Three years out.  It is not any easier to deal with losing Jesse in the physical plane – but we do our best.   One discovery for me has been experiencing love songs in a new light – as a father to a son.   Most recently “Sorry-Grateful” from Stephen Sondheimʻs “Company” captured the tension between the pain and loss and being joyful and thankful for what we had, what we still have in terms of memories.

Jesse wrote a love song that most of you have not heard called Roarer.   I hope you enjoy it.  Here is a link

‘That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all.’

Isaac Asimov, Guide to Shakespeare.^[6]

Here is a song that Jesse made while living in Tsushima.   One of our combined dreams was to create the Intergalactic Luau as a showcase for talent in many fields on Maui.

Intergalactic Time is Jesseʻs take on “sci fi” calypso – I grew up in Barbados learned how to “lime”  and play in calypso bands and of course shared this with Jesse who was great at “liming” and also covered songs by the Mighty Sparrow and others.  Calypso is a very playful verbal form coming out of the African griot tradition, very similar to the European court jester.    Sun Ra and George Clinton of Parliment/Funkadelics were pioneers at taking this tradition in to space in the jazz and R&B worlds respectively.

“Mau Kau Kau” is Hawaiian for “Are You Ready?”

To “lime” is a popular word and activity in the Caribbean meaning to hang out and socialize with your friends.

In going over Jesseʻs original music files on our computers in preparation for his Celebration of Life, a file popped up called “rap beat”.   It was an excerpt from Desmond Tutuʻs “God Has A Dream:  A Vision of Hope for Our Time”   and it triggered one of many “open the floodgate” experiences that we have been having.   The audio book version of this book was produced and published by Maui resident James Jacobson and it is an example of where an audio book can dramatically exceed the experience of print where the voice of the reader is exceptional – as it certainly is with Bishop Tutu.

Jesse did an internship with Jim in 2004 with the task of creating promotional audio snippets of Bishop Tutu reading from his book in his distinctive voice.   Many of these snippets pop up when I use shuffle mode on the computer that Jesse used to do these edits.    It is really quite wonderful!   This one seems to have had special meaning for Jesse at the time, and it certainly has profound meaning for us as we process Jesseʻs passing from the physical plane in to the spiritual one.

It starts with “I am sorry to say, suffering is not optional….suffering can either embitter or ennoble…”    Listen .

One of the reasons Jesse was originally drawn to this project was that he was frequently told of an earlier exposure to Bishop Tutu.   Not long before Jesse moved to Maui he attended a highly subsidised day care center at Trinity Church on Wall Street near where Jan was working as an Assistant Attorney General for New York State.   One day there was much excitement when Jan picked up Jesse and we learned that Bishop Tutu had shared the nap room at the day care facility before an afternoon meeting at the United Nations.

Jesse was reminded of this when we as a family visited New York City in December 2001 to pay our respects just after the events of 9/11.    The New York AGʻs office had been in the World Trade Center, and David had attended NYUʻs Stern Business School which was located across from Trinity Church at the time.   We were able to visit the day care center which was closed and still behind police tape as were many of the buildings adjacent to “Ground Zero”.  We were also able to spend quiet time in Trinity Church which was used years earlier for my MBA class commencement, and more recently served as a support center for the occupiers during Occupy Wall Street. (The graveyard is also where Alexander Hamilton is buried.)

Brief encounters indeed, but it is these kinds of experiences that can have everlasting impacts.

 

 

 

What we will be singing in Church for Jesseʻs Celebration of Life on 3/11

Here are the five hymns that we will all be singing – we are still working on the sequence. Jesse will be very pleased if we all sing out with the confidence of having checked it out in advance – although discovering these for the first time as you sing them is also cool – but will probably require a hanky.

1) The most somber one is “Commit Thou All That Grieves Thee” in an arrangement by J.S. Bach featured in his St. Matthew Passion. Here is a piano version over the sheet music: