James Randolph was a fixture on the Waynesburg College Campus. No one called him Professor Randolph. To everyone he was simply Fuzzy.
Fuzzy
died this week at the age of 88. To say he was one of the most loved
people I have ever known is an understatement. Everyone who ever knew
him loved him. The reasons for that are very simple; Fuzzy loved life
and everyone in it. This way of being was returned to him a
thousandfold.
I met
Fuzzy when I started Waynesburg College in the fall of 1979. He was a
professor of music and I only ever had one class from him. But on a
small campus he was a daily presence in the lives of everyone there.
He was one of the most wonderfully eccentric people I have ever
known. Fully at home with who he was. Brilliant. Humble. He wrapped
warm strong arms around his whole community and you knew you were
loved and safe.
I
realized, while thinking of this for the last day, that my specific
memories of him are few. The day he walked into the student union,
unannounced, and serenaded us with his bagpipes. His hands in the
fall, stained with the henna-like secretions of the wild walnuts he
had shelled, because using gloves would take away from the
experience. Touring the college museum that he curated and hearing
the stories of decades of Waynesburg history. Seeing him around town
and campus regularly in the thirty-plus years since I graduated and
always being happy for the experience.
There is
an overall sense of his presence that overwhelms the day-to-day. His
love of learning and the childlike wonder and curiosity he shared.
The many times he would just break out into song. The kind words he
always had for everyone. The joy he wore for everyone to see.
For
years he conducted the campus choral group, The Lamplighters. I was
never a member because even though I love music you probably
shouldn’t have to hear me sing. Generations of students under his
care produced joyful noise.
Fuzzy
was a Lamplighter, in the truest sense. In his presence there was
always light and warmth. He lit a fire of curiosity and a love of
learning in those around him. Whatever darkness there may be in the
world can be pushed away by his example.
Rest in
Peace, Fuzzy. The world is poorer for your absence, but so much
richer for your journey.
Or,
as Neil Gaiman put it, through his characterization of Death, ‟You get what anyone gets... you get a lifetime.”
David
Bowie died, and here I am, attempting to join the throngs of
memorials being written about him. It probably goes without saying
that I never knew the man. Why does his death affect me? Why does the
death of a celebrity affect any of us? I still have everything I have
ever had of Bowie, except the knowledge that he was alive. All most
of us have of him is the music, art, and creative legacy he left
behind. That will remain, and my life goes on with no real, personal
loss at all. Yet I’m still compelled to add my tiny voice to the
outpouring of tributes that have already appeared.
I
came to Bowie around the same time most of America did, with his
Rebel Rebel single. I was eleven when The Rise and Fall of
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars was released. Contrary
to how the album is perceived now it didn’t leave much of a splash
in America at the time. I was just starting to explore real music at
this time. Rebel Rebel was one of the earliest Rock 45s I ever
purchased (the actual first record single is lost to memory, but this
was close). I discovered this around the same time I first heard
Alice Cooper’s School’s Out (which was a couple of years
old before I first heard it). These were the two songs that launched
adolescent Wayne into the world of Rock fandom. The opening riffs of
both of these are the two most primal rock hooks in my personal
lexicon. Both are songs about rebellion against authority and
societal standards. Perfect for a twelve year old.
Other
than a few pictures I didn’t see much of Bowie at the time. I now
know he was in the process of moving past the Glam persona and
experimenting with his white boy American Soul era. I think had I
seen more pics of the Ziggy era I might have been more into him from
the beginning. As it was I really didn’t listen to a lot of Bowie
in the 70s. As much as I loved Rebel Rebel and Fame
(which I also bought on 45), I simply never invested in the albums. I
remember looking at Diamond Dogs in the stores, but full
albums were still a little beyond my budget yet. By the time I
started really buying records I was hooked on Alice and KISS and a
bunch of other 70s hit bands and Bowie had moved to Berlin and become
too experimental for the radio stations I was listening to. As far as
I knew he had completely dropped off the musical landscape. I don’t
remember ever hearing Heroes on the radio back then.
Scary
Monsters (and Super Creeps) was released in 1980 and pretty much
escaped my notice at the time. I vaguely remember hearing Ashes to
Ashes and Fashion as part of the radio background of the
time, but I was taking my first tentative steps into New Wave and
Punk right then and it just didn’t register for some reason. I saw
the Ashes to Ashes video and thought it was pretty cool, but
at the time my access to MTV was pretty limited, so it wasn’t as
much of a constant as I know it was for a lot of other people.
Somewhere
around 1981 I bought a used car, a blue mid-70s model Ford Granada.
It had a factory installed 8-track player in it and the previous
owner had thoughtfully left a copy of Heroes in it. At that
point in my life that album was the most challenging thing I had ever
listened to. I immediately fell in love with the title track (and,
gun to my head, I may still consider it my favorite Bowie song, if
such a thing is possible). But the rest of that album was a
revelation and changed the way I thought of what Pop music could be.
Not long after I bought Space Oddity, Ziggy Stardust,
and Aladdin Sane and was promptly blown away. I was pretty
primed by the time Let’s Dance blew up in America. Though I
heard most of his other work in the 80s, I didn’t invest in his
entire back catalog until the CD revolution in the 90s.
I
only got to see him once, on the Sound and Vision tour in 1990. My
first visit to Star Lake was to see the Starman.
Smaller
moments... I was in a dance club called Tin Pan Alley in Wheeling in
1980, bored by the disco floor and too scared to talk to the girls
there. There was a band in the upstairs room and the only thing I
remember about them is they covered Space Oddity. The grad
school apartment I shared with five other guys had a poster of the
cover of Aladdin Sane in the living room. The first time I saw
the Dancing in the Streets video with Mick Jagger was on the
big screen when it was played before some movie I saw at the Edinboro
discount theater.
I
realized recently that I have spent more time as a fan of his first
twenty years of work in the last twenty years than I was when it was
new. And, like a lot of others, while I haven’t ignored his output
since 1990, it just doesn’t resonate in the same way. I’ve read
several biographies. I’m fascinated by his interactions with Marc
Bolan, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. I’ve read analyses of his lyrics and
his concepts and recently an entire book of pretty heavily academic
essays about him and his career. I’m currently reading a book
called Ziggyology that is not a biography of Bowie, but of
Ziggy, an attempt to pull together all of the musical and cultural
influences that led to his creation.
So,
I’m a little obsessed. The question is why. Why does this one
person’s creative output lead me, and many others, to not just
listen to his music, but to devour his career? Obviously, a huge part
is the music. I like it. That’s pretty simple. It entertains me.
I’m aware that there is a lot more going on in his oeuvre than
there is in many other musicians I like, but I’ll leave it in the
hands of those who are much more musically savvy than I am to talk
about that.
For
me, a lot of it is image. My two biggest life-long hobbies are comics
and music. They were doorways for me. They opened on to a bigger
world. They were the entrance to Narnia in the back of my closet.
They were a TARDIS that took me away. They were the technicolor world
of Oz in my sepia-toned Appalachian youth. I came of age in era
where, at least for me personally, comics and music overlapped.
Bowie, and Alice, and KISS, and Queen were superheroes, at least
visually. My heroes, on the page and on the stage, were the weird
outsiders that every teenager feels like. They showed me that the
things that made them different were actually their strengths. What a
great lesson. Loving the alien means loving yourself.
Somewhere in my brain, developing very slowly, is an entire thesis
about identity and persona and costumes and personality and myth and
pop culture and how these things relate.
Part
of the genius of Bowie was that he showed us that we all wear masks
and personas, and that it was possible, through these, to remain true
to your authentic self. For all of his permutations of image, Bowie
always followed his own path, distracting the world with style while
creating his truth through art and music.
What
we lose in his death is whatever he may have gone on to do beyond
this. The potential for more. That is what we always lose when
someone dies. The potential for more.
We
will only ever know David Bowie through his masks and personas. Only
his closest friends and family can say any differently. But through
these characters and through his art we glimpsed a burning creative
talent. We can simply enjoy what he gave us, or we can use it as an
inspiration. We are all stardust. We can be heroes, forever and ever.
The Starman that is waiting to blow our minds is our own potential
for more.
And,
as we’ve been told, if we sparkle he may land tonight.
I’ve
been ending my blogs with a video. I’ve spent the day trying to
choose the right one. In the end I decided it wasn’t about which
one was exactly right, or summed up what I want to say in the lyrics.
In the end it’s the one that made me a fan.
