Redford

 

Everyone is a little star stuck, I suppose.

That said, there are very few whose passing affects me. Indeed, celebrities’ deaths rarely move me. Some have, however.

My first shock was Stephen King’s near death. He did not die in 1999 when hit by that van while walking, but I understand it was a very real thing that he might have. My reaction surprised me. I had not read King in years; but I’d read his novels in my teens and twenties, perhaps my most formative years, the first author whose works I consumed in any great degree.

The next to affect me was David Bowie’s passing. I actually mourned his loss. It matters not that I had not followed his latter career. Indeed, his music had always been present; and that longevity appeared immortal, even if he proved not to be. It’s largely his early work that moved me: “Space Oddity,” Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, “Fame,” “Golden Years,” “Young Americans.” "Heroes"! The list goes on. It helps that his duet with Queen (“Under Pressure”) and his album Let’s Dance were monster hits just as I was coming of age. His music moved me. It helped to define my musical taste.

Who might affect me next? Peter Gabriel, assuredly. Phil Collins, too, I imagine. Time will tell. Most celebrities, though, pass with little more than mild regret on my part. It’s a wonder, really, why some deaths floor us and others not. They’re celebrities. Not friends. We don’t know them. We only know their effect on our psyche.

Robert Redford’s passing did. And I understand why: His works, much like King’s and Bowie’s, had a profound effect on my world view. Not his early films. I have little experience of his days in television, aside from that Twilight Zone episode he starred in: “Nothing in the Dark.” Not his earliest silver screen films either: Inside Daisy Clover and Barefoot in the Park, and the like, most notably. They are fun to watch now, watching him evolve as an actor.

My first exposure to Redford might have been The Sting. Or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was then that he rose in public consciousness. It helps that he starred with Paul Newman in these two films. (One might wonder why Newman’s death did not have the same profound effect on me, given how high he stands in my regard: it may be because he was older than Redford, that he first found fame outside my lifespan.)

Woven in with these modern classics stand Downhill Racer, Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, The Candidate, and (most affectedly) All the President’s Men. Each of these films stood out in my mind from the fray: each meant something, each spoke to a point, and each were unflinching in Redford’s commentary on society as he saw it, we know now. Maybe that’s why they stand the test of time: they were in tune with society’s social conscience. Downhill Racer and The Candidate and All the President’s Men are all about how the adage “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” could not be further from the truth in our Western Society. There are about holding the mirror up to our duplicity, in that regard. The Way We Were may be a love story, but it’s also about integrity in the McCarthy era. It helps that Hubbard’s story mirrors F. Scott Fitzgerald’s.

Redford remain as unflinching throughout his career. Indeed, in his life. He was political, ideological, remarking that he believed in causes, not political parties. He bought up land to protect it, championed native rights, supported fledgling filmmakers.

His middle career was as inspired. When he began directing, he held up the most personal of institutions to scrutiny: Ordinary People, for one; A River Runs Through It, another. He reminded us that what we see on television is not always what it seems: Quiz Show. The roles he chose were as inspired: The Natural; Out of Africa; (the little watched) Havana.

I suppose you can plainly see how large Redford looms in my consciousness. He became the watermark of what it meant to be a man, in my mind. The hallmark of integrity.

It comes to mind that the reason his passing has affected me as much as it has: he was the same age as my parents. My father was born in 1936, my mother in 1937, mere months apart. Redford was born shortly before them. The same age as them, he looked like them when in the prime of their lives, and beyond. And that likely drew me to him, even more so than his as lauded early collaborator and friend, Newman. I suppose that made Redford something of a father figure to me, almost as much as my actual father.

That may be projecting too much. But I have to say that Redford’s idealism inspired my world view, perhaps more than my father did. My father and I had very different interests and opinions. I expect that ours were more in line than I might know or admit. It’s not like my father and I discussed world events. When we did, we were as apt to argue than agree. Then again, that’s unfair. And probably untrue.

I never found myself arguing with what Redford taught me, however.

Time Considered

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

It’s been some time since I checked in. I’ve no excuse other than time somehow gets away from me. I ought to do what I ought. And I do. It’s just that what that is seems to drift. These days that seems to be crashing out on a couch with a book, reading the innumerable titles on my shelves that I’ve collected over the years, with every intention that they be read within the next short while when I bought them, but realise now, in fact, that the pace at which I purchased them exceeded the pace I could ever read them.

Honestly, I ought to cease buying books. I promise myself just that often. Then I find myself killing time in our local bookstore while my wife browses clothing, or I drift into an independent (or monstrous chain store) while on holiday (sometimes because I have no other notion of how to occupy my idle hours) and discover I’ve another two or four or eight titles in tow, haunting my expectations. It does haunt me. I’ve likely not enough time to read what I own anymore.

I’ve likely not enough time to master another of my pursuits – music – either, no matter how much time I invest in it. It haunts me that I might have begun too late in life to excel at the instruments I’ve picked up: guitar, clarinet, and sax (to varying success, depending on how much time I’ve spent practicing each, and whether each has lain fallow, for whatever reason). There are days I delight in what skill I now have with them. And there are days I know that I am hopelessly inadequate, and perhaps always will be. Most musicians believe this, I imagine, regardless how good they are; but in my case I know this to be true. My memory is not what it once was, so recall can be spotty. My sight reading is not rapid, either. I understand that I need more time to decipher what in inscribed on the page than others that I’m acquainted with, and can only play what I read cold when it is not laborious.

I ought to post to my blogs more regularly, too. But doing so takes time, more time than I wish to commit. This blog staggers on, in fits and starts, picked up after I had all but set it aside, years ago. My other blog, Greyhawk Musings, has languished. It may for a time. It may forever. For those not in the know, it is a D&D blog, where I collected and ordered the scattered lore of AD&D’s original setting (Greyhawk) into easily digested subjects. I enjoyed the meditative immersion of that research; but I also understood, as I met and interacted with other fans of that setting, that I was nowhere near as invested in it as I ought to be, as they most certainly were. And never would be. It was a labour of love for them, and merely a curiosity for me. I understood then that I did not belong in their sphere, regardless our shared pursuit. I have greater interest in Classical Studies, something I discovered a love of in university (and through my original involvement in D&D). Ancient Greece and Rome and their story fascinate me, far more than any invented world ever could.

Indeed, I have a great interest in story. It matters not in what form: oral, myth, film, television serials, fiction or non-fiction. The telling of stories is a human thing, our oldest pastime. It is no wonder then that we invest as much time in the telling and listening of them.

It is no wonder then that I enjoy writing (actually, it’s very much a wonder why anyone does, but that’s a thesis in its breadth and depth). It matters not whether anyone witnesses it. I wish they would, though. I’ve always been a storyteller. I can make a short story long. And have. Longtime readers of this blog already know that I have written more than these blogposts. I’ve written short stories and two novels. None were accepted for publication, regardless the praise I sometimes received from those publishers who bothered to read what I submitted. There’s a Catch-22 quality to why that is. Those rejections discouraged my pursuing that pleasure further for quite some time; until I began musing on my own life some years ago, and began jotting down vignettes about it. I’m reminded of Charles Dickens did very much the same thing his early Sketches. I understand that writers write. Whether anyone reads what they write is another matter, altogether. So, I do. And gather thoughts on what I might mine from those vignettes.

And wonder whether I might have enough time to do something about them.

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
― Charles Darwin, The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin