What Is It All But Luminous Read online

  a round depression at Odessa, and part of Poland’s

  chipped away. (I know I must save the world

  from Beau but my discipline is undone

  by the sweet conceit.)

  One night I find myself embracing my Kathryn

  and allowing myself to be embraced

  by the beauty of my life today.

  Our hearts swell together.

  Out from our feet, little Beau rolls the globe away.

  My son was so handsome last night, so forthright, so earnest, so dressed to kill—dark charcoal lightweight suit, tie all cranberry red, golden curls, eager to learn, beautiful complexion, 15¼—the brink of change.

  MARCH 31, 2006

  I don’t write bits to my firstborn son—

  words would diminish my love.

  Now that HE IS, I AM

  a something else again,

  a captive of how much I care

  and unaware of time,

  heart without rhyme,

  my son defies defining.

  The heart is a fist,

  a muscle pumping blood,

  the source of the thing I feel for him:

  my son is a lover with the muscle grown,

  he IS the poem and the poet’s aims—

  no names describe his embrace

  as wide as the human race.

  To my “partner’s” son,

  Though the challenge, the direction is as blinding as the sun, aim toward your father’s heart and just take one baby step toward it. A little is a lot. Let your true inner self be warmed. His is the heart that needs to melt. Let cracks precede the awe-full task. Then recede, slip back, go cloudy like the weather, whatever. But please persist before he dies. See him as the lonely one—a poet turning prosaic. You are the rising sun.

  The bedsore doctor needed someone to brace my brother. So I came up against his back and rotated him on his hip, while the hideous wound was rebandaged. There, in his bed, on my elbow, I pushed my neck and my cheek into the back of his shoulder. I felt I belonged there—kid brother behind his brother’s wing. I held him and kissed his neck and behind his ear. Death was present. The smell was in his mouth—cancer was almost done with its work. It was unprecedented that I would hold him, here at the end of life at last. The wound was dressed. We returned him in place. After a time he gave an indication. I leaned my ear to his mouth. “Is there something you need, Jules?” I said. “Money,” he said.

  AND THESE ARE ALSO THINGS YOU THINK ABOUT:

  The great ones are the ones who mix and match,

  blending contradictions. Take Jack, for example.

  We all know his spectacular vernacular.

  I worked with him on camera, in a dorm room,

  a bedroom, a man cave. I know the exquisite artist.

  I was in the room when he went to ten on the scale

  of temper, take after take after take after take.

  Amidst the interior strain of sheer brilliance,

  he joked with a grip on the scaffold above us

  —fellow workers tilting lights in an industry town.

  Jack straddled these realities, and rubbed his

  loves together. In the broad dissonance,

  Atlas held it up and scratched an itch.

  Mix it, Jack.

  On crooner ballooner, happily to Napoli, in pretty Italy.

  I passed through a season of dying (please God). Climbing into Frosinone on the Rome-to-Naples road, sixty or more sycamores were silently dropping their leaves, one by one, a glide. In khaki camouflage, the wet barks witness the big brown sails come down.

  I thought of my mother and sighed. I thought of my brother Jules and died a little with the trees. A shady arcade, a quiet grove of letting go. Gravely, in stride, at the end of the fall, I crushed the leaves in the nave under toe.

  We give one-sixth their worth to those alive;

  afterward—the other five.

  On my iPod:

  Ong So Hung, Vocal Exercises I–IV, VII * James Taylor, Enough to Be on Your Way * Gaia * Ananas * Up from Your Life * Walking My Baby Back Home * J. J. Cale, Crying Eyes * Magnolia * The Everly Brothers, That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine * Put My Little Shoes Away * Rocking Alone in an Old Rocking Chair * I’m Here to Get My Baby out of Jail * Lightning Express * Kentucky * Oh So Many Years * Chet Baker, The Thrill Is Gone * But Not for Me * Time After Time * I Get Along Without You * There Will Never Be Another You * Look for the Silver Lining * I’ve Never Been in Love Before * Simon and Garfunkel, Old Friends / Bookends * Bruce Hornsby, Song C (Instrumental) * Art Garfunkel, Someone to Watch over Me * Let’s Fall in Love * You Stepped out of a Dream * It Could Happen to You * What’ll I Do * J. J. Cale, Call Me the Breeze * Nowhere to Run * The Everly Brothers, Devoted to You * Take a Message to Mary * Let It Be Me * I Wonder If I Care as Much * J. J. Cale, Crazy Mama * Maurice Ravel, Ma Mère l’Oye Part 1 * Ma Mère l’Oye Part 2 * Ma Mère l’Oye Part 5 * Paul Desmond, Old Friends * The Swingle Singers, J. S. Bach, Fugue in D Major * J. S. Bach, Chorale in E Major * J. S. Bach, Fugue #2 in D Major * J. S. Bach, Brandenberg Concerto V, 3 * Maurice Ravel, Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2 * Enrico Caruso, The Pearl Fishers * Nick Holmes, The Promise * J. S. Bach, Et in terra pax * Leon Russell, Love’s Supposed to Be That Way * Kenny Rankin, Blackbird * Lenny Bruce, Frank Dell * Igor Stravinsky, Shrovetide Fair * James Taylor, You Can Close Your Eyes * J. S. Bach, Christmas Oratorio duet * Frank Sinatra, The House I Live In * Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill * W. B. Yeats, Blessed by Everything * Billie Holiday, Don’t Explain * The Everly Brothers, So Sad * Robert Frost, Birches * W. B. Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole * James Taylor, Another Grey Morning * Michael McDonald, Real Love * James Taylor, I’ve Been Wonderin’ * Singers Unlimited, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas * Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians * James Taylor, Lookin’ for Love on Broadway * W. B. Yates, Innisfree * Bill Evans, This Will Take Work * Player, Baby Come Back * Kool and the Gang, Cherish * Stephen Bishop, City Girl * Michael McDonald, I Can Let Go Now * Maia Sharp, Long Way Home * James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man * Ruth Draper, The Italian Lesson * Joni Mitchell, Wish I Had a River * Fleetwood Mac, Rhiannon * J. S. Bach, B minor Mass * James Taylor, Never Die Young * Jimmy Webb, Come Thou Fount * Paul Brady, Steal Your Heart * Jimmy Webb, Inneskillen * Paul Brady, Oh the Beauty * Let It Happen * Jimmy Webb, A Baptist Hymn * Skywriter * Stephen Bishop, That’s When She Cries * Maurice Ravel, Concerto in G * Ralph Vaughan Williams, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus * Claude Debussy, Sonata for Flute, Viola, Harp * Dylan Thomas, If I Were Tickled * Art Garfunkel, Jimmy Webb, All I Know * Art Garfunkel, Perfect Moment * Two Sleepy People * Some Enchanted Evening * The Promise * Barbara Allen * Kathy’s Song * Waters of March * Art Garfunkel, James Taylor, Crying in the Rain * Stephen Bishop, The Day You Fall in Love with Me * Losing Myself in You * Madge * City Girl

  I am moved to speak of Janice Zwail, the colonics queen. A Chelsea chick, she cleans your colon for cash or check. Something clicks for me in our Queens connection. After the evacuation, behind the bathroom door, I mention the clickety sound of colonics, so she tap dances on the hardwood floor.

  —To not get all jummed up, she says, eat kale and chard and green such things.

  Behind the movement, the bard in the mind goes back to both Flushings.

  Today I met with my publicist. He wants me to tweet and to meet my audience where it’s at. (“You love your new record, don’t you? You want ’em to know it exists?”) Couldn’t I be a glifter first? Or better, a dripster (see the pen dwip)? Feel the self-image take a serious hit. Does nothing embarrass? If I’m to be a tweeter now then cut a hole in the seat of my trousers; give me feathered tail. All is fashion. Shame for sale. O techno-America, tattooed and gadgety, when do we call you a national twagedy?

  Today I stopped at the jeweler’s shop.

  Does the brilliance belong to the diamond or to the halogen light?

  Is it the million rods and cones of the shopper’s sight?

  It i
s the lover’s right to capture the movie and be the bright star of my life.

  Ah, the flower man. He deals specifically with love.

  Valentine’s is coming up; the business of affection will bloom.

  Peter runs the Windsor flower shop. I tried to find out

  if he could tell from the notes he’s asked to write:

  Is it just flowers to sell?

  Or does he sometimes run into true love—real love,

  golden, deep, and mature—two lovers being their finest selves?

  Does Peter know when the hearts are pure?

  No, he says. Love goes on behind a closed door.

  It’s not so easily understood. The lover turns buyer

  when the night before was good.

  pointillistic age…no lateral bond…

  discrete dots with histories live side

  by side…intensity more vivid, the picture loses truth.

  I watched the record become the CD.

  I saw in the mix the bass, the percussion,

  so readable, so “placed”…gone the gestalt

  I hardly know my neighbors in the co-op,

  there’s only eight of them and me…

  connective tissue…

  —The trouble with pot, said a doctor I know,

  is: the insights, the color, quite wonderful—

  are like fireworks…there and gone…

  points in time…last year’s clouds

  Let today sweep away the curriculum—

  flatten the structure from Bach to Bill Evans.

  Like 21st-century nitrogen-fixing bacteria,

  let us all turn to mulch for the new shoots to grow.

  Arthurs, Senior and Junior, 1999

  I wanna be the Big Reveal,

  left behind the glory train,

  down at the station,

  dressed like Arthur,

  not the type to win.

  The car pulls away,

  and there on the platform,

  staring at hype and spin—

  the authentic artist,

  devoted for life,

  tools in his head, bemused.

  Sleeve full of heart,

  a man apart from people,

  a freak of another nature,

  lost in LOLs and to whom it spells,

  lost in thought,

  left in the dust of Beethovian bombast,

  nonplussed.

  I take the world for what it really is.

  This that we swim in’s not it.

  It’s the love you make, it’s here and gone,

  it’s a ball in space rotating daily

  in an oval path that takes a year.

  It’s your own rosy-fingered dawn, home base,

  it’s hidden wrath and petty fear.

  It’s all the groping printed here.

  Words can’t cut it. Only the gut can take it in.

  (What is the name for the smell of the neck

  of a newborn, or the word for the touch of its skin?)

  I am immersed in a world that keeps saying:

  O my God. The culture calls and I am a wafer

  dissolved in it. Only evaporation of the present

  generation can reveal the Arthurian distillate.

  IS IT ONLY ME OR DO WE ALL FEEL SCHIZOPHRENIC? KALEIDOSCOPIC IDENTITIES. LIVING IN FRAGMENTS EVERY DAY. ACCEPT MULTIPLICITY. CALL IT A VIRTUE. POETIC—PROSAIC. I AM A MOSAIC. NOW LET ’EM ALL HAVE THEIR SAY:

  MEN

  We want to impress, imprint, impregnate. We wander around wanting to make our marks. (Sing it good; move their hearts.) We long for love, our highest value—real love, gorgeous and true, bloody and sincere. We’re not really beasties. Men like me don’t like our hairy chests (and hate a hairy back). When we’re fit to be tied, we huff and puff and blow the house down. But with children around, this is excruciating for us.

  What we like is sly power. We like to be alone in a limo in blue jeans and a T-shirt, a thin cotton one that smells of the bedroom. Our hips are narrow, we’re skinny, and it’s after the show; we’re full of the potency of just having used our “stuff” and made hundreds of thousands of people high.

  But mostly we long for real love. Just like you do. When we speak truthfully and you respond with verbal sleight-of-hand, the insincerity breaks our heart. We move on in our most serious longing. Through decades we slowly observe what we’re doing here on earth. We go through parts and try to feel it as a whole—What am I?

  I was in Venice.

  I was alone—

  stalking beauty by the Bridge of Sighs.

  Suddenly the object of my eye comes to me

  across the Square to the shade

  of this columned arcade and takes me

  to his table.

  And as we walk we are akin.

  —You met me once…

  I am taken in.

  MY OCCUPATION, SINGING IN CONCERT HALLS, IS PUT ASIDE. I DO A PIECE OF MOVIE ACTING, AND WALK THE SOUTHERN PART OF ITALY IN MAY 2008.

  Now in June, James Arthur is my preoccupation. Upstairs all days, I review his life, recorded on my Handycam, on forty-four two-hour videotapes from 1990 to today. Religiously, I cherish his beauty and his beautiful development. Down in the kitchen, the living Arthur Junior emerges…

  What is to be said between father and son beyond: “Watch me, Dad,” and “I love you, son”? Tack to these winds, let all others be bluster. Faith is a goddess; mine is to trust her.

  I AM DEVOTED TO*:

  MY WOMAN A twenty-one-year love affair with Kathryn

  RAISING JAMES ARTHUR AND BEAU

  MY BODY OF WORK—MUSIC c. 1,000 solo concerts; 11 albums (with songs #138 through #151) just completed

  MY HEALTHY BODY

  MY PEOPLE Sandy Greenberg; brothers Jules, Jerome; my wife’s mother, Patricia Hagen; Jack Nicholson; Jimmy Webb; Paul Simon; Paul Krause; Nicole Hambro

  MY BOOKLIST—LITERATURE Currently reading #1,217, 48 years, 361,980+ pages read, 20.6 pages per day [5/15]

  MY EUROWALK From Shannon, Ireland, in 1998, now 20 legs to 40 kms east of Rome (USA was 40 legs, c. ’85–’96)

  MY WRITING May 2015, I am at page 676, entry no. 1,115 in the eighth notebook

  FAMILY VIDEOTAPE Handycam, Super 8, two-hour videos: started 1990, James’s baby shower; now shooting #42

  DIARY/NOTEBOOK 2½” x 4” day-to-day engagements; ’72–today

  PHOTOGALLERY (STAIRWAY) 123 framed pictures of my family

  JAMES QUOTES BOOK Page 42, entry no. 227

  DIMES 12,840

  THE PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES From Robin Roberts—to help me remember how to not be too happy

  * * *

  *  Written in 2006

  Why couldn’t I be a goldsmith? I could build an entire battle scene in little strips of filigree with separate strands of gold in the horses’ manes and set it all on a pinky ring for Kim’s adornment…and not have to sing these nuances, inviting angels onto the head of a pin.

  SIMON AND GARFUNKEL    Watched pot, pitted kettle

  HAVING WALKED ACROSS THE USA FROM THE MID-’80S TO THE MID-’90S, I BEGAN TO WALK EUROPE IN 1998: FROM THE SHANNON AIRPORT IN WESTERN IRELAND THROUGH A CHAIN-LINK FENCE, ACROSS THE COUNTRY TO THE SOUTHEAST CORNER. THEN FERRY TO PEMBROKE IN SOUTHWESTERNMOST WALES, ACROSS ITS SOUTHERN COAST TO BRISTOL IN ENGLAND. I THEN WENT SOUTH, SAW SOME OF WEST ENGLAND, AND FERRIED FROM POOLE TO CHERBOURG, THEN NORMANDY, PARIS, BURGUNDY, LYON, GRENOBLE, OVER THE ALPS TO ITALY’S PIEDMONT, AND DOWN TO GENOA, TUSCANY, SIENA, ROME, THEN NAPLES. NOW ACROSS SOUTHERN ITALY TO BARI, WHERE I STALLED. (DO I NEED TO SEE GREECE?)

  It’s fitting that I should return to the road and finish my voyage to Istanbul. But is it worth my time to fulfill the dream, to execute the concept? Is it about Ulysses anymore? Or a Turkish destination, a Middle East door to the Syrian war? All the Greece that’s east before me—lambs and white rock, Thessaloniki, the Bosporus, Troy—tax the sciatica, change at the Aegean from Iliad boy
to the shining Achilles. From Ireland to the heel of Italy, true to the original deal. Is there areté in Avraham?

  Or am I Don Quixote alone before the windmills come, with a thousand more kilometers to Byzantium?

  I’m up there IN the etchings on the walls

  of fine hotels in that other air of Baudelaire

  where ice is blue and creviced walls with

  frozen waterfalls and stone so steep even

  Louis Philippe bows his head in prayer.

  He lingers on his way to sleep. Brahms is

  not “Romantic” yet. He longs to get away

  from care and stare at timeless rock up there.

  From February 2006 to January 2011 I read 160 books. These 26 books stand out:

  Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (2005)

  Geoff Emerick, Here, There and Everywhere (2006)

  J. P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man (1955)

  Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (2001)

  Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (1978)

  Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach (2007)

  Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn (1999)

  José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1994)

  Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic (1930)

  Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918)

  Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (1934)

  D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

  Henri Troyat, Tolstoy (1965)

  Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (2009)

  Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching (c. 6th century BC)

  Daniel Defoe, Roxana (1724)

  Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov (1859)

  Akira Iriye, The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific (1987)

  Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West (2009)