Obituaries.
I think it's time to talk about obituaries of the famous,
because I actually am addicted to reading the Times obituary
page, which is one of--
those of you who are young writers,
especially prose writers, if you're looking for a place
to learn how to write really well,
the obituary page of the Times is magnificent, OK?
Great prose stylists.
There's a woman named Margalit Fox
who I think is just a fabulous, fabulous writer.
Anyway, raise your hand if you know who-- if you remember
who Owsley Stanley was.
Oh man.
You're too young to even know.
Owsley Acid?
Yeah.
Owsley Acid.
Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE] I knew that you would know.
[LAUGHTER]
Owsley Stanley was the guy who made
the acid for the acid tests--
Ken Kesey's acid tests, which the Grateful
Dead played at in the mid-60s.
And he also designed the Grateful Dead amplifier system,
you know, which is actually sort of still state-of-the art,
and at the time was just kind of magnificent.
It was way better than-- so the guy
was this sort of like strange, autodidactic genius.
He went to prison--
[LAUGHTER]
--and he learned jewelry design.
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
And he also had some very strange views about what--
well, anyway, this poem quotes directly
from some parts of the obituary that was in the times
when he died-- he died this year.
And that those quotes are towards the end.
I think it'll be clear which ones they are.
So this is a kind of anti-elegy actually,
and also a kind of meditation on elegies--
a meditation on obituaries, for sure.
And there's a very oblique reference
at the beginning of this poem to the capture of James Whitey
Bulger, who, if you're from Boston,
you know who Whitey Bulger is.
And he was like no one on the FBI's Most Wanted list,
and he was kind of a Boston Irish gangland guy.
What's the Scorsese movie?
The Departed.
Which one?
The Departed.
Yeah.
The Departed, that's the story of Whitey Bulger.
Oh man.
We're almost out of time, you know.
And like, I have a million things
to explain about this poem.
"Kid Charlemagne" is the title of the poem.
"Kid Charlemagne" is a song by Steely Dan
from the early 1980s, maybe late '70s, or something like that.
It is about Owsley Stanley.
It's actually a fairly satiric song, which he did not like.
It's a great song, you know.
"Kid Charlemagne."
"On the paper's front page, the crimes
of gang leaders spoken of as newsworthy in Appalachian
locker rooms and Utopia Avenue workshops.
But back of the metro section, half forgotten, Owsley Stanley,
76, the 'artisan of acid,' dead in Queensland, Australia,
crashed.
Jewelry design learned in prison,
and eclipse-proof audio engineering,
the twin skills of his life beyond bruise of LSD.
His children, pining, devastated,
have planted an oar in the sandy embankment
where inexplicably, he ditched his car into a tree.
The piper paid at last for having
picked the celestial locks.
Some of us get to burn on the obituary pages like moonlight
on the Ganges, burning the bodies already burnt
to ashes by untroubled fire in early sunlight.
Each man's story is the story of a rake's progress,
each woman's song is chicken skin music
and curses raging against the rake, who
cowers inside a commuter.
You have to live once and for all
as a character inside whatever remains of who you were.
Your zest for cherry pastries.
You're snake-free face.
Your prior convictions, and inventions,
and bad penmanship, and demands for meat at every meal.
Each story is the story of someone in a comic strip,
his speech balloon over-inflated,
he floats above those who think they knew him, listening.
His was the acid behind the acid tests.
He believed that a coming Ice Age would annihilate
the northern hemisphere.
In a song he hated, the singer called him "Kid Charlemagne."
A heart attack he suffered in the '90s he ascribed
to eating broccoli as a child, forced on him by his mother.
Avatar of the melting horizon, he
leaves behind an ocean where an empty rowboat drifts slowly
on the indecipherable water."