This is a memory of a very old and very wild friend. I've wanted to post this for months. I post it today for reasons explained in the piece. It's not polished, but I need to post it now. I hope you enjoy it... I'll leave comments for everyone this week. Have a wonderful week, and thanks for your inspiration, support and love! Peace Mark * * * ERIC (A True Story) Eric stood 6 and a half feet tall---that's 200 CM---was thin as a rail, maddeningly high strung, acted as if he were always on the verge of being caught, and---though incredibly nice---always gave you the impression he had a kilo of cocaine under his vest and was being stalked by police, and, worse, didn't give a damned. He was from London's East End, had a Cockney accent so thick, none of us had a clue what he was talking about, he'd been raised on the streets, been in fights since age 6, worked on the docks at 15, and had done time---i.e., prison---having used and dealt every drug known to humankind. (I'm pretty sure on that: His suitcase was a walking chem lab.) When he greeted you, he'd slap you on the back so hard, you'd nearly pass out. Then he'd roar, slap you again, and say: "You shoulda seen yer face, mate! Fahhkin' priceless!" (You had to hear him: He said mate as moit. Face was foiss. And "oh bloody hell" was aww bloody ay-ouuuwww. Try it: ai-ouuuwww---for hell. Thus: "How are you" was aww ahh yuuu! It took time to get used to this. But, knowing this, he'd speak extra fast just to mess you up: He'd bust in the house and shout: "Blimey!!! I got to the stowe ((store)), an' I bloussed the roit-ing blinkers outa the noiss-tees!" No one had a clue what that meant, and he loved that...) But the killer was: He was a Shakespearean actor. He was in the student troupe of one of England's premiere dramatic troupes. Was he well spoken? No: He walloped everyone on the back, shouted fuck constantly, told the dirtiest jokes since creation, and was particularly fond of the word cunt. Now, it was the British cunt---meaning guy or bloke---but in America, in the 70's---when I met Eric---"cunt" was about the worst thing you could say in front of a woman. It was so bad, we called it "the C word". But Eric blasted "fahking cunt" at anything with 2 legs: Our first day, we went to the store to buy dinner; and within 5 minutes, he'd called everyone in the store---male, female, customer and clerk---"bloody cunt" with a big beaming smile. Which got every woman within earshot to cast stares that could've cut a hole through walls. This delighted Eric no end. Then---in what he called, 'smoothing things over'---he shouted: "Aouuuuuuwwww! Ahhhhm a BRITTTT, L's and G's!" (L's and G's meant Ladies and Gentlemen):"Ahmm the biggest cunt of ALL!" At which he roared with laughter, walloped everyone on the back, and shouted: "We're all brothers in CHRIST---am I right???"---which he said for reasons NO one could understand, as, in this conservative town, saying that after all his "cunts" and "fucks" was like a porn star praying to the Virgin Mother before copulating with every creature on the set. Then, at dinner, Eric consumed enough food for 6 people while downing a bottle of wine (by himself) and several Guiness's, and letting out belches that made the windows shake; after which he took us out for drinks---as if what he'd just consumed was mere 'water'---wherein he drank 3 Tequilas, an aged Scotch, a Rye, several more Guinness's, and 2 Kahlua's---yes, 2 thick, ultra sweet, rum-based Kahlua's. And, the whole time, he remained cold sober. (For comparison: I once had a shot of Tequila---1 shot, with nothing else---and forgot my name, my address, my town, my specie, and I'm pretty sure what planet I lived on; and wound up spending the night with someone who I was pretty damned sure had wings. ((I'm not kidding about the wings. She was a female, and human; but I swore she had wings...)) Moral: Don't fuck with Tequila. Yet for Eric? It was as tame as a sip of Perrier...) The most astonishing fact of all? The next day, he was playing King Richard from Shakespeare's Richard III: A major part. To place you (in case you don't know Shakespeare's plays): Richard is one of Shakespeare's slimiest, scummiest, most deliciously horrible villains; and I mean delicious: Richard seduced you. He slimed you. He was a greasy, slimy insect who lured you into his lair and had you for breakfast: If any villain demonstrated Schadenfreude---the delight in someone else's suffering---it was Richard. So it was an extremely challenging part. Could anyone play it after all those drinks? * * * The Next Day The Performance. Backstage. 30 minutes to curtain... Now let me say this: Any of you who've ever been in the theater knows the electricity it emits before a performance. (I'd been there as a musician.) It's palpable. You can touch it: The crew's scrambling, the actors and actresses are rushing to get to their places, the audience is gathering---mumbling that low frequency rumble which, to theater people, is pure magic, and bristling with anticipation---and everyone feels the gravity: This play's been tackled by the most accomplished artists since the 1600's; and this troupe was acutely aware of that. You felt that something massive was about to unfold---a pregnancy, an about-to-let-loose blast---and these artists had the burden of either making or breaking this play. It was tactile, terrifying and breathtaking. Suddenly, from the dressing rooms: "FUUUUUCCCCCCK!" (Eric, throwing a tantrum.) "SHITTTTTTTTTT!!!" (Slam!) "DAMMMMMMMMM!!!" (Bang, Bang!) "FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKK!" Everyone froze. The woman who played his wife---Lady Anne (who Richard seduces, then murders)---whispered to me: "That guy gives us a heart attack every damn time. Working with him's like walking on a tightrope!" "FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKK!" Lady Anne threw up her arms and walked away... * * * 10 minutes later. Lights to black. It's about to start. When--- "BOO!!!" I shot around: It was Eric. "Holy shit!" I rasped: "You scared the shit outa me!" He was ghastly: He was bent nearly 90 degrees (Richard's a hunchback), his arms swept the floor like a gorilla, his hump stood higher than his head, his eyes drooped like a basset hound's---only with pitch-black lines, and terrifying---he heaved and grunted like a boar, and he stared at me like he were about to grab me and suck my blood. I shrieked. He roared---quietly---and slapped me on the back: "The look in yer face, mate: Puh-riceless!!!" "Is this how you treat everyone?" I rasped. "Ree-laxxxxxxx!" he said: "Ahm a fuckin' cunt! You know that!" Then he swept across the backstage like the Hunchback of Notre dame, mouthing, "yessss, mah-ster! At yer service, mah-ster!!!" "They can hear you!" I rasped. "Ohhhhhhh, ahm shakin' in mah boots!" he whispered. "They can't hear a fahkin' thing, mate: I been in the theater 3 years: It doesn't travel..." And he walloped me again. Then: 3 bells. "This is it!" he snorted. He jutted behind the curtain, waited for the spotlight; the spotlight came on, he turned to me and whispered, "I'm gonna git these suckers!"---in a perfect American accent---the curtain opened, and, without losing a beat, he turned to the audience, and--------- Voila! Magic! He became Richard! Two minutes earlier, you wouldn't have believed it: But once he faced the audience, he was transformed. The "magic circle" happened---the sense that a hall which, 1 minute before, was nothing but a ganglia of ropes. lights, scrims and curtains, is now suddenly the 'sacred circle' that the ancients spoke of; and it's really true: In a flash, the play takes over the universe; and, for the next two hours, this place will be a revelation-ground for the darkest and brightest urges of the human condition. With that in mind, out walked Eric, to gasps and applause: He leaned into the front row as if he were about to devour them, he swept across the stage with grunts and snorts and withering stares, he sized them up, then condemned them with razor-sharp grins: In short, he was majestic. For the first time, I felt what he must've felt each time he began one of these celebrated soliloquies, standing all alone in that obliterating spotlight with the 'eyes of the universe' on him, waiting for his first utterance. He bellowed: "Nowwwwwwww---" (i.e., from "Now is the winter of our discontent...") He spoke the King's English! Where'd that come from? He continued: "Now is the winter of OUR discontent, MAAAAADE GLORIOUS SUMMER" (pause), "by THIS" (pause) "SUNNNNNN...of YORK!" ("Sun of York" is a pun on "SON of York"---i.e.,a descendent of the House of York. Don't worry if you don't know it. Just know, the House took over the crown...they were murderers...) And when he spoke the curdling line, "since I cannot prove a lover...I am determined to prove a villain," he said it as vilely as any actor I'd heard. He dripped with sensual ugliness... Some other Eric moments: While seducing Lady Anne---the young innocent who he destroys---he was positively gagging: "I'll have her," he confesses, beaming at the audience: "But I will not keep her long!" (He cackled like a silent movie villain twirling his mustache.) And when Anne asked: "I would I knew thy heart" (meaning: "please tell me what you want from me"), Richard answers: "'Tis figured in my tongue" (i.e.: "my intentions are in my speech"). What did Eric do, on "tongue"? He stuck out his tongue, dive-bombed into Anne's breasts, jutted his tongue between them---this was wholly unrehearsed---then licked them both, then her chest, then her neck and face---in a continuous cringe-inducing line---until he reached her earlobes, where he bit her earlobe and whispered vile things in her ear. You could hear them. Anne walloped his face---also unrehearsed. Then Eric---with the glee of a devilish schoolboy who got his way again---roared with laughter, pulled her to his lips, and tongue kissed her for nearly a minute. "Holy shit!" I muttered. Later that night, I asked Anne if she wanted to slap him a second time: "Oh God," she said, "and how! But he made me be Anne---do you see? He made me young, violated, and utterly seduced! He sets you on fire!" ****** In the final scene---after Richard's "a horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"---Richmond slays Richard. But when he slayed Eric's Richard, Eric did another high-wire act---also unrehearsed: Eric grabbed Richmond's hand so hard, Richmond lost circulation, and later said he needed aspirin to stop the pain. Then Eric---still clasping Richmond's hand fiercely---glared into Richmond's eyes, smiled savagely, and spit thick blood in Richmond's face. (You have to imagine the impact of this: It was like house paint: This is accomplished by swallowing a pill and letting it foam in your mouth till it turns to sludge.) In fact, it was so thick, Richmond had to wipe it off 9 or 10 times---while speaking. He had the final speech of the play. Eric roared at this, fell to the ground, peered over to me (behind the curtain: I couldn't believe he actually looked at me), winked, then turned back to Richmond, and died. But: Eric never let go of Richmond's hand: He squeezed it until it turned blue. (Eric called this "one fuck of a rigor mortis".) Richmond was beside himself... So picture: Richmond has to give his famous closing speech---"the day is ours, the bloody dog is dead!"---all while Eric was squeezing him for dear life, and lying dead on the floor. (I hope my description isn't too hard to follow---) So Richmond gave his speech in monumental tones while desperately trying to shake off Eric...and Eric never let go. Richmond told me, later: "I wanted to kill the guy! I wanted to fucking kill him!" Richmond stormed off cursing, then Eric pranced by me---the audience now cheering wildly---and whispered: "I nailed it, huh? Whaddya think???" Then---ala a New Jersey mobster: "Aaaaooouuuwwwwwwww---fahkin' A!" Later that night, Eric was in his room, crashing about and mouthing the words from Hamlet: He was playing him in 2 weeks. The crashing went on all night... * * * Well, we became friends after that. He wrote, called, told me his exploits---which were predictably outrageous---and kept writing even when I didn't write him. You knew he was dangerous---he enthralled you and maddened you, and you always felt he took you on the precipice of a gaping canyon: He lived on the edge of an enormous razor. I cherished his lightning-flash improvs and characters and imitations; his wild humor, and big bear hugs. He drank and did drugs like he were 20-people-in-one, and he never seemed to suffer. Then one day, he disappeared... He didn't answer anymore---not me, nor anyone else. Some friends said he was killed: He was drunk, pissed off a guy in a bar, they fought, the guy smashed Eric's head, and Eric died. Several people affirmed this---but was it real? Maybe someone made it up, to continue the 'legend of Eric'. All I knew was, he never showed his face or voice again. Not a word. I got the word on August 21st, years ago. That's why I share this on this day. (And there's an eclipse today: How fitting is that...) ********* Final Thoughts Some people carry too much inside. Eric was one of those people: a gifted but tortured soul who lived with 2000 people inside---you could see them in each character he imitated, in the lightning-fast way he flitted from one to the other, in all his dialects, accents, faces: He'd pull-out these characters like masks from a bag---like a tall, over-drugged Robin Williams. He was wildly creative, equally funny, and a keg of TNT---with a talent which overflowed like lava from a volcano, but replete, unfortunately, with demons and terrible deep-burrowed hurts. W.H. Auden wrote, of the poet W.B. Yeats: "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry". Sometimes we're hurt into poetry. Something deep in Eric hurt him into poetry. I say, let us all experience some madness---the creative type, the willingness to dive off an edge and experience breathless elation: to know what it is to fly. But we shouldn't hit bottom. Eric hit bottom. I'm sure of it. He would never have disappeared without a word... However: I'd like to think that, somewhere on this planet, he did his own King Lear: Shakespeare's harrowing old king, who was torn to pieces by regrets so great, you believe they'd collapse the whole world. Eric would've understood him---but also the strange, miraculous act of turning pain into dazzling light---what Auden called "a rapture of distress". Damn that it'll never happen again! And, to Shakespeare's words, "and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest": I don't think the angels ever entered into it with Eric: They knew that Eric had enough light in him to carry him all the way to heaven, by himself... That's my memory of Eric, who disappeared on this day too many years ago... (Thanks for reading.) ------------