Want the Angel" now. I actually like it. The words are still infuriatingly close to being on the same tempo as the music without actually being on the same tempo as the music, but I've got a generally good feeling about it tonight. Maybe it's nostalgia or maybe it's because I haven't listened to it in probably eight years.
I'm on the song "Wicked Gravity" right now. It's better than I remember too. It's really good. I can't find a link to that either.
This summer, we lost the stars of a video with dancing zombies and of a movie called "Ghost." We lost a guy whose tagline was "And that's the rest of the story" and all I could do was laugh at the unintentional irony.
Now the guy who wrote "People Who Died" died. And I'm not laughing. Serves me right.
This year has taken someone from every camp. Even cynical meanies lost a poet.
Like sports? 2009 took Nick Adenhart, Harry Kalas, Wayman Tisdale and Steve McNair. News junkie? We lost Walter Cronkite, Don Hewitt and Robert Novak. Art? Good-bye, Andrew Wyeth. Love the '80s? Forget about it. Michael Jackson, John Hughes, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze and the funniest Golden Girl.
How did both David Carradine and Ricardo Montalban die and not make the top 10 this year? Hell, even the Kennedys lost two.
I'm not going to lump all these people together. I'm not going to claim I'm as sad about Billy Mays as I am about murdered Russian journalists. But I'm also not going to claim that some deaths aren't sad at all. They're all sad.
But why am I so broken up about Jim Carroll, a man who did one song I loved and a bunch of stuff I thought ranged from OK to pretty good.
Because he did one song I love.
All these people did something that improved our lives. Even Michael Jackson, an endless source of jokes for society until death canonized him, gave us "Thriller" and "Billie Jean." David Carradine was in "Kung Fu" and "Kill Bill." Larry Gelbart brought us "M*A*S*H."
And they all died during the same revolution of the sun.
I'm going to do something different here. I'm going to close with a poem. It's by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who died 120 years ago. It's called "Spring and Fall, To a Young Child." It always makes me think of lost friends, of, to quote the late Mr. Carroll, people who died.
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.-- Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880
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Paul Dailing
Paul Dailing (pictured standing in front of the World's Largest Boot), now has a different haircut. He's also lost a bit of weight since that picture was taken, but not as much as he likes to think. More
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