Monday, February 09, 2004
Charlie Mosler Memorial Reading: "all a poet ever gets."
Prefaced my reading of a Charlie Mosler poem at his "Memorial" concert / reading by saying I met Charlie in the Seventies shortly after I left college, which began a series of oddly similar encounters that went on for 25 years. After a reading or gig or party, Charlie would be sitting at a piano, his large left hand splayed across about an octave & a half of the keyboard, hitting some conglomeration of notes over & over. He'd always say something like, "Rixon, I heard a cat play this - is it a C sharp diminished seventh with a thirteenth in the bass?" * I'd lean over, peering at the notes & say something like, "Charlie, doncha know if you already figured out how to make the sound you can give it any name you want? Think of one." The musicians laughed.
Edie pulled the affair together from invites to flyers to food; She never ceases to amaze. Among the poets who showed up to honor Charlie were Sofran McBride, Tom Obrzut, Hal Sirowitz, Sheldon Biber, Donald Lev (sadly, without Enid Dame, who passed on recently). Also music journalist Michael Redmond, actor Jeff Maschi, WNTI jazz DJ Todd Ellis. It was nice to find myself standing beside painter John Volanin, who I feel like I've known since forever, yet see so infrequently.
Musicians performing included Alan Wasserman, Artie Bressler, Sue Terry, Rosemary Conte, Steve & John Conte, Honey Gordon, Derwyn Holder, Wayne Smith, some others whose names I didn't catch. The music was better than swell, ranging from classical to Coltranish, with a closing jam session, of course.
A capacity crowd at Barron Arts Center, Rona Mosler looked pleased, but it was a bittersweet occasion.
What Charlie got on Saturday afternoon is all a poet ever gets. It's all Joel Oppenheimer got, all Joe Salerno got. If you're really influential there could be a little parade, like Ginsberg & Berrigan got. There might be a larger audience, if you have a lot of non-poetry family & friends who show up; or less; or nothing at all. Maybe, as with Salerno, the very people who wouldn't publish The Live Poet pull together a book for the deceased one, which then quickly sinks out of sight, like 99% of all books of poems These are matters-of-fact, not cynical opinions.
Charlie Mosler was a rare bird a amongst us; we were too used to having him around. If he had flown in from the outside he would've been recognized as one of the last of his species, & played the so-called "Big Tent" at the Dodge Poetry Festival every other year. Charlie trusted too much that he would be appreciated & accepted based on a combination of longevity & the quality of his "product," a common enough miscalculation, & a sign of creative integrity. & it doesn't usually happen that way, does it? Hell, at the 1994 Festival I witnessed Gary Snyder with Paul Winter, in a poetry & music performance that was simultaneously shameful & shameless. Charlie Mosler cut that sort of crap every time he stepped on stage. It was a part of his mission. He was nobody's sycophant, & had a low tolerance of flatterers. I liked that about him.
(* Pianist Wayne Smith, whom I consider a genius, mentioned later that he'd just encountered a 13th bass note in a Debussy piece. Wayne doesn't joke about stuff like that. Some years back he correctly identified a few bars of music by Faure on a torn piece of score buried in one of Christine Dolinich's collages.)
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Edie pulled the affair together from invites to flyers to food; She never ceases to amaze. Among the poets who showed up to honor Charlie were Sofran McBride, Tom Obrzut, Hal Sirowitz, Sheldon Biber, Donald Lev (sadly, without Enid Dame, who passed on recently). Also music journalist Michael Redmond, actor Jeff Maschi, WNTI jazz DJ Todd Ellis. It was nice to find myself standing beside painter John Volanin, who I feel like I've known since forever, yet see so infrequently.
Musicians performing included Alan Wasserman, Artie Bressler, Sue Terry, Rosemary Conte, Steve & John Conte, Honey Gordon, Derwyn Holder, Wayne Smith, some others whose names I didn't catch. The music was better than swell, ranging from classical to Coltranish, with a closing jam session, of course.
A capacity crowd at Barron Arts Center, Rona Mosler looked pleased, but it was a bittersweet occasion.
What Charlie got on Saturday afternoon is all a poet ever gets. It's all Joel Oppenheimer got, all Joe Salerno got. If you're really influential there could be a little parade, like Ginsberg & Berrigan got. There might be a larger audience, if you have a lot of non-poetry family & friends who show up; or less; or nothing at all. Maybe, as with Salerno, the very people who wouldn't publish The Live Poet pull together a book for the deceased one, which then quickly sinks out of sight, like 99% of all books of poems These are matters-of-fact, not cynical opinions.
Charlie Mosler was a rare bird a amongst us; we were too used to having him around. If he had flown in from the outside he would've been recognized as one of the last of his species, & played the so-called "Big Tent" at the Dodge Poetry Festival every other year. Charlie trusted too much that he would be appreciated & accepted based on a combination of longevity & the quality of his "product," a common enough miscalculation, & a sign of creative integrity. & it doesn't usually happen that way, does it? Hell, at the 1994 Festival I witnessed Gary Snyder with Paul Winter, in a poetry & music performance that was simultaneously shameful & shameless. Charlie Mosler cut that sort of crap every time he stepped on stage. It was a part of his mission. He was nobody's sycophant, & had a low tolerance of flatterers. I liked that about him.
(* Pianist Wayne Smith, whom I consider a genius, mentioned later that he'd just encountered a 13th bass note in a Debussy piece. Wayne doesn't joke about stuff like that. Some years back he correctly identified a few bars of music by Faure on a torn piece of score buried in one of Christine Dolinich's collages.)
