WEBVTT

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Gibb Windahl.

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It's an honor to be here.

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To see so many friends of
Steve gathered together.

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I was a student in
Steve's very first class

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that he taught here
at U of A. And he

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took the place of a professor
who had to leave town suddenly

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because he was having an
affair with a colleague's wife.

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And of course, Steve stepped
right into that empty space,

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to become the Charlie Sheen
of the English department--

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briefly.

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And he was a great friend,
but not always an easy friend,

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and we sometimes
discussed the necessity

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of forgiving your friends to
sustain a long friendship.

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And as I was
thinking about that,

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I was thinking, well,
where do you draw the line?

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And I thought, if your
friend kills your dog,

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is that friendship done?

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And well, no, maybe
it was an accident.

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What if your friend
eats your dog?

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Well, he was probably starving.

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But if he was starving,
I was probably starving,

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and I would have
wanted to eat my dog.

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So anyway, Steve and I,
our nickname for each other

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was Doc we were los dos docs.

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And we shared as Buzz
and Tony both mentioned,

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we shared an assortment
of obsessions.

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I think of his
career on this planet

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as being a curator
of his obsessions.

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And our pathological
families were at the center

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of those obsessions.

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And when Steve got
involved with genealogy,

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he was my rabbi by the way,
something about the lost

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tribes of Sweden.

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He got really obsessed
with genealogy,

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and I was supposed to
meet Steve and Dean

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Young at the Red Garter, and
I was late getting there.

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And when I went in the
room, Dean said, Oh, my God.

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Stop him.

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He's been going on for an
hour and a half on genealogy.

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Get me out of here.

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But that's because of his
obsession with our forbears.

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He understood that my
father was illegitimate

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and his name would have been
the name of his French father

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if they had gotten married,
his mother and that man.

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And so, he asked me
very enthusiastically,

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well, what would
your name have been?

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And I had to confess Morass.

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Not de Gaulle or Mitterrand.

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It was Morass.

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And he said, but
pronounced caviar.

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Yes.

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Pronounced caviar.

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And for a while then, he
became cravat and I was caviar.

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And all he had to do was
say pronounced like--

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pronounced caviar, And I
was on the floor again.

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I was-- anyway.

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I shared 37 years--
no, 43 years with--

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wait.

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One of those numbers
between 37 and 43, and I

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got to observe Steve as
he shared the coolest art

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salon in Tucson that
ever was or ever will be.

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And his son has grown up
listening to the word play

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and seeing the amazing
images in that house,

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and has benefited from
that, as we all have.

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So in his memory, "In The House
of the Voice of Maria Callas"

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"In the House of the
voice of Maria Callas,

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we hear a baby's cries,
and the after-supper rattle

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of silverware, and
three clock's ticking

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to different tunes,
and ripe plums

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sleeping in their chipped
bowl, and traffic sounds

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dissecting the avenues outside.

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And we hear, like water
pouring over time itself,

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the pure distillate arias of
the numerous pampered Queens who

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have reigned, and
the working girls

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who have suffered
the envious knives,

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and the breathless brides
with their horned helmets

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who have fallen in love and
gone crazy or fallen in love

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and died on the grand stage
at their appointed moments.

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And who will sing of them now?

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Maria Callas is dead, although
the full lips and slanting eyes

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and flaring nostrils
of her voice

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resurrect dramas we
are able to imagine

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in this parlor on evenings like
this one, adding some color,

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adding some order.

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Of whom it was said, she
could imagine almost anything

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and give voice to it."

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As did Steve.

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