6th
& 7th October, 2007
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Rod at
Dos Vidas. Photo by Thomas Kist from the 2006 Arjan Vlakveld film “Rod
McKuen: A Man Alone” for Netherlands Public Television. Photo ©2006,
2007 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives. All Rights Reserved.
A Thought for Today
Because pride seldom lets us beg forgiveness, we must content ourselves with dying a little each time a door is closed.
FROM the¨BOOKS
GOING HOME: A QUESTION OF BALANCE
Beretta's gone.
That voice so haunting
in the Porter / Coward song
has not been stilled
but now fills other halls,
sends new lovers home
to fresh-made bed and breakfast
in Eastern cities.
Ginsberg comes home on occasion
and Snyder carries North Beach ever onward -
not so much a tattered banner
(the City Lights have never dimmed)
but now it's more a whim to him than cause.
Because the old haunts haunt us
I go back.
And yes you can go home again -
sameness, once allowed to set
will supercede each change
and what we find and name call strangeness.
Those of us addicted,
infected with dependency of time and place,
will always have a home here,
if not homecoming.
What serves and saves us
is our own hard overriding need
forever pumping adrenaline into the landscape.
I arrive furlough-like
on R. & R. without the hell-raise bent
knowing no one anymore but knowing
there are those
convinced beyond mere reckoning
that they know me.
It's true
you are not a hero in your own hometown
unless you've got a weekly series running
or rerunning every day.
But even that is danger-bent.
The mask must never slip.
The dancer must waltz endlessly,
he's not allowed to dip or turn
or do-si-do, without rehearsal.
Still San Francisco always gives back
better than we give.
It is a luxury to merely walk the wharf.
Day workers jingle take home pay
that would stagger millionaires,
coin of the realm in ambiance.
But none of us are heroes
in a hero city.
Praise singers only.
Caen's Baghdad or Dong Kingman's splashy thrust
are pastel backdrops for the Ferlinghetti muse,
mad or merry.
Every Delaplane postcard home
is not greeted with surprise
and Pike went mad at sunrise.
O'Flaherty will talk convincingly
of how the old town's gone,
Keene eyes no longer look from every gallery,
(ample argument for plus and minus still).
Sparky's strip's been quartered,
cut apart,
analyzed more often than Miss Doda's.
He survives, we all do.
It is the city and surrounding squares
that give us give and take.
Being in and out of one another's favor
and embrace
cause each of us to try the longer stride
next time.
Jose, that Sunday diva with soprano reach
should set it all to music.
Butterfly in one act only.
Can you imagine Ginsberg
not yet declared a monument by government ?
It's a tantamount to winking off Niagara
and Grand Rapids in a single blink or wank.
So he comes home to San Francisco,
now and then.
Lots of give and take here, not just take.
When I was younger, way back when,
Willie Kapell slam-dashed into
a San Francisco mountain top.
No one's made a painting
or a poem of it yet.
(Not even one of eighteen variations.)
Most San Francisco tragedies stay unadorned.
This lack of advertisement
is what makes The City great.
True, the Chronicle chronicles
each leap from bridge, keeps count.
But names of divers are not etched on pilings.
Death is not always dignified by chisel
as life is not propelled by good words only.
Oh, but we love the adjectives
and we should do so
while we can.
They are the perfect lovers every time.
And when they change
to fast friends or to worse
they needn't cause an early death
or banishment.
It's only time to go away again.
This is the city that remembers to forget.
Wasserman tests have gone the way of rabbits,
truth has a good name bay to bay.
Have I been too gentle with the neighborhood,
perhaps.
But there'll be letters, sub-headlines -
that will tell me if I went too far
or did not venture far enough.
Never gossip, through. (Perhaps a whisper in Marin).
It's too fragmented up here for all that
and it's the fragments come together
that have made the rock
on which to build the home
for visitation.
Beretta's gone, but she'll be back.
Meanwhile the lovers each make private plans
for bed and breakfast and attack.
And those of us who travel
from the city
know the best credential
we can trot out in fast company
is news of where we came from.
- from "Suspension Bridge," 1984
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Saturday 6 October
Shana Alexander o
Paul Badura-Skoda o
Henry Chadwick o
Alan Copeland o Le
Corbusier o
Jerome Cowan o
Britt Ekland o
Bill Gallagher o
Janet Gaynor o
Gary Gentry o
Charles Hallam o
Thor Heyerdahl o
Amy Jo Johnson o
Jenny Lind o
Carole Lombard o
Elizabeth Shue o
Millie Small o Li
Ta-chao o
Fred Travelena o
George Westinghouse o
Helen Wills o
Stephanie Zimbalist
Sunday
7 October
June Allyson o
Shawn Ashmore o
Niels Bohr o
Toni Braxton o
Bobbie Brown o
Shura Cherkassky o
Sarah Churchill o
Andy Devine o
Alfred Drake o
Robert Drivas o
Charles Duitoit o Le
Roi Jones o
R.D. Laing o
Diana Lynn o Yo
Yo Ma o
Helen MacInnes o Al
Martino o
John Cougar Mellencamp o
Vaughn Monroe o
Elijah Muhammad o
Oliver North o
Vladimir Putin o
James Whitcomb Riley o
Bishop Desmond Tutu o
Henry Wallace o
Thom Yorke |
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Don't be stricken by acceptance and applause. The same breath that kindles a fire can just as easily extinguish it.
The leanest naked body is the work of God and therefore a love object.
The sun is a moveable target. Aim for something in life a little more steady and less all consuming.
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THINGS DO NOT CHANGE |
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Things do not change
because of accident or war.
Man is not altered,
at least not rearranged by man himself.
Man changes and is changed
by something else.
He evolves like the dinosaur, but slower.
Evolution is usually preoccupied
and pays no attention to proceedings
when it comes to man.
And so the wind of change
is not always accompanied by
the sands of time.
More often they are left behind
not even relegated to the history book.
Whatever you believe or see,
whatever horoscope you read or bible you consult-
God's own ancient diary or the one
you've written for yourself -
no stars, no sages, and no sayings change us.
We are altered by the alternates we stumble on.
These certain accidents
planned, unplanned, or perpetrated
that come upon us like an early fog
do make a difference.
If that fog would last or was predictable
then any change could last or be controlled.
But men have brains too small
to chronicle or keep a change
from falling backward into all the rubbish
that a brain contains.
Knowledge is akin to loving the closer
to reality you come the deeper the mystery.
He who loves his country first has time
for children and for walking, talking in his sleep,
rolling down a hill, and finding one
who supersedes all other loves.
Time will take the patriot on an endless journey
and it will seem like overnight.
His list of pursuits can challenge an abacus
and still his mind will stay uncluttered.
If you would put yourself,
your house in order
try thinking of your country first,
and you will learn that order
is the secret of selectivity.
Believe it. Try it, anyway.- from
"The Power Bright & Shining", 1980 |
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