Death on Gypsy Day

Jeremy Pearce in this morning’s New York Times:

“Dr. Fritz Klein, a psychiatrist and sex researcher who studied bisexuals and their relationships and later helped start a foundation for promoting bisexual culture, died on May 24 at his home in San Diego. He was 73.  The cause was a heart attack, said his companion, Tom Reise.”

Sunrise in Death Valley

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(Click to see the larger original,
a photo by Michael Trezzi)

“The Waste Land,”
 
a 1922 poem by T. S. Eliot:

The sea was calm, your heart
       would have responded		  420
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
 
                      I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?  425
Eliot’s note on line 424:
“V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance;
chapter on the Fisher King.”

“The Fisher King,”
 
a 1991 film by Terry Gilliam:

“Did you lose your mind
 all of a sudden,
 or was it a slow,
 gradual process?”

“Well, I’m a singer by trade.
Summer stock, nightclub revues,
that sort of thing.
And God, I absolutely lived for it.
I can do Gypsy, every part.
I can do it backwards.

Then one night, in the
middle of singing ‘Funny’…
…suddenly it hit me.

What does all this mean?

I mean, that,
plus the fact
that I’d watched all my friends die.”

“[Screenwriter Richard] LaGravenese, speaking of the experience of making this special film, says: ‘At times it appeared that for some people working on the movie, individual journeys were being made towards their own particular Grails. This was certainly true for me. I hear it is common; that a movie you’re working on can begin to reflect the life you’re having around it.'”

— Dreams: The Fisher King,
    edited by Phil Stubbs