Tom Robbins, best known as the author of eight remarkable, subversive novels, died this month at the age of 92. Here's Robbins laying down the rules of writing:
Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.
--Tom Robbins
May he rest in rebelliousness, riotousness, and redemption.
An odd thing happened recently. I was thinking of an old friend who's in the hospital. A song came to mind: the Doobie Brothers' For Someone Special. And then I thought of the first jukebox I first heard the song on (pointed out to me by a friend as the B side of Takin' It to the Streets).
It was the jukebox in the first bar I worked at, over forty years ago in New Orleans, a college bar located in the armpit of Tulane University called The Boot. I could picture that jukebox, its location just inside the entrance to the bar, like a squat sentinel. Then something scary happened.
Primitive man was extremely territorial.
Early civilizations avoided looking at the sky, afraid that it might get angry and fall on them. Assyrian nobles favored their much taller Hittite slaves as bodyguards, reasoning that if the sky fell, they’d take the brunt of the impact. The ancient Babylonians did attempt an ambitious project to build a tower all the way to the sky. Ultimately, the project failed, however, mainly due to the use of Mafia-connected contractors for construction work.
The Phoenicians first noticed that there were objects suspended in the firmament. This made them an extremely nervous people. They would dart back and forth under the trees, muttering the words “firmament, firmament” to each other, hoping to avoid any falling celestial objects. They invented boats so they could get out from under the sky at short notice. Eventually they sailed their boats so far that they sailed right off the edge of the planet, and were a happier people as a result.
It was the Greeks who gave us the science of astrology. The Greeks gave the world reason and logic. So far they’ve refused to take them back. Credit for the invention of astrology goes to Optometrus of Thebes, although the role of Estremides the Athenian cannot be discounted. Both men were philosophers, but Optometrus also had a thriving business in time-share goats. The two philosophers were walking together one day in the groves of Academe, hoping to catch a glimpse of Academe’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Minerva the Winsome. They stopped for a moment to gaze at the clouds lazing across the sky.
In 1962, the song "Me and My Shadow" seemingly enjoyed a renaissance. I say "seemingly" because that's the way I remember it. I was only four at the time, and the first time I saw it performed on tv, I thought it was a new song. That's the way it is when you are very young; each new encounter is a reinvention of the world.
In fact, the song was written in 1927, if Wikipedia is to be believed, by Al Jolson, Billy Rose, and Dave Dreyer. It's been performed by a host of artists since. In 1962, it seemed, it was performed all over television on every variety show--and variety shows were big back then.
There's just one thing. I can find no proof of this phenomenon. I don't know that it ever actually happened. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.
Except, except
--for a memorable rendition by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., which you will find at the end of this post. A performance of such grace and easy charm that I'm certain it must have been repeated on at least two or three different variety shows. But two or three does not a renaissance make.
Why then do I remember it as making such a splash? Could it be that it was the first time I was ever faced with, ever really thought about my own shadow, as a separate entity apart from me?
(Well, maybe not. After all, the Disney version of Peter Pan, with its memorable scene of Pan chasing his shadow, came out in 1953. And the Broadway play with Mary Martin aired on tv in 1960. But I wasn't around in '53, and wasn't old enough for its first re-release in '58. I must have caught the Disney on its third go-round in '69. I probably caught Mary Martin's rebroadcast in '63.)
Well, what is the shadow, besides proof of our defiance of the sunlight, saying to the photons "thus far and no further?" I mean, what meaning do we assign to it? Well, she's Nyx, the goddess of darkness, sister of Erebus, the god of night. A presence that is an absence.
What was it to me, my shadow at that age? I can take a guess. Tall in the evening, a glimpse of the future. Crouching in my protection at noontide, reminding me of the shortcomings of the present. My own portable sundial. A cool, companionable blue parasol in the mornings that the afternoons chased away. A friend to confide in as darkness approached. A terror among the streetlights. A shape-changer.
Of course the shadow is one of Jung's crowd of archetypes. It stands alongside the ego, the self. He saw the shadow as literally our dark side, all the failures and foibles we don't want to own up to, want to dismiss and for that very reason must make peace with. We have to clap for the wolfman. The wolfman is, after all, our animal energy, our unbounded creative impulse. We cannot be a fully integrated person if we deny the person that we are at every full moon. There is no soul without a body, no yin without a yang.