A Serious George Gershwin Problem, Volume Two

 

Link to Original Slideshow by Astairical

POST-IT NOTES: I found this rhapsodic (in blue) tribute a few years ago, God knows where, and took a liking to it immediately. I had been trying to chop my way through a 900-page tome on Gershwin's life (90% of it was a minute and detailed dissection of the show tunes he wrote before he became really famous; only one chapter 50 pages long was devoted to "Gershwin the Man".) When I found this, I thought - hey, why not? This fan tribute really gives us the essence of who and what Gershwin was. It's also plain this girl was CRAZY ABOUT THE MAN - mad about the boy - and expressed it in contemporary language that I actually find quite charming. I blew it up here to make the text more readable. I don't know what happened to Astairical after this - haven't been able to find anything on her (at least I THINK it's a her), but this stands as one of the most unusual Gershwin tributes - hell, one of the best tributes ANYWHERE about ANYONE or ANYTHING, period!

As with Dylan, I'm drawn back to Gershwin cyclically, pulled back into his orbit again and again. There were similarities: Gershwin broke all the rules, all the while beguiling his public with a magnetism that is hard to describe. But unlike Dylan, who is still doing amazingly well at age 80, he died horribly of an undiagnosed and agonizing brain tumor at only 38. Because his death on the operating table was so shocking and unexpected, it's possible he did not know he was dead, which can cause a great deal of spiritual disorientation. It's said that his ghost roams freely, and even his brother Ira, who did NOT believe in such things, saw him waving at him from his study shortly after he passed. Ira did not tell anyone about this until he was on his deathbed, afraid people would think he was crazy. But others saw him too: sitting mischievously at a player piano in a town square, hurrying along the street with his head down, his face just visible in a crowd - no, wait a minute, it COULDN'T be.

I myself felt a visitation. I can't prove or disprove this, but it was a gift, so I don't throw it away. Paul Biscop, a former friend and spiritualist medium, had a way of disparaging MY experiences (though his were always bona fide - he had two Masters degrees and a PhD, so anything he said about spiritualism automatically trumped mine, and he often wrote off the experiences I shared with him as "fantasies").

I won't write a lot about how he died, but I had my mojo working on him not long before that: I made a formal request, or spell, or whatever you want to call it, not that he'd die or anything, or even suffer, but that he'd SEE, for once and for all, just how destructive his dismissive behaviour could be, how hurtful to others his pose as a "nice" person who had a very dark heart.  I will admit this involved beads, candles, incense, chanting, and even a little Haitian voodoo. Some of it I had learned in a course I took from Paul called The Anthropology of Religion. 

Within a few months I received a message from his longtime partner, also named Paul, that he had passed. Later I was to find out that he left Paul (a simple soul who seemed far less mature than his actual age) in HUGE debt, a massive amount of money that he could not possibly repay. He was rendered virtually homeless. Some people from the spiritualist church which Paul had founded (then stomped away from, bitterly, when they refused to do everything HIS way) tried hard to raise some money so Paul could at least figure out his next move. But he had a mortgage to pay, along with other debts he had  known nothing about. His memorial was NOT held in the spiritualist church but in the local Masonic hall, and to scrounge some money, Paul's tomes on spiritualism were on sale at a table in the back. 

Paul had dissed my Gershwin connection, the powerful sense I'd somehow - I can't explain it - "felt" him steal into the room, wordlessly, longing to connect with someone who would believe in him and deeply listen. I wrote about this in a blog post I've re-posted several times called Gershwin's Ghost. 

Gershwin won this struggle, and Paul ended up showing his true colours. DID some of that negative energy bounce back at him, after all? All I can say is that a similar situation happened with Lloyd Dykk, with whom I had some really poisonous experiences, and he too dropped in his tracks at age 60, felled by a stroke, just like Paul.

So what's the message here? Nothing, except that dear George still inspires strong feelings, and he DOES hang around because of the unfairness and confusion of his early death, his head cracked open by ignorant surgeons only to find a grapefruit-sized tumor that had been there for years, causing him agonizing pain and ruining his co-ordination so he couldn't even play the piano any more. Right up until his death, his deterioration had been considered a manifestation of "neurosis". He deserved so much more than that. Incredibly, he wrote the exquisite song But Not for Me very shortly before he died - kind of ironic, considering the circumstances:

"They're writing songs of love, but not for me

A lucky star's above, but not for me

With love to lead the way, I've found more clouds of grey

Than any Russian play could guarantee. . ."

Goodbye, George. We haven't forgotten you. I don't want you to wander the world as some sort of musical orphan. Look what happened to your detractor, the man who scoffed at my vision, my tender connection with you. Not that I want to strike anyone dead, but I am NOT particularly sorry that Paul Biscop no longer walks this earth. How you treat people, especially the ones you are supposed to love the most, says everything about you. George loved and was loved mainly for his songs, and for that he was deeply melancholy. But it's that sadness behind the jazziness that still touches us, grabs us, and keeps him alive in our ears and souls and nervous systems, forever.