Gibb Windahl.
It's an honor to be here.
To see so many friends of Steve gathered together.
I was a student in Steve's very first class
that he taught here at U of A. And he
took the place of a professor who had to leave town suddenly
because he was having an affair with a colleague's wife.
And of course, Steve stepped right into that empty space,
to become the Charlie Sheen of the English department--
briefly.
And he was a great friend, but not always an easy friend,
and we sometimes discussed the necessity
of forgiving your friends to sustain a long friendship.
And as I was thinking about that,
I was thinking, well, where do you draw the line?
And I thought, if your friend kills your dog,
is that friendship done?
And well, no, maybe it was an accident.
What if your friend eats your dog?
Well, he was probably starving.
But if he was starving, I was probably starving,
and I would have wanted to eat my dog.
So anyway, Steve and I, our nickname for each other
was Doc we were los dos docs.
And we shared as Buzz and Tony both mentioned,
we shared an assortment of obsessions.
I think of his career on this planet
as being a curator of his obsessions.
And our pathological families were at the center
of those obsessions.
And when Steve got involved with genealogy,
he was my rabbi by the way, something about the lost
tribes of Sweden.
He got really obsessed with genealogy,
and I was supposed to meet Steve and Dean
Young at the Red Garter, and I was late getting there.
And when I went in the room, Dean said, Oh, my God.
Stop him.
He's been going on for an hour and a half on genealogy.
Get me out of here.
But that's because of his obsession with our forbears.
He understood that my father was illegitimate
and his name would have been the name of his French father
if they had gotten married, his mother and that man.
And so, he asked me very enthusiastically,
well, what would your name have been?
And I had to confess Morass.
Not de Gaulle or Mitterrand.
It was Morass.
And he said, but pronounced caviar.
Yes.
Pronounced caviar.
And for a while then, he became cravat and I was caviar.
And all he had to do was say pronounced like--
pronounced caviar, And I was on the floor again.
I was-- anyway.
I shared 37 years-- no, 43 years with--
wait.
One of those numbers between 37 and 43, and I
got to observe Steve as he shared the coolest art
salon in Tucson that ever was or ever will be.
And his son has grown up listening to the word play
and seeing the amazing images in that house,
and has benefited from that, as we all have.
So in his memory, "In The House of the Voice of Maria Callas"
"In the House of the voice of Maria Callas,
we hear a baby's cries, and the after-supper rattle
of silverware, and three clock's ticking
to different tunes, and ripe plums
sleeping in their chipped bowl, and traffic sounds
dissecting the avenues outside.
And we hear, like water pouring over time itself,
the pure distillate arias of the numerous pampered Queens who
have reigned, and the working girls
who have suffered the envious knives,
and the breathless brides with their horned helmets
who have fallen in love and gone crazy or fallen in love
and died on the grand stage at their appointed moments.
And who will sing of them now?
Maria Callas is dead, although the full lips and slanting eyes
and flaring nostrils of her voice
resurrect dramas we are able to imagine
in this parlor on evenings like this one, adding some color,
adding some order.
Of whom it was said, she could imagine almost anything
and give voice to it."
As did Steve.