MONDAY 6TH & TUESDAY 7TH
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Rod on Maui, August 2003.
Photo by John Scoggins.
©2003 by Stanyan Entertainment.
A Thought for Today
By leaning on someone you love you help
to hold them up.
A LITTLE TIME WITH BELLINGHAM & ROD
As I finish my new book and my stay in the Southern California desert
paradise The Lodge at Ranch Mirage comes to an end, much of my head and
heart is still in Maui. That’s pretty understandable since I worked on
“Rusting in the Rain” in both locations. What a summer I’ve had, it’s been
fun but plenty of hard work (which of course, for me is another form of
fun.)
When I got to Maui it turns out I ended up writing a new song for Patricia
Watson’s “Soul Mates” and I have been getting requests in the past several
weeks to reprint the lyrics. Here’s one of them.
Dear Rod, I am one of the many fans who saw you on
Maui in the rock opera "Soulmates." Since then I've been trying to get the
words to "September Comes Around (Too Soon)." Alas, no luck. PLEASE send
me the words. It is perfect on every level. Much Aloha & Mahalo, Mary
Lawrence
Dear Mary, It was generous of Patricia Watson to let me write the song for
my character Father Jim to sing in Soul Mates. In fact she and I wrote a
song together that didn’t make the final cut so it’s all the more unusual
that my solo effort did.
I’ve printed the lyric for you at the bottom of this Flight Plan and your
E-mail also gives me an excuse to reprint one of Bellingham’s recent San
Francisco Examiner columns about September Songs. Warmly, Rod
September and its Songs By Bruce Bellingham
The Conservatory of Flowers will reopen tomorrow in Golden Gate Park now
that its long restoration is complete. "It looks really wonderful," Allen
White reports from the famous glass house. "But I was taken aback when I
came across the exhibit, 'Victorian Pot Culture.'" Was there a Queen Mary
Jane? ... This event makes for a swell day for The City and it comes at
the right time of year. ... September is the month that all songwriters
love. It provides the right sort of wistfulness, the invitation to the
autumn, the farewell to rambunctious summer dalliances and the realization
that the months and the years do inevitably slip from our grasp. ... The
poets revel in this sort of exquisite pain. That's their job. They take
time out to suffer professionally. The rest of us just just go back to
work ... or back to school ... and consider the cascade of holidays ahead
of us and wonder: Will the Hans Blix costume still be available for
Halloween? ...
More songs are written about September than any other month. Why? Because
it rhymes well. "Ember," "remember," and all that. Even "distemper," if
you want to stretch the hangdog image. "September in the Rain" is a
classic (especially by Dinah Washington) and so is Sinatra's "September of
My Years." ... My current fave album is by local songstress Wesla
Whitfield and her pianist/arranger husband, Mike Greensill: "September
Songs." The Kronos Quarter also plays on it. "We never could have done an
album this expensive without all that dot com money available three years
ago." ... That would make anyone wistful.
There is also "See You in September" ... Earth, Wind & Fire's "September"
... "September When It Comes" by Roseanne Cash and the late, great Johnny
Cash ... even Natalie Imbruglia's "Come September." They go on and on. But
the supreme September song is "The September Song" by Kurt Weill and
Maxwell Anderson: "And the days dwindle down to a precious few/September
November ..." My favorite verse is: "But if you examine the goods they
bring/They have little to offer but the songs they sing/And a plentiful
waste of time of day/A plentiful waste of time." ... What a great line.
Not so long ago Grace Slick was talking about how an aging rock and roller
conducts herself with grace, so to speak. "You have to consider your
choices a little more carefully as you get older," Grace told me. "Time is
a lot more valuable. .... Part of being age-appropriate is thinking about
the consequences of your actions." I can remember when wasting time was a
wicked sort of luxury. It wasn't all that long ago. This morning, I think.
On my grade school report card, I was invariably marked deficient for
"uses time wisely." I wonder what a wise use of time is when you are a
child. Making a list of career options instead of throwing apples at
trucks? ... That's no fun. ...
There is no reason that fun has to be abandoned on the road to reason. It
is likely far more important to have fun as the years roll along. I guess
the essential part of all this is who you select to join you in all of
this frivolity. And the person you select to make yourself vulnerable and
share the pain, as well. Just as long as it isn't a plentiful waste of
time. But it usually is. ... I have almost succeeded in giving up on
forcing people to go along with me on this and that. You can't hurry love,
as the song goes. You can't even hurry apathy, now that I think about it.
That involves getting others to cooperate. Or getting people not to
cooperate -- which is sometimes a dicier premise. All this is usually a
lost cause. Lost causes are attractive only when there is a plentiful
amount of time to spend. ... The chronically reckless will not heed these
words.
Lately I have rekindled a friendship with Rod McKuen that began long ago.
Rod is the poetic king of the wistful and the solitudinous. One of the
things I like about Rod, who is now 70 years old, is his childlike,
mischievous manner. He still wears sneakers. Like his footsteps, his
message is gentle. Rod was shot to fame in the 1960's in San Francisco
with his books of poetry, such as "Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows" and
"Listen to the Warm." ... He's written hundreds of songs. He was
commissioned by Frank Sinatra to write an album, "A Man Alone." Dean
Wallace, who owned a book & record store on North Point in the '60s,
recalls, "When we had a Rod McKuen book signing, it was a near riot. Life
magazine sent a reporter and a photographer." Rod wants to do an album of
September songs, too. He is off to a swell start with a new song that he
wrote in Maui the other day, "September Comes Around (All Too Soon). Some
of the words: "Don’t waste another summer / No August or July / Make every
moment magic/ Don’t stop to reason
Why / Loves sweet song lasts just so long/Learn to sing the
tune/Remember, September Comes Around All Too Soon." ...
I think it is an instant McKuen classic. I also like it when McKuen warns
not to squander the stars: "You'll need them by and by." ...
In the savings account of the heart, the poets reign as CEOs. But it isn't
likely I will ever learn how to use time -- or anything else -- wisely. If
this currency of love is all the more valuable as time races by us, then
perhaps it's to be savored at a time when it is drawn "from fine old
kegs." But I think it is like the nouveau beaujolais that comes in late
November. It must be consumed as soon as possible. ... Now, I am off to
New York where it's "Hola, Isabel." I will likely walk in a shower of days
that the hurricane will certainly provide. But if I have a September to
remember in the rain -- that will be quite all right with me. ...
© 2003 by Bruce Bellingham & The San Francisco Examiner. All Rights
Reserved. Used by Permission
Don’t forget to join webmaster Ken on Wednesday for his This One Does it
For Me feature. I’ll be back on Thursday. Sleep warm.
RM 10/4/2003 10:49 PM PDT, Southern California
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