Mourning & Wishes for Rest

Two of my childhood heroes passed away this past week: Adam "MCA" Yauch of the Beastie Boys and children's book creator extraordinaire Maurice Sendak. (Sidenote: I didn't know until today that Sendak was from Brooklyn. This means that both men were born in the borough in which I now live, which helps me a little with my mourning.) Others have written far more eloquently than I on how important both men are to arts and letters, so I won't attempt that today. What I'm thinking through is how and why we mourn, especially when we don't personally know the person who has passed away.

I deliberately chose "non-traditional" obituaries for the links, in part because the Internet is scattered with hundreds of remembrances of both Yauch and Sendak, but also because I've been thinking a lot about what it means to memorialize (and mourn) someone. Derrida is useful here (on Levinas), and even Dylan Thomas.The obituaries to which people often seem to draw much of their information tend to be from "official" news sources like the New York Times - or perhaps the drawing is more internal, given that I used to think of that paper as more of an arbiter of influence than I currently do.

The other thing about memorials, as my post title indicates, is the invocation of a peaceful rest, and what that says about the mourner and the mourned. It is a beautiful thought, no matter one's religious (or non-religious) tradition. Lately, though, it's been occurring to me that the peaceful rest is in stark contrast to a survivor's roiling sadness and pain. I haven't yet decided how much I'll infuse my personal life into this blog, but suffice it to say that one of the closest people to me has received a cancer diagnosis, so Yauch's death, especially, is hitting me harder as I deal with my own loved one's pain. I keep thinking of his daughter and the pain, confusion, and rage that she is probably feeling. As much as I love the Beasties' music and Yauch's activism and humor, this is his daughter's tragedy, and his wife's, and the other Adam's and Mike D's, not mine.

Rest in peace, Adam Yauch and Maurice Sendak.

A Book of One's Own

Happy Monday!

I was recently struck by a small phrase in Michael Dirda's Washington Post review of Fiona MacCarthy's The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination. Dirda calls the book (which I haven't yet read) "one of those books one can happily live in for a week." I love the idea of inhabiting a book - in part because it really speaks to what readers often feel when they encounter an engrossing text, and also because the phrase itself shifts our perceptions about what is and isn't possible to do, both with words and with books. To expand a bit on this latter point, I guess I'm more broadly interested in the poetic use of words to describe what one might consider an everyday experience.

Happy Birthday, Kurt

We miss you.

Among many other things, thanks for the best acoustic performance I've ever heard (and my favorite Nirvana song).

Public Service Announcement

Not bad, actually.

(This show is my most recent guilty pleasure. That Damon Wayans, Jr. is quite a looker.)

Whoops

Happy belated, Mr. Rose.

Thank you for this.

The Great Bridge, History, and Hipsters.

I guess I've never really been one for reading history books. They're pretty popular in my family and among my friends, but I've always gravitated much more toward fiction and criticism. I was recently handed a copy of David McCullough's The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge and told that as a recent and fervent Brooklynite, I had to read it. 


I couldn't put it down. Now that I'm finished with it, I actually miss it. I wish there was more. My fuzzy memories of McCullough's work from high school history - and his more recent appearance on Colbert - don't do justice to his talent. (My fuzzy memories of reading history textbooks are even less useful, although I was proud of myself for recognizing the Taft-Hartley Act.)


I've been thinking about why I had such an enchanting time reading this particular book. I think part of it is McCullough's open, empathetic prose, and his scrupulous attention to detail. (As a literary critic who does no archival research to speak of, the hours he must have spent gathering his material boggle my mind.) He vividly brought an era to life, and several important figures in my city's history jumped off the page (in particular, John, Washington, and Emily Roebling, and Boss Tweed). Permit me to channel Captain Obvious for a second, and say this: history is magical.

And then there's Brooklyn, with which, to be honest, I am a little obsessed. (I should have moved here years ago, and I think about that on a daily basis.) I am still well into the discovery phase when it comes to my own neighborhood, and now I want to gather all the information I can about its history. 


And then there are hipsters.* When they** bike over that bridge, its history is almost invisible. Heck, it often is for me too, or at least was until I read the book, and I see it every day. But that confluence of modernity and history in one of the most (arguably) trail-blazing cities in the world is a force in which I'm really interested. I keep coming back to cities in a lot of my writing - in fact, I'm doing it right now in an abstract I'm working up right at this very moment. McCullough's book makes me want to keep doing it.


Perhaps I shall. 


*Maybe a tenuous connection. You have to admit that the alliteration with history is nice, and maybe also admit that it made you think.
**Or anyone, really.

Wow

"In another time and in what would seem another world, on a day when two young men were walking on the moon, a very old woman on Long Island would tell reporters that the public excitement over the feat was not so much compared to what she had seen 'on the day they opened the Brooklyn Bridge.'"

-- David McCullough, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge