PEARL

Today, December 7, is Pearl Harbor Day. Because of that, a good friend, and perhaps first partner, was born in a detention camp in Topaz, Utah.

On September 1, 1976, a bearded Japanese-American man, whom I had seen on occasion, wrote his name and phone number on the back of a fellow Sloane’s employee’s business card, and left it for me. That’s how I met Gary Murakami. He later told me he had been loaded, or he wouldn’t have been so bold. I hadn’t noticed. September 1st was Mother and Dad’s 39th wedding anniversary.

We started seeing each other. And for several years, I spent more time at Gary’s place on Pierce Street than at home on 23rd. Several times I offered to move, so that we could find a place together. But he hesitated. Gary said he could never live with me. Later, I learned that was because of a dependence problem. He thought he could disguise it, if we didn’t live together. But we virtually lived at his place—a tiny studio with a bath and kitchen. It was very elegant – in a modern, Japanese fashion. Gary was a wonderful cook, and a beautiful man. He had had several lung operations as a teenager, and had matching scars from his nipples, under the arms to his back. He called them his angel wings. His lungs were atrophying, and would eventually have killed him. I think that added to his anxiety, and contributed to his alcohol dependence.

When I first met Gary I wrote:

SYNTHESIS OF EAST AND WEST

DIVORCED

FROM LINGUAL HERITAGE

BY RANK INJUSTICE

ALL IN BUT ONE DAY

MANY ENEMIES AGO

CONFISCATED PROPERTY

BROKEN PORCELAIN

TRANSPLANTED PEARL

CAST IN THE DESERT

UNTO SWINEHERDS

IN UTAH

AFTER CROWDED STABLES

DARKENED TRAINS

TO BE ABANDONED

IN THE WILDERNESS

BORN IN ISOLATION

AMID SALT FLATS

AND DESERT FLOWERS

PERHAPS

PARENTAL RETICENCE

UNDERSTANDABLE

WITH RIGHTFUL DIGNITY

AWAITING RESTORATION

EVEN NOW

OVERDUE

AN ONLY SON

WITH FAMILIAL OBLIGATIONS

AND HOPE

OF MANY FUTURES

DESPITE THE PAST

OR

BECAUSE

OF LARGER PASTS

A STYLE IMPECCABLE

AND SERENE

WHITES AND WICKERS

TAILORED

APPROPRIATENESS

SIMPLE ELEGANCE

TRANQUILITY

CAN THERE BE

NO BITTERNESS?

###

BEAUTY SEEN

EXPERIENCED

AND TRANSMITTED

MAY I KNOW MORE?

He said yes-- for almost five years. But Gary was always extremely moody on Pearl Harbor Day.

THIRTY-SIX YEARS AGO

Image: faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/milk

Today marks the thirty-sixth anniversary of former Supervisor Dan White’s murder of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in their offices at City Hall. Gary Murakami and I marched that night in the silent candlelight parade from the Castro to Civic Center.

I saw the opening of Gus Van Sant’s superb film Milk at the Castro Theatre six years ago last night. It really managed to capture the time and brought back so many bittersweet memories!

I had bought two tickets online for the seven o’clock show and gave one to Tom, a tenor at Grace, but there were so many people that I never did find him. But I’m sure he went. I sat in the middle of the front row of the balcony, which is usually closed.

From my vantage point I was able to see several other acquaintances from a distance, including one who doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore. But that just added to the evening’s internal drama.

The film was brilliant in so many ways: the acting, the screenplay, the direction, cinematography, music, editing. I was overwhelmed. Sean Penn, James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, and Alison Pill, as well as others, were simply wonderful in their roles. Sean Penn, however, was in a class by himself.

Of course, typical of me, I noted several factual inaccuracies. They were perfectly fine and in no way detracted from the overall effect. I was amused, though, to see the Chapel of Grace at Grace Cathedral —with its marvelous Samuel Yellin wrought iron gates— depicted as a Roman Catholic parish for Dan White’s son’s christening. Robert Hillsborough’s name was mentioned at least twice. The movie stated he was murdered in the Castro. That’s a slight inaccuracy. I knew Robert. We were involved briefly. He was murdered at a fast food place on South Van Ness and 18th, which is the heart of the Mission and not the Castro. But that’s beside the point. His hate-murder did arouse the entire city just before the Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1977, and I went to his funeral in the full nave at Grace Cathedral, and may have even sung in the choir.

I hadn’t realized that Harvey Milk’s Hispanic lover Jack hanged himself. That was almost too much for me to take, because of the association with Gary Murakami.

Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times on Sunday November 23, 2008 referred to Dianne Feinstein’s involvement on that tragic day. She had discovered Milk’s body, and then was the one who announced the double tragedy to the Press, and as President of the Board of Supervisors, Feinstein succeeded the murdered mayor.

Maureen Dowd wrote:

Dianne Feinstein is not sure she’ll ever be able to watch the movie “Milk,” even though she’s in it.

There is 1978 footage of a stricken Feinstein in the opening minutes of the new Gus Van Sant biopic of Harvey Milk, her colleague on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the first openly gay elected official in American history. (Sean Penn soars as Milk.)

“I was the one who found his body,” the California senator told me Friday, on route from the airport to her home in San Francisco. “To get a pulse, I put my finger in a bullet hole. It was a terrible, terrible time in the city’s history.”

The movie, chronicling the rancorous California fight of gay activists against church-backed forces in the ’70s to prevent discrimination against gays, is opening amid a rancorous California fight of gay activists against church-backed forces to prevent discrimination against gays.

Maureen Dowd’s entire column is worth reading.

(Please refer to my postings “Jury Duty” 11/12/08 and “California State Proposition 8” 11/6/08.)

APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING ~ July 20, 1969

The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of Project Apollo and the third human voyage to the Moon. It was also the second all-veteran crew in manned spaceflight history. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.

The mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s, which he expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Image & Text:wikipedia.com

July 20, 1969 was also Gary Murakami's 24th birthday; though this was seven years before I met him. He died three days before his 36th. (For more on Gary, please see my post on December 7, 2008.)

NICHOLAS II ~ May 18, 1868 ~ July 17, 1918

Nicholas II (Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov; Russian: Никола й II, Никола й Алекса ндрович Рома нов) (18 May [ O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, and claimed the title of King of Poland. His official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, and he is currently regarded as Saint Nicholas the Passion Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw Imperial Russia go from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to an economic and military disaster. Critics nicknamed him Bloody Nicholas because of the Khodynka Tragedy, Bloody Sunday, and those anti-Semitic pogroms that occurred during his reign. As head of state, he approved the Russian mobilization of August 1914 which marked the first fatal step into World War I and thus into the demise of the Romanov dynasty.

Nicholas II abdicated following the February Revolution of 1917 during which he and his family were imprisoned first in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, then later in the Governor’s Mansion in Tobolsk, and finally at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. Nicholas II, his wife, his son, his four daughters, the family's medical doctor, the Tsar's Valet, the Empress' Lady in Waiting and the family's cook were all killed in the same room by the Bolsheviks on the night of 17 July 1918. This led to the canonization of Nicholas II, his wife the Empress and their children as martyrs by various groups tied to the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia and, prominently, by the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia.

Image & Text:wikipedia.com

Today is also the 32nd anniversary of the tragic death of my dear friend Gary Evans Mamoru Murakami. He took his own life as I was flying to England to join Chanticleer on our first European Concert Tour. I still keep in touch with his mother, Toki, and sisters Annie & Mako. I was even asked to speak at his father's funeral. I visited Toki and Mako tonight. For the first time in many years, Toki told me that she missed Gary -- three times. She's in her ninety's and is bed ridden after a stroke. Of course, I did not mention the significance of today's date -- but I think she somehow knew.

PEARL

Today, December 7, is Pearl Harbor Day. Because of that, a good friend, and perhaps first partner, was born in a detention camp in Topaz, Utah. 

On September 1, 1976, a bearded Japanese-American man, whom I had seen on occasion, wrote his name and phone number on the back of a fellow Sloane’s employee’s business card, and left it for me. That’s how I met Gary Murakami. He later told me he had been loaded, or he wouldn’t have been so bold. I hadn’t noticed. September 1st was Mother and Dad’s 39th wedding anniversary.

We started seeing each other. And for several years, I spent more time at Gary’s place on Pierce Street than at home on 23rd. Several times I offered to move, so that we could find a place together. But he hesitated. Gary said he could never live with me. Later, I learned that was because of a dependence problem. He thought he could disguise it, if we didn’t live together. But we virtually lived at his place—a tiny studio with a bath and kitchen. It was very elegant – in a modern, Japanese fashion. Gary was a wonderful cook, and a beautiful man. He had had several lung operations as a teenager, and had matching scars from his nipples, under the arms to his back. He called them his angel wings. His lungs were atrophying, and would eventually have killed him. I think that added to his anxiety, and contributed to his alcohol dependence.

When I first met Gary I wrote:

SYNTHESIS
OF EAST
AND WEST
DIVORCED
FROM LINGUAL
HERITAGE
BY RANK
INJUSTICE
ALL IN BUT
ONE DAY
MANY ENEMIES
AGO

CONFISCATED
PROPERTY
BROKEN
PORCELAIN
TRANSPLANTED
PEARL
CAST
IN THE DESERT
UNTO
SWINEHERDS
IN UTAH

AFTER CROWDED
STABLES
DARKENED
TRAINS
TO BE ABANDONED
IN THE WILDERNESS

BORN
IN ISOLATION
AMID SALT FLATS
AND DESERT FLOWERS
PERHAPS

PARENTAL
RETICENCE
UNDERSTANDABLE
WITH RIGHTFUL
DIGNITY

AWAITING
RESTORATION
EVEN NOW
OVERDUE

AN ONLY SON
WITH FAMILIAL
OBLIGATIONS
AND HOPE
OF MANY
FUTURES

DESPITE
THE PAST
OR BECAUSE
OF LARGER
PASTS
A STYLE
IMPECCABLE
AND SERENE
WHITES
AND WICKERS
TAILORED
APPROPRIATENESS
SIMPLE
ELEGANCE
TRANQUILITY

CAN THERE BE
NO BITTERNESS?

###

BEAUTY SEEN
EXPERIENCED
AND TRANSMITTED

MAY I KNOW MORE?


He said yes-- for almost five years. But Gary was always extremely moody on Pearl Harbor Day.

All SOULS DAY TRANSFERRED

Jerusalem Cross : nextjeneration.net

Today was a day of rituals and remembrance. I went to the Mozart Requiem performed as part of the regular service at Grace Cathedral. Initially I wasn’t sure why the All Souls Day commemoration had been postponed a week; but then it made sense. All Saints Day was on Saturday November 1, but was celebrated a day later. So All Souls had to wait a week. I didn’t sing today, but I had rehearsed part of the Mozart a few weeks ago when I subbed for John Kelley, fellow Yalie and Bohemian. In any case, I wanted to hear it and had given a donation in memory of Dennis.

I thought at first to wear the suit I had worn at Dennis’ funeral, but instead wore what had been my everyday outfit on our last trip to Venezia for Carnevale in 2006. So I wore olive corduroys, a black turtleneck with the gray, rust, olive and black Harris tweed Orvis jacket Dennis had given me as a final Christmas present. Since it was chilly, I wore the Woolrich logan coat I had bought for Dennis at the company store the day we were in Woolrich for Mother’s interment. Then with a muffler, tweed cap, and Dennis’ Cartier wristwatch, I headed to BART. It was a clear, beautiful, sunny day, particularly after the rain yesterday. As Charles Agneau— the late verger at Grace Cathedral— had recommended to my Dad, I took BART all the way to the Embarcadero stop and then the Cable Car up California Street to the cathedral, rather than walking up Powell Street as is my usual custom. At the coffee shop downstairs I bumped into former Chanticleer alto Jesse Antin, who was going to be one of the soloists today. He said he hoped to do an adequate job. He was utterly superb!!

I sat on one of the stack chairs in the left front of the nave with a perfect view of the choir and orchestra in the North Transept. Els Holt, a parishioner I hadn’t seen in several years, greeted me and asked how Dennis was. She was shocked to hear that he had died two and a half years ago – embarrassed that she hadn’t known.

The altar frontal was the ivory and gold mosaic-like fabric with the Jerusalem Cross motif that former Chanticleer singer Sanford Dole had sewn for Easter many years ago. It inspired me to find the gold Jerusalem Cross pendant Dennis had given me at the time of my confirmation. I nearly threw it away by mistake. He gave it to me right after Bishop Swing blessed me. It was wrapped in tissue paper, and I thought it was for a runny nose or emotional response. Dennis had it engraved with my name, the date 28~9~86 and a reference to Psalm 46 verse 10 :  “Be still and know that I am God.”

A few days before I was confirmed, Dennis almost retracted his sponsorship. We were having a heart-to-heart theological discussion, when all of a sudden he exclaimed: “I don’t think you’re a Christian!” But he deferred until I had had an opportunity to discuss the matter with our then pastor Dr. Lauren Artress, founder of the Labyrinth project at Grace Cathedral. Lauren and I hit it off pretty well. I think her own perspective is more universal than most Episcopalians’ and is open to Hindu and Buddhist influences.

I was being confirmed at Dennis’ insistence in the first place. He didn’t think it right that I was a 'music mercenary.' If I were going to sing at Grace Cathedral, I should be a contributing member. After all he was on the Board of Trustees and the Stewardship Committee.

I have one of the few 18 carrot gold Jerusalem Cross pendants that Dennis had designed and made especially for our then Dean David Gillespie to give to the visiting Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, a few years before. In 1987 Dennis and I had a private visit with the Archbishop on the grounds of York University when we were in England together for the first time. (We had hoped we might be invited to tea at Lambeth Palace instead, but the Archbishop wasn’t in London when we were.)

Anyway, this has been a day of remembrance. The Mozart was glorious. I particularly liked the 1994 completion by Robert Levin of Mozart’s incomplete final work. Afterwards, I visited Dennis’ plaque in the North Tower Columbarium. Dennis died without knowing that I would have the space next to his. I’m still paying a monthly mortgage on my Nob Hill condo.

Last night’s concert was excellent, though I’m afraid I have to agree with S.F. Chronicle reviewer Joshua Kosman, that the Brahms Violin Concerto was fine, but not outstanding – despite the soloist Nikolaj Znaider’s Guarneri violin once owned by Fritz Kreisler. The Nielsen Symphony No. 3, however, was absolutely grand. Herbert Blomstedt certainly knows how to interpret the symphonies of Carl Nielsen.

Tuesday is Veterans' Day and my late friend Gary Murakami’s mother Toki’s birthday. Since she’s allergic to fragrant flowers, I always send her an orchid plant. Her living room is full of them.