1995: The Musical - Act Two - #25
Still chasing professional success - or at least a definition of it
Welcome again to my loyal readers and a special welcome if you are reading my ramblings for the first time. I mention many characters in here who have been already introduced. I tried to provide links for readers just catching up; sorry if I missed some. If you like what you read and want to receive future installments by email, just enter your email address to subscribe. It’s free! And you will also receive a welcome email with all the posts listed in order since I began writing this memoir on Thanksgiving day of 2022 and can read through to meet all these crazy people and follow along my mid-30s changes.
Since I am presenting 1995 as a musical in three acts, let’s start Act Two with a prelude. The song I chose is Landslide, written by one of the top choices for America’s (versus Brasil’s) Queen of Rock and Roll, Stevie Nicks. The backstory is this. In 1973 she finds herself alone in Aspen, Colorado. Her partner Lindsey Buckingham is on the road. Mick Fleetwood has not yet invited them to join Fleetwood Mac. She’s contemplating where her life is going, whether she can make it in the music business. One might say she’s in her “gap year.”
Before you read on, I invite you to watch and listen to this cover of the song by one of my current favorite Hawaiian artists, Josh Tatofi. Landslide.
The house I owned with Oh Shinnah in Manitou Springs was near Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak. I had envisioned it as my place of retreat, but it never served that purpose.
Supporting artists and their creations seemed like a way I could contribute to making the world a better place. I was constantly busy in 1995, hanging out with my artist friends, attending their concerts and gallery shows and musing their projects, supporting Amanaka’a and Amazon Week and my Native American friends. My mental chatter was busy as well. For three years I had climbed that mountain and looked around, taken my time, afraid of changing. Now that I had made a commitment, made the change, doubts crept in.
Was I on the right path?
Shrug. How would I know?
Was I fulfilling my personal legend as Paulo would put it, had I moved closer to my life’s purpose?
Shrug. How would I know?
My entire adult life I had spent around people of great accomplishment, politicians, C-level executives, famous people. I was still hanging out with celebrities, but that was not a measure of my success, those were just my friends. I wasn’t measuring my success against theirs either - my gig was different. I felt happier than I had in a long time. But I had been trained and rewarded for accomplishment, not happiness.
Happiness.
The landslide always lurking in the bright mountain snow during 1995 was my friend Craig’s journey as AIDS increasingly brought his body down. His mother Rosetta took a job at a stationery story half way between Craig’s East Village apartment and St Vincent’s, the West Village hospital where he was admitted with regular frequency. My apartment at 16 Saint Lukes Place was a ten minute walk down Seventh Avenue. It became a refuge where Rosetta could take a break with a cup of tea or glass of wine, talk it out or sit in compassionate silence, whichever options she needed. It also was convenient when the doctor wanted to admit Craig and Rosetta was still at work. I could pop up to keep him company and advocate during the hours in the crazy NYC E.R. until the hospital eventually found a room for him.
When Craig felt well enough, he still worked a little, although not on high-pressure fashion shoots. I sometimes went with him, carrying his tools and monitoring his energy as he worked his makeup magic on a jazz or rock singer for an album cover. He could paint out a double chin with a triangle of dark makeup that looked to the naked eye like the mis-located jaw in a Picasso painting, but in the camera lens and lighting simply disappeared. Craig’s outer work and his inner journey were all about light and shadow and the choices we make with them. We spoke often of light and love and service.
Like trying different poses on an urban rooftop for a new head shot, I was stretching my ideas and expression of self. I actually had professional makeup done for this shoot.
Speaking of Warriors of the Light, The Alchemist had enjoyed enough success that Harper published the English edition of The Valkyries in 1995 and sent Paulo on an extensive book tour. Carman and I were visiting Billielee’s daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren in Wimberley, a town in the Texas Hill Country, when we noticed an ad for a book signing in Austin. We all decided to drive to town to surprise Paulo.
We arrived just as the talk was beginning. The others took seats while I held back, out of the author’s line of view. Christina was also standing to the side and noticed me with a wave and mimed look of astonishment. Once the long line formed for the actual signing part of the program, Christina came over to greet me and joined us in line so we could catch up. Paulo was so completely attentive to each person as they appeared in front of him that he talked with my friends and signed their copy of the book without noticing me standing right beside them. I was choking back giggles. They moved aside and I met his eyes. “Didn’t you have a single omen?” I asked in Portuguese. Filha da puta! he greeted me - his version of a term of endearment.
Back in New York, I recounted the story to another of my Brazilian friends, the brilliant Leny Adrade, a jazz singer described by American fans and critics as the Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan of Bossa Nova. Here is the next song in 1995 The Musical, a sample of her virtuosity: Batida Differente.
As you might recall, The Valkyries is the story of Paulo’s journey to encounter his guardian angel. It turned out that Leny was, like Nelsinho’s father, a student of angel lore. She offered me a reading. Perhaps learning about the angel assigned to me would provide me with some guidance as to my destiny and whether I was on track?
I did not keep a journal that year, but I have random clippings and buried among them I found a yellowed piece of paper with my notes from Leny’s angel reading, dated August 30, 1995. According to those notes my angel is Haaiah, which means “God Listening in Concealment.” There were all kinds of details associated with this. Planet - the moon, lucky number - four, Psalm 118, month of change - April, for example. Good professions for me would be politics, pilot, tour guide, or worker with oracles. Apparently that is because I “know that earth laws can and should be changed; universal laws not.”
The notes continue: someone with Haaiah as their angel will consider destiny synonymous with change, be a conscious collaborator with the Divine Plan, like to travel and adapt readily to people and languages. These people are very independent, a little rebellious, like to live taking risks.
The description of personality traits seemed accurate enough. But politics, pilot, tour guide or worker with oracles? I would need some time to consider how those job descriptions might fit. We laughed. There had to be a metaphor or a good song lyric in there somewhere.