Category: Ang

Screen Salvation

September 26, 2024

Some are living with the apocalypse right in front of them. Others seem to be able to put it in their peripheral vision. 

For the latter group, the apocalypse is something to be reminded of, as a caution, while they go about their lives, which have organizing principles and purposes that propel them and carry them along. These are the people who are raising children, doing essential jobs, basically, keeping the world on track amidst the hubbub of things. The former group, though, have been immobilized by the apocalypse. All has been lost, already, always already, and nothing is possible.

I put myself in the first group, because, I suppose, I feel I have experienced a loss so absolute that there’s no recovery from it, no way of pushing it to the side, no way of restarting and hitting my stride. That loss, of course, is Angelo. But death is something every human has to deal with; what I’ve experienced, everyone has, or will, in some version. Of course, everyone will experience it in a very personal, immediate way in their own death, if not through the loss of a child.

The apocalypse of a single death is as absolute, as devastating, for each individual as any other apocalypse, be it the Holocaust, a nuclear war, or end of the world through climate change or an asteroid strike. It’s weird to say that everyone will experience a loss equally as devastating as world-wide annihilation. But the stakes are high for each of us; rather, the stakes are beyond high; they are “all in,” always and everywhere. How does one function facing such an extremity? Clearly, we must learn to focus on other things.

This week I edited my screen saver. For some time, I had had only the Julie London quote about her singing: “It’s only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.” Julie’s words were a friendly reminder to me, on a daily basis, of something I tried to describe some months back in my blog: “Such confidence, expressed with awareness and humility and precision. Not to mention, a good dose of sensuality, along with the promise of being together through it. The woes of the world would be lessened, I’m convinced, if we all just listened to, and spent time with, Julie London.” I would smile each time her words appeared on my screen. 

I found myself this week needing, however, other reminders—or at least some glimpses of a non-apocalyptic lifestyle. I happened to come across St. Paul’s words, and it occurred to me that I needed to see them more often. I needed these words as an incantation, as an invocation to a better life than I had been living. Could this be my equipment for living, my distraction from the apocalypse? So I put them on my screen saver.

Then, with St. Paul and Julie London sitting there alone, I felt a need for some kind of connector—some statement that might round out the wisdom. These thoughts brought me to Kenneth Burke, and all the influence he has had on my life. That influence can’t be reduced to a single quotation, but his description of the “comic frame” in Attitudes Toward History does seem to partake of the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, and the humility of Julie London’s celebration of her voice on the other.

So, here’s my screen saver in its current iteration:

Saint Paul, on letting God in: “Brothers and sisters: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed on the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” Ephesians 4:30-5:2

 Julie London, on her voice: “It’s only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.”

Kenneth Burke, on comic forgiveness: “The progress of humane enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken. When you add that people are necessarily mistaken, that all people are exposed to situations in which they must act as fools, that every insight contains its own special kind of blindness, you complete the comic circle, returning again to the lesson of humility that underlies great tragedy.” Attitudes Toward History, p. 41
Angelo’s Screen Saver

I now notice that my introductory characterization of two of the quotations could be debated. For instance, was Burke really speaking about “forgiveness”? Or was that a reading I had imposed? Was I progressing a step beyond “enlightenment” to forgiveness, possibly as a natural effect of understanding/misunderstanding, and contextualization, and the necessity of error for all? I want there to be forgiveness. Also: Was St. Paul talking about “letting God in”? Or was this my wish—the wish that I might be able to abide by Paul’s request not to “grieve the Holy Spirit”? Paul talks of the seal of God, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the fragrant aroma of Christ’s sacrifice in which we are all suffused and made beneficiaries (I do notice he imports the holocaust of Christ’s sacrifice in this otherwise upbeat message). To me, he implies that we are somehow resisting it all; I know I have resisted giving up my grievances. Are they not keeping God out?

I hope these words, my companions on my screen, can keep on casting a spell on me. I need to look away from the ultimate devastation at my feet and in my sight. Kindness, love, humility—and intimacy too—I hope the reminders keep me upbeat and moving forward. I hope I can learn to push the apocalypse to the side, at least for part of the day, for part of my days that remain.

The Fixations of February 2

February 2, 2023

Was it Bill P. who said that every important life lesson could be taught from The Godfather? Bill, now long retired, is still with us, still sharp as a tack. I’m thinking of Bill as I picture the convalescent Don Corleone, rehearsing over and over again the details of the operation ahead of them—or was it the Barzini matter? Obsessively, Don Corleone would repeat the steps, with self-awareness of his preoccupation. He was talking to Michael, who had matters in hand (kinda).

I think of the Don, and Bill, as I contemplate my plans and prospects. I keep going over the numbers, the possibilities for retirement, as the idea has loomed up as a salvation of sorts. It still feels too early. Is my main motive that of escape? I know I need a change. I know I’m paralyzed with depression. But yet I function on. There’s a comfort in rehearsing the Barzini … er, retirement, business.

The woes of SXU: I keep thinking that all these vanities will pass. But they still seem so important. Here I am in a class, with all these young people, and their futures are so important, so full of promise. I need to be the adult and to lead them. But under the weight of my depression, I can’t move well.

Bill P. always brought a smile—he was always on, always performing. His schtick didn’t play well with everyone. My UIC classmate, Mary Kay, was thrown off by Bill’s irreverent demeanor during her interview in 1996, a day or two before my own interview. Maybe something about that interaction got me the job? I too was thrown off by Bill—but his voluble, comic, and I would eventually learn, Italian, nature made it easier for me to roll with him. Bill wasn’t, of course, the decision maker in the hiring for the position that I won—but he captured or represented some kind of favor that fell on me then in that life-changing accomplishment of becoming the English Education Coordinator as an Assistant Professor of English at Saint Xavier University. I still can’t believe it, and I still look on that moment as … what … a blessing? Curse? Miracle?

It was lucky in so many ways—to get the local job in a disciplinary area that was my first choice. To have gotten it when I did—with the family I had when I did. To have been able to send three children here—so proudly—when the institution was so worthy, though it did not ever know it, or appreciate it fully enough. 

Through the twists and turns of the late nineties and early aughts—before tenure, there was such energy, hope, vitality. I could name conferences that were transformational—in Arizona (the Grand Canyon being a big part of that) and Florida (on vacation with the family in Orlando, and my catapult into technology with Nicenet and Web Course in a Box). When Angelo became a student in 2004, everything changed, and the promise he pointed towards—intelligent, moral, carefree, free-spirited and free-wheeling engagement in the world—became an incarnation of what it was all about—the life of the academic, the purpose of education, the purpose of raising a family—the promise of it all.

It wasn’t necessarily his greatness (though he was great)—he was just the first of the kids to make that transition into adulthood. And he did it in a time when, despite being in the near aftermath of 9-11, was still a time of hope and promise … and even innocence.

I’m thinking of retirement … only because life has gotten so unbearable at SXU. I take that word “unbearable” from my colleague Amanda—who, young as she is, didn’t retire, but moved out of state and into a different teaching career in high school. Such were/are the conditions of worklife at SXU. Our best and brightest—our future—our most dedicated are made to feel the unbearable, and they leave in search of a better way to work and serve. Her farewell letter was polite and upbeat—no shots fired—and her use of the word “unbearable” was uttered in a more or less matter-of-fact way, but the word now rattles in my mind.

Part of my problem was just how good I had it. When we’re living the dream it’s hard to be aware that it is just a dream, that it all can vanish in the face of oncoming realities. There is some truth to the privilege of being a white guy, an older white guy, a tenured professor white guy. So many of the challenges now swirling about in contemporary society have spotlighted, if not outright critiqued, the accrued benefits of each of those adjectives and nouns—and it’s all justified. But those justifications don’t necessarily rehabilitate the motives or effects of the dismantling of academic mission that our university has suffered since 2015. The victims have been people of all kinds—varied in race, age, and gender. We have all lost—first the faculty, then the students. Our bloated, over-paid, over-self-congratulating administration seems to be the only winner, as we collectively descend into whatever version of us is to settle into place.  

There’s always hope that a new order, a new approach to justice can, yet again, put us on a path to a new prosperity, a structure of things that sidesteps some of the old injustices and deficiencies—and builds on new principles of inclusiveness, youthful vigor, and academic promise. But the grief over the things lost will still be there. Today is Groundhog Day—a “holiday” that invites a hope for sunnier days sooner rather than later. It’s a day also that has come to mean being trapped in a deficient—but improvable—environment, and one complete with all the resources needed for escape and future happiness. In the mixture of hope and imprisonment endemic to Groundhog Day, I struggle with my depression, and I smile at thoughts of Bill P. and Mary Kay, and I shed a tear for all that is unbearable. I hope to wake up to a better tomorrow; I long for February 3rd, and what might lie beyond.

Why I Can’t Read Novels Anymore

[Or Eat Sitting Down, When Alone;
Spoiler: It’s About Panic]

I hope it’s temporary, my inability to read. Rather, I should call it my disability in reading. I’m actually reading much more perhaps than ever before, since it’s all the time. But it’s so fragmented and erratic. I read news stories, alerts, tweets, threads, threads, threads. It’s twitter and its ilk becoming like rabbits in Australia, taking over. Fragments and bits, all distilled to pungent effects, like so many stabbings of wit and pure essence, pulling us this way and that, leaving us enervated and depleted, and ultimately, unfulfilled.

The old curling up with a novel, and doing so as a routine in my life, over long stretches of time, no longer seems possible. The reading nowadays is forever in snatches, sometimes precipitated by a buzz on the phone, sometimes stolen in a moment of distraction, sometime sought after in a pursuit of something—not sure what—but primarily a distraction. There are distractions that come unbidden, and distractions that are sought after, but whatever the pursuit or activity, all that seems to “be” is … “distraction.” This is my (and our society’s) current state of growing pains at the takeover by cell phones, social media, new journalism, contemporary consumption of culture, the agonizing human condition, the loneliness of modern life, the desperation for remedies, the nostalgia for a simpler, long-form type of life. Nothing is long-form any more. The shelf-life of ideas, dreams, aspirations, plans has shrunk. We scramble and move on, in ways that have lost a defining purpose or value. Why bother, though we don’t ask that, so we just keep the perpetual motion going, till it, mercifully?, stops.

Is this all but the logic, still, of a parent losing a son in his prime, or rather just before his prime?

It is. But it extends far beyond me too. We’re all feeling it in the ennui of 2022, post-pandemic (kinda), post-Trump (kinda), post-analog world, post unconnected world. The frenzy of 24/7 news and communication and being is getting to us all, and it’s not all bad, just mostly.

And I’m so busy, and everyone is in crisis. I have trouble justifying that selfish indulgence of long form reading as a regular part of life. But I worry as I skate along the surfaces of distractions that I am cutting myself off from hope, from possible immersion in that very thing that will cure me, that will help me find solace and understanding and calm—if only through transport to another place, not one of my own creation, a place that can provide healthier “distraction” in realms of greater possibility, where some unseen core of truth or energy will give us something essential for health and hope and joy.

I worry about my inability, our society’s inability, our youths’ inability, to carve out that slow pace, that shutting down, that putting on blinders that is reading. And without reading, I fear for the sanity and peace of the future world. Why can’t we turn away, shut out the outside world, and transport ourselves into that place, whatever/wherever it is, and however created by an author, and let that author and that world carry us along?

I bring this up during my deep dive, maybe halfway into the oeuvre of Margaret Atwood—not in books, but via Audible. So, the novels are being consumed, and at a relatively good rate, but not by reading, sitting, and being alone and focused solely on the book. There’s no underlining in ink. No pausing. No reflection, note-taking, and writing. So, it’s a different experience—again, not wholly negative, or deficient. 

If I’m ever to leave this new “reading” experience (and of course that day is coming, but no need to be morose or lugubrious about it), I’ll miss the performance aspect of the reader. Such pleasure in the human voice telling us a story. Such pleasure in the intonations, the singing, the sound effects, the interpretations. We’ve always had artists putting their stamps on a literary work, when, say the work is translated from the page onto the screen in a movie adaptation, for instance. But there, the interpretive license went too far, sometimes giving directors and other creators too much license to remake the work in their own image. With an Audible book, the interpretation is fully constrained to the author’s words, and the interpretation becomes only an enhancement, not a divergence.

When I was consuming Virginia Woolf on Audible, it was the breathy and beautiful Nicole Kidman who enchanted me through To the Lighthouse, and then it was the less-breathy, but equally enchanting and beautiful Annette Benning taking me through Mrs. Dalloway. I got to know these readers … through their intelligent interpretations, their miraculously deft performances—and my heart swelled with such gratitude. Thank you for doing this for me! Thank you for reading to me. Thank you for the simplicity and elegance of it.

But now I have a problem. I can’t listen to Audible outside the car. I just can’t do it. I can’t hunker down, hour after hour, while at rest, and approximate the old routine of reading. My impatience and distraction and anxiety about “the impending” (no noun to follow, just “the impending”; that’s what has kept me from the old way of reading)—prevented me from listening, despite the profundity of my gratitude. 

I should note an evolution in my Audible life which began last summer with Virginia Woolf. I read my Audible Woolfs, dare I say, on the treadmill (that just sounds wrong) this past summer, when I had time [cough, excuse] to exercise. Now, however, I listen to Audible solely in the car, where fortunately (?), I find myself every day. On my daily commute, and even short errands, I find I am able focus on the words and story, almost fully, but certainly enough to be “carried along”—both by the story and by my auto-pilot driving. Is that auto-pilot phenomenon real? Should I trust it? I can’t be sure…. But where I am now … I need the car; I need to be driving somewhere in order to read. It’s both a pragmatic need, but also metaphorical for the simultaneous escape and purposefulness, or the not having to choose between them. Most of all, it’s where I can give myself permission to “do nothing else” but luxuriate in the possibility of an author’s universe.

As I said at the onset: I hope I it’s temporary, my inability to read. I don’t always want to be driving to read. And the pandemic, which confined me to the house for nearly two years showed me that all my travels, and thus all my books, may evaporate into the ether, without notice. Also, this long-form reading works well for novels—but what about all the other kinds of reading I should return to? Philosophy? Meh, I guess I could do without philosophy; non-fiction works fine on Audible. Maybe I shouldn’t panic … about everything.  

Earlier this week, Atwood recommended against panic. As she accepted the Hutchins Prize (a bit of news I read, alas, old school/new school, as one of those Apple News distractions on my phone): “[D]esperate times require desperate remedies, and our times are desperate. However, instead of all these chariots and swords, I’ll propose something simpler. Don’t panic. Think carefully. Write clearly. Act in good faith. Repeat.” And so I will, but with a voice in my ear and a going someplace, at least for now.

From the Archives: An Early SSW; A Close Encounter; Family, Friends, and Enemies

March 31, 2021

[Potential spoilers! If you’re not caught up on your Gunsmoke episodes (as of April 27, 1958), go listen to “Squaw.” Then come back here!]

Email to Colleague Suzanne Lee, April 8, 2016

From: Angelo Bonadonna <bonadonna@sxu.edu>
Subject: Yesterday’s Encounter
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 08:53:11 -0500
To: Suzanne Lee <slee@sxu.edu>

Hi, Suzanne—it was good seeing you not once, but twice, yesterday!

I want to share with you a little outcome of our first encounter yesterday. Each week with my freshman writing class, I engage in an exercise I call SSW—silent sustained writing (the sibling of SSR). Yesterday when we met, I was on my way to class, and so you made an appearance in my lead-in to my writing session, which I’ve entitled “Miraculous Intrusions of the Day.”

The whole thing brings me a big smile (and some tears as you’ll see if you read on), and I’d like to share it with you. Thank you for being part of the miracles in my life. Let me know if you want me to track down and send you an MP3 of the Gunsmoke episode in question. :)

The writing is not complete or particularly polished, but it does, at the end, touch on grief, and attempts to admire a simple and genuine portrayal of it in the Gunsmoke program. On that level, I want to say again, I’m sorry for […] the sadness around much of our experience these days. But anyway—it was nice seeing you! —Angelo

Here’s the SSW I attached to Suzanne’s emaill:

Miraculous Intrusions of the Day
April 7, 2016:  
 
So much happens in a day that is unexpected. I never would have guessed that I’d be telling Suzanne Lee about George Bahumas running up to me from behind and knocking me down—and how, (at least for the surprise factor), she reminded me of him, though as she said, she hoped there’d be a different outcome than the two of us fighting in the grass. [Comment from 2021: The fight with George Bahumas, (my oldest childhood friend), was the only real, Western-style, fist fight of my life. This was true in 2016, and, somewhat surprisingly, it is still true in 2021, given the the events of the past 5 years at SXU.] 
 
But my surprise conversation with Suzanne is not what I planned to share today. I came to write about another unexpected miraculous intrusion of the day, the Gunsmoke episode, “Squaw,” that I heard on the Old Time Radio station during my morning commute. It caught me by surprise. I’ve never been a Gunsmoke fan, though the show does have some powerful claims on me. The TV version was a favorite of my mother, and I have such warm, simple memories of her watching the show in the basement (?) while she cooked. I have such a devotion to Bonanza, and I think some of the qualities of that show correlate, obviously, to Gunsmoke. Then there’s William Conrad, the great radio actor, maybe the greatest radio voice of all time, but someone destined to become TV’s “Cannon”—such a step down from the Matt Dillon he wanted to play on TV, after giving life to the role on radio. All these, and other, ideas are swirling as I was driving down this morning, listening to “Squaw.” By the end of the show, the tears are welling up in my eyes, unexpectedly. And the tears well up now as I write this. Why? 
 
I’m reminded of King Lear, and the way Shakespeare was able to create a genre—the family drama—a category of experience so powerful, so unique, so important—and so likely to be neglected without the writing and art form, as propelled by a great innovator and artist. King Lear is a tragedy—not of civic matters, or personal ambitions, or tempestuous romances—but rather of parents and children, and their inability to figure out life’s complex ways of putting us in simple, necessary, and fundamental relationships. “Squaw” told of a family conflict, father and son, culture and culture, boy and mother, boy and step-mother—and on all levels, from Freudian sexual motivations, to anthropological confusions, to race relations, to 1950s mores, to fairy tale romances, to current xenophobias, and many swirling dynamics in between—the story strikes a chord.  
 
The boy’s father has remarried—to a Navajo squaw, and the boy is now acting out, getting into bar fights in Dodge. So Matt gets involved, and he and Chester make a visit to the boy’s father. It turns out that the father has married this woman according to Indian custom (where the man “purchases” the woman from the father; note to self: really? is there any accuracy to this thread? is this a case of 1950s racism? but that’s another concern), but he has not married her legally. The boy is living in the shame of being a “squaw man.” His father has disgraced him. The woman is the same age as the boy. So there’s also the narrative of the dirty old man living with the young Indian woman. And one suspects the boy’s attraction to his step-mother causes no little stir to the mix of emotions—the strong hateful emotions he feels towards his new mother. 
 
So Matt and Chester make their trip. They find a woman there—both very beautiful and young, and they further find that, though she can barely speak English, and the father can barely speak Navajo—the marriage is one of genuine love. Kudos to the narrative art of the writers—to “condense” that effect, that impression, in a few verbal exchanges. But the power and authenticity of the love come across to us after all these years and differences, and the woman, in her broken English expresses hope that Matt and Chester will come again—and be fed by her. The sense of hospitality—and the promise of family life is complete in the very brief scene.  
 
Matt prevails on the man to come into town on Saturday to have a legal marriage performed. This will help alleviate the son’s angst—or part of it—or so Matt hopes. 
 
But just what is the nature of the son’s problem? He is very deluded, it seems, about his own motivation—and near the story’s end, after all the horrible tragedy of the family drama has unfolded, Matt Dillon makes the observation about what the son thinks was his motivation. Matt calls out his rationalization explicitly. In doing so, he suggests that the boy was struggling with a mix of perturbed, dark, swirling confusions—about sexual desire, cultural bigotry, family loyalties, the father-kill motive, self-hatred, an Oedipal relationship with his birth mother, and a violence born out of frustrations of efficacy.  
 
So many ideas here—but the tears, I’m sure, stemmed from some simplicities—simplicities of portrayal of the love between these two different people, the father and his new wife who could barely speak to each other. Then there was the portrayal of the grief (spoiler, sorry) of the woman for her dead husband, killed by his own son. The portrayal of grief was twofold. Again, I don’t know the cultural accuracy of the portrayal here, but I do feel the respect that was captured. The woman grieved in a song…and in a way that would not have been offered if it were not genuine. And then there was the knife and the blood—and Matt Dillon’s sleuthing of the crime scene, in part, through his explanation of the widow’s severing of two of her own fingers as an expression of grief for her loss of her husband.

More perspective from 2021

Suzanne Lee was one of those dear friends a professor is blessed to have as a colleague. At every phase of my career at SXU, Suzanne was there—teaching, working on committees, writing articles together, collaborating on teams, and helping me and others adjust to new realities in programs and institutional politics. When she became dean, I felt the School of Education had a chance to recover from its disastrous period of rudderless drift it had endured after the long, slow, and neglected decline of the prior dean. And when Suzanne became provost, I reveled in Rick Venneri’s hallway comment to me, delivered in a nod, with a smile and that confidential gravitas of his, “She’s a straight shooter.”

After Angelo died, she and her partner, Judy, appeared on our doorstep with a pecan pie. I was not there—the family was not there—but sister-in-law Jane was, and she relayed to us later the whole episode—how concerned the visitors were about the pie getting to us, how much they had hoped to be there for us. We couldn’t be there because the whole family had flown to Thailand to recover Angelo. And it now occurs to me: have I ever conveyed to Suzanne how much her gesture of kindness meant to me then, and how much it still means to me now?

It’s hard to blame President Joyner for what happened to Suzanne Lee—i.e., her departure from the university. The two apparently were friends and respected each other. But of course, Suzanne is gone, her career truncated too early at SXU. Whether or not it was Suzanne’s choice to leave, I hold Dr. Joyner responsible, in part, for creating an environment where so many careers have ended prematurely because of, in my view, her flawed vision of who we are, what we should be doing, and how we might position ourselves for growth.

It’s appropriate that, in relaying my impressions of Suzanne’s encounter of April 7, 2016, I thought of childhood memories with George Bahumas. Suzanne’s act was so child-like. She literally ran up behind me—quietly—and put both hands over my eyes, so as to say, “Guess who,” without ever saying it. Can you imagine? How did she have both hands free—wasn’t she carrying anything? Could such a thing happen in the 21th century, with all our sacred notions of “personal space”? Could such a playful encounter occur between a dean and a faculty member ever at SXU?

Update 2021, Looking Back Again, on Angelo, through Suzanne

“Miraculous Intrusions of the Day,” Version 2, would go even deeper into the Angelo archives—before 2008, his year of graduation. Suzanne and I were having a conversation in the second-floor hallway by the stairwell, and Angelo approached to meet up with me for some reason (or maybe not? Maybe it was just one of those chance encounters, where we wound up falling into a conversation because we happened to run into each other? I’m not sure…).

As Suzanne and I conversed, in that animated way we had, I could sense Angelo looking on, maybe too intently, in my peripheral vision. When we finished and Suzanne left, Angelo looked at me, with that grin of his—I mean that really characteristic grin of his that is best described by Virginia Uphues in the documentary (at the 45:29 minute mark).

“What?” I said.

Angelo’s response was destined to become one of my favorite memories of him:

“She digs you!”

And that smile. And then, of course, my smile, because I did not expect him to say that. I didn’t feel a need to explain that I wasn’t Suzanne’s type. It was true that she dug me—and I dug her. Suzanne and I had such a friendship, one filled with sparkling eyes on both our parts and lots of inappropriate language (mostly on her part). Angelo’s observation was one of those moments where you see your kid has not only grown up, but is celebrating a kind of adult thing—here, love and friendship—in a way beyond the silliness and worry of the family drama (to get back to Lear and Gunsmoke). Angelo, in his natural hippie-speak, was being himself, capturing a truth, celebrating his dad, inhabiting the chance moment, but not letting it go till the love was communicated. I put it in the category of another comment he had made a few years earlier, where, after I had driven through the night on the last leg of a long family vacation, he commented (sensing, no doubt, my need for validation of my driving prowess), “You’re a warrior!”—a statement he made without irony, and one that caused (and still does cause) those suffusions of the heart that the recipient (till now) doesn’t talk about. Such power we have for one another as family and friends in affirmations like these. So seldom, it seems, do we (or I at least) use this super-power. It came spontaneously and naturally to Angelo in moments.

I think now of my trollish ways of interacting with loved ones, and I want to do better. And I’ll try.

Thoughts on the release of the Angelo documentary revision and the 10-year anniversary

Gen and Moira’s revised documentary on their brother, Angelo, has been posted! It’s here! And it reminds me:

Angelo was a new entity, the likes of which the universe, in all its miraculous and endless diversity, had never yet experienced prior to his existence.

In combining the genres of home movie and documentary, Genevieve and Moira have given our family a reminder, and the world a fresh glimpse, of that “new entity.” They’ve done so with grace and generosity, and we (his family and friends and yes, the universe) owe them a debt of gratitude.

Angelo had characteristic gestures that were uniquely his. But he also had the most common of all things—a charming smile, for example. Some of his better qualities should have come with a warning label. His smile, for instance, was so expansive and so charming that you had best learn to mistrust it at some point, or he would find some way to put you in an impossible bind (usually involving bungee cords). He was common and unique, but most of all, as one interviewee says (wink), “he was sweet.” His story is compelling and intriguing, as you might imagine when a young, charismatic, socially-conscious, world traveler and raconteur dies unexpectedly.

But this project was done by Gen and Moira as a simple gesture of love—for their brother, for their parents. Over the years since its first release in 2013, Gen stayed with the project, and nurtured it and its possibilities—which have ever been growing, and in different directions, in the background of her evolution as a filmmaker. Her commitment has been gentle—the best kind of long-view living-with her art and memories and care for her family.

I look at the evolution of this documentary and I’m reminded of the value of effort, commitment, process, patience—and yes, grief and love and affection—and sibling privilege, obligation, and commitment, and love of parents….

I look at this documentary, and I think of all the clips—where did they come from? I think of the “new” audio interview with Moira at age 6; of the “new” clips from the original interviews; of the new clips from the new interviews, and yes, from a technical point of view, I think of all the frame-by-frame editing, the color grading, audio normalizing, captioning, and organization and re-organization. I think of a story about a girl named Lucky, and how did that make it in?

Angelo was a new entity that the universe in all its diversity had yet to experience until 1986-2011. But the lesson I learn most from this documentary is that, special as he was, Angelo was but an example of the humanity that is all around us every day—that humanity that is so fragile and evanescent and moved on from, and, worst of all at times, ignored and discarded in our crass and dangerous and neglectful world. Angelo has now been gone 10 years, and also not at all. We’re just lucky enough to have a documentarian, an archivist, a “sweet remembrancer” as the Bard would have it (in the words of one of his more crass tragic heroes), who keeps him coming back at us, in different angles and moments, all with a universe of insight into that new entity that he once was, and still is, in and beyond these fleeting clips, pictures, and comments.

No explanation is needed of Angelo to those who knew him. He’s right there in our memories, animated in the full explosiveness of song and dance and eating and arguing and smiling. But to those who didn’t know him, they can catch glimpses of him through this documentary—and in ways that will make you feel the loss many of us have been struggling with and turning the corner from—with success and failure, and smiles and tears, and hope and love.

Watch—and try not to miss him. Thank you for that, Gen and Moira!