WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.290 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.290 --> 00:00:11.750 align:middle line:90% Obituaries. 00:00:11.750 --> 00:00:15.680 align:middle line:84% I think it's time to talk about obituaries of the famous, 00:00:15.680 --> 00:00:20.660 align:middle line:84% because I actually am addicted to reading the Times obituary 00:00:20.660 --> 00:00:22.580 align:middle line:90% page, which is one of-- 00:00:22.580 --> 00:00:24.398 align:middle line:84% those of you who are young writers, 00:00:24.398 --> 00:00:26.690 align:middle line:84% especially prose writers, if you're looking for a place 00:00:26.690 --> 00:00:28.640 align:middle line:84% to learn how to write really well, 00:00:28.640 --> 00:00:33.200 align:middle line:84% the obituary page of the Times is magnificent, OK? 00:00:33.200 --> 00:00:34.400 align:middle line:90% Great prose stylists. 00:00:34.400 --> 00:00:35.870 align:middle line:84% There's a woman named Margalit Fox 00:00:35.870 --> 00:00:39.800 align:middle line:84% who I think is just a fabulous, fabulous writer. 00:00:39.800 --> 00:00:45.320 align:middle line:84% Anyway, raise your hand if you know who-- if you remember 00:00:45.320 --> 00:00:48.200 align:middle line:90% who Owsley Stanley was. 00:00:48.200 --> 00:00:48.900 align:middle line:90% Oh man. 00:00:48.900 --> 00:00:50.150 align:middle line:90% You're too young to even know. 00:00:50.150 --> 00:00:51.320 align:middle line:90% Owsley Acid? 00:00:51.320 --> 00:00:51.830 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:51.830 --> 00:00:52.470 align:middle line:90% Owsley Acid. 00:00:52.470 --> 00:00:52.970 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:52.970 --> 00:00:53.420 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:53.420 --> 00:00:55.045 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] I knew that you would know. 00:00:55.045 --> 00:00:56.750 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:56.750 --> 00:01:00.800 align:middle line:84% Owsley Stanley was the guy who made 00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:03.410 align:middle line:90% the acid for the acid tests-- 00:01:03.410 --> 00:01:06.260 align:middle line:84% Ken Kesey's acid tests, which the Grateful 00:01:06.260 --> 00:01:09.470 align:middle line:90% Dead played at in the mid-60s. 00:01:09.470 --> 00:01:15.110 align:middle line:84% And he also designed the Grateful Dead amplifier system, 00:01:15.110 --> 00:01:18.570 align:middle line:84% you know, which is actually sort of still state-of-the art, 00:01:18.570 --> 00:01:22.082 align:middle line:84% and at the time was just kind of magnificent. 00:01:22.082 --> 00:01:23.540 align:middle line:84% It was way better than-- so the guy 00:01:23.540 --> 00:01:26.810 align:middle line:84% was this sort of like strange, autodidactic genius. 00:01:26.810 --> 00:01:27.680 align:middle line:90% He went to prison-- 00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:29.220 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:29.220 --> 00:01:31.040 align:middle line:90% --and he learned jewelry design. 00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:32.970 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:32.970 --> 00:01:33.470 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:01:33.470 --> 00:01:37.220 align:middle line:84% And he also had some very strange views about what-- 00:01:37.220 --> 00:01:41.330 align:middle line:84% well, anyway, this poem quotes directly 00:01:41.330 --> 00:01:46.100 align:middle line:84% from some parts of the obituary that was in the times 00:01:46.100 --> 00:01:48.590 align:middle line:84% when he died-- he died this year. 00:01:48.590 --> 00:01:51.500 align:middle line:84% And that those quotes are towards the end. 00:01:51.500 --> 00:01:54.320 align:middle line:84% I think it'll be clear which ones they are. 00:01:54.320 --> 00:01:57.200 align:middle line:84% So this is a kind of anti-elegy actually, 00:01:57.200 --> 00:02:02.000 align:middle line:84% and also a kind of meditation on elegies-- 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:05.750 align:middle line:84% a meditation on obituaries, for sure. 00:02:05.750 --> 00:02:08.389 align:middle line:84% And there's a very oblique reference 00:02:08.389 --> 00:02:12.200 align:middle line:84% at the beginning of this poem to the capture of James Whitey 00:02:12.200 --> 00:02:15.890 align:middle line:84% Bulger, who, if you're from Boston, 00:02:15.890 --> 00:02:17.210 align:middle line:90% you know who Whitey Bulger is. 00:02:17.210 --> 00:02:21.650 align:middle line:84% And he was like no one on the FBI's Most Wanted list, 00:02:21.650 --> 00:02:25.160 align:middle line:84% and he was kind of a Boston Irish gangland guy. 00:02:25.160 --> 00:02:26.420 align:middle line:90% What's the Scorsese movie? 00:02:26.420 --> 00:02:27.920 align:middle line:90% The Departed. 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:28.698 align:middle line:90% Which one? 00:02:28.698 --> 00:02:29.240 align:middle line:90% The Departed. 00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:29.740 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:02:29.740 --> 00:02:34.094 align:middle line:84% The Departed, that's the story of Whitey Bulger. 00:02:34.094 --> 00:02:36.312 align:middle line:90% Oh man. 00:02:36.312 --> 00:02:37.770 align:middle line:84% We're almost out of time, you know. 00:02:37.770 --> 00:02:39.150 align:middle line:84% And like, I have a million things 00:02:39.150 --> 00:02:40.275 align:middle line:90% to explain about this poem. 00:02:40.275 --> 00:02:43.395 align:middle line:84% "Kid Charlemagne" is the title of the poem. 00:02:43.395 --> 00:02:46.380 align:middle line:84% "Kid Charlemagne" is a song by Steely Dan 00:02:46.380 --> 00:02:51.010 align:middle line:84% from the early 1980s, maybe late '70s, or something like that. 00:02:51.010 --> 00:02:52.817 align:middle line:90% It is about Owsley Stanley. 00:02:52.817 --> 00:02:55.275 align:middle line:84% It's actually a fairly satiric song, which he did not like. 00:02:55.275 --> 00:02:58.230 align:middle line:90% 00:02:58.230 --> 00:02:59.550 align:middle line:90% It's a great song, you know. 00:02:59.550 --> 00:03:01.680 align:middle line:90% "Kid Charlemagne." 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:04.530 align:middle line:84% "On the paper's front page, the crimes 00:03:04.530 --> 00:03:08.910 align:middle line:84% of gang leaders spoken of as newsworthy in Appalachian 00:03:08.910 --> 00:03:12.540 align:middle line:84% locker rooms and Utopia Avenue workshops. 00:03:12.540 --> 00:03:17.550 align:middle line:84% But back of the metro section, half forgotten, Owsley Stanley, 00:03:17.550 --> 00:03:24.000 align:middle line:84% 76, the 'artisan of acid,' dead in Queensland, Australia, 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:25.770 align:middle line:90% crashed. 00:03:25.770 --> 00:03:28.260 align:middle line:84% Jewelry design learned in prison, 00:03:28.260 --> 00:03:31.080 align:middle line:84% and eclipse-proof audio engineering, 00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:36.180 align:middle line:84% the twin skills of his life beyond bruise of LSD. 00:03:36.180 --> 00:03:39.930 align:middle line:84% His children, pining, devastated, 00:03:39.930 --> 00:03:43.530 align:middle line:84% have planted an oar in the sandy embankment 00:03:43.530 --> 00:03:48.340 align:middle line:84% where inexplicably, he ditched his car into a tree. 00:03:48.340 --> 00:03:50.610 align:middle line:84% The piper paid at last for having 00:03:50.610 --> 00:03:54.280 align:middle line:90% picked the celestial locks. 00:03:54.280 --> 00:03:59.560 align:middle line:84% Some of us get to burn on the obituary pages like moonlight 00:03:59.560 --> 00:04:02.980 align:middle line:84% on the Ganges, burning the bodies already burnt 00:04:02.980 --> 00:04:07.930 align:middle line:84% to ashes by untroubled fire in early sunlight. 00:04:07.930 --> 00:04:12.970 align:middle line:84% Each man's story is the story of a rake's progress, 00:04:12.970 --> 00:04:16.600 align:middle line:84% each woman's song is chicken skin music 00:04:16.600 --> 00:04:19.690 align:middle line:84% and curses raging against the rake, who 00:04:19.690 --> 00:04:23.130 align:middle line:90% cowers inside a commuter. 00:04:23.130 --> 00:04:25.740 align:middle line:84% You have to live once and for all 00:04:25.740 --> 00:04:30.600 align:middle line:84% as a character inside whatever remains of who you were. 00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:33.750 align:middle line:90% Your zest for cherry pastries. 00:04:33.750 --> 00:04:35.880 align:middle line:90% You're snake-free face. 00:04:35.880 --> 00:04:39.060 align:middle line:84% Your prior convictions, and inventions, 00:04:39.060 --> 00:04:44.910 align:middle line:84% and bad penmanship, and demands for meat at every meal. 00:04:44.910 --> 00:04:50.160 align:middle line:84% Each story is the story of someone in a comic strip, 00:04:50.160 --> 00:04:52.950 align:middle line:84% his speech balloon over-inflated, 00:04:52.950 --> 00:04:58.560 align:middle line:84% he floats above those who think they knew him, listening. 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:03.270 align:middle line:84% His was the acid behind the acid tests. 00:05:03.270 --> 00:05:06.540 align:middle line:84% He believed that a coming Ice Age would annihilate 00:05:06.540 --> 00:05:09.210 align:middle line:90% the northern hemisphere. 00:05:09.210 --> 00:05:15.120 align:middle line:84% In a song he hated, the singer called him "Kid Charlemagne." 00:05:15.120 --> 00:05:18.750 align:middle line:84% A heart attack he suffered in the '90s he ascribed 00:05:18.750 --> 00:05:23.160 align:middle line:84% to eating broccoli as a child, forced on him by his mother. 00:05:23.160 --> 00:05:26.010 align:middle line:90% 00:05:26.010 --> 00:05:29.970 align:middle line:84% Avatar of the melting horizon, he 00:05:29.970 --> 00:05:35.370 align:middle line:84% leaves behind an ocean where an empty rowboat drifts slowly 00:05:35.370 --> 00:05:38.390 align:middle line:90% on the indecipherable water."