Friendo to HE (received last night, 6.18): “I noticed you did not mention today what would have been Roger Ebert’s 80th birthday. Today is also Paul McCartney’s 80th.”
HE to friendo (sent this morning): “Yeah but I don’t want to cherish the past too much. It sends the wrong message in a cosmic, God’s eye, wheel-of-time sense, and it gives Millennials and Zoomers one more reason, etc.
“For every riff or recollection about the in-and-out cinematic glory days (late ‘30s to 2008) I try to summon at least one daily acknowledgement that things are better (or at least could be better) than they sometimes appear.
“Remember the nostalgia for the ‘30s and ‘40s between the late ‘60s and mid ‘70s (Chinatown, Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Crazy Mama, Bound for Glory, Play It Again Sam, The Godfather, The Way We Were, Gable & Lombard, Day of the Locust) and those somewhat gaudy, emotionally needy celebrations of ‘40s and ‘50s Hollywood musicals (That’s Entertainment! + No No Annette on Broadway)? And the concurrent grim despair & paranoia of the Nixon years?
“Roger was an excellent writer and a wise, ballsy, first-rate critic but let’s not forget that he could be & in fact was overly generous at times, especially during the last 10 or 15 years of his life. Kindness doesn’t always age well. And at the end of the day, Roger wasn’t a God soaring above us on gossamer wings.
“McCartney turning 80….good health & long life to a guy I’ve loved all my life but 80 bums me out a bit…’will you still need me, will you still feed me when I’m 80?’ doesn’t have quite the same ring.
“You can’t stop the gradual graying and withering of gifted people or the eternal process that necessitates a million daily sparks of light and birth and creation (Sutton’s arrival on 11.17.21 was one such spark) along with the necessity and brutality of death…but if it’s all the same I’d prefer to ignore the exact present-tense numerology of Paul McCartney…a bit of a “holy shit” moment, if you don’t mind me saying.
“Remember the shock of John Lennon’s murder 40-plus years ago and how an entire generation was suddenly hit with the slap of cruel happenstance and random destruction and that No Country for Old Men moment when Barry Corbin told Tommy Lee Jones that “you can’t stop what’s comin’”?
“Macca turning 80” is an uh-oh out of that same hymnbook.
“The metaphor of dead leaves lying in heaps on those well-manicured northeastern suburban lawns and how those tidy, old-time curbstone neighborhoods in Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Long Island and throughout New England (especially during the fossil-fuel eras of Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ & Nixon) used to smell of burning leaves in the fall months, as dusk and then nightfall settled in…that’s all fine but Macca turning 80? Not so much.”