Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 06:00:31 +0100
From: John Perry Barlow
Subject: BarlowFriendz 5.5: Johnny, They Hardly Knew Ye...
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/_ _ ---------> B a R L o W F R i e N D Z
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------------------------------> -------------------> -------->
Somewhere Over Mississippi
Thursday, July 22, 1999
It is dawn.
I am flying from Atlanta to New Orleans and I know that the haze below,
while gray, is probably not cold. Still it seems so. The universe - or
at
least that part of it that passes through the filters of my own heart -
seems cold and gray.
This is because later this morning someone will pour the powdered bones
of
my long-dear friend and hero John Kennedy into the sea. They will also
scatter the horribly reduced beauty of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, the
fairy
godmother of my three teen-aged daughters. That gray powder is all that
remains of two people from whose spirits sparkled a large part of the
magic
in my life.
With these two merciless deaths, the whole world has become less alive to
meI less adventuresome, less vital, less funny, less loving. I'm tempted,
in
my fatigue and sorrow, to just say "fuck it," but, three daughters that's
no
option. And besides, it would hardly serve their memory well to make
others
hurt as much as I do now.
J
I met John 22 years ago this month. His mother - whose maternal
achievements
were the least renowned and most extraordinary of her manifestations -
had
decided that it was time to toss John from her 5th Avenue nest. With
characteristic - though astonishing - faith in the essential safety of
the
world, she'd sent him off to a Youth Conservation Corps camp in
Yellowstone
Park. However appropriate to her politics, this option wasn't working out
well. Green John, who had never been alone and unprotected before, was
naked
to the press and being mercilessly hit on by his fellow corpsmen. He was
miserable and wanted to come home.
But Jackie wasn't ready to bring him in from the cold. So she called a
Congressman from Wyoming from Teno Roncalio to ask him if he might know a
rancher who would be both willing to hire John for the summer and
sensitive
enough to his peculiar condition to extend him something like normality.
Teno had been a special actor in both her life and mine. When John F.
Kennedy, Sr. sought the Democratic nomination in 1960, the vote was tied
between him and Lyndon Johnson all the way down through the alphabet of
states to Wyoming. Teno, the leader of the Wyoming delegation, knew that
three of his six delegates were for Johnson. Their votes would have led
to a
tie and thus a second ballot. And it was generally assumed that Johnson,
the
ultimate backroom operator, would out-maneuver the upstart if it came to
that. So Teno stood up and declared all Wyoming's votes for Kennedy,
betting
that in the ensuing hullabaloo, his Johnson delegates would find it
expedient to keep quiet. They did and history found its present shape.
I knew Teno because he'd helped raise me. In Wyoming, ideology is less a
part of the political process than personal chemistry. So, despite the
fact
that Teno was a union Democrat and my father was a Republican state
senator
of such troglodyte views that he suspected Barry Goldwater of communism
leanings, they were such close friends that had entrusted me to Teno at
an
early age. Teno took me off to Aspen and taught me to ski. He also taught
me
a lot about political reality. He was and remains my hero.
When Jackie called him, Teno recommended sending John to the Bar Cross,
the
large family cattle ranch that I operated for 17 years. By odd
coincidence,
this suggestion that was seconded by Tom Carney, a good friend of mine
who
was dating Caroline Kennedy at the time and who happened to be at dinner
that night.
Next thing I knew there, was a breathy voice on my phone saying, "Hello,
this is Jacqueline Onassis."
"Well," I replied, "in the unlikely event that this isn't a joke, what
can I
do for you?"
Two days later, John rode the bus from Jackson Hole into my life. (I
imagined my father turning about 2500 rpm in his grave.) John was not
what I
had expected. Goofy and self-effacing, he was a gangly quasar of random
energy. Fifteen minutes into it, I think we both knew we'd be friends for
life. I never would have guessed that that the terminated life would be
his
and not mine.
When he showed up on the Bar Cross, he was so wide-eyed and energetic
that
he was like a giant Labrador puppy. But he was amenable to being
focused.
The first thing I put him to was digging post holes, and he went at it
like
he was killing snakes. I was erecting a new corral fence, and he dug
through
glacial alluvium, all gravel and rock, with a ravenous intensity. It was
the
first time in his life he'd ever done anything for money, not that he was
getting paid a hell of a lot.
At least he had a job. This wasn't something that his mother was paying
for.
It was something that he was doing on his own. He was delighted to be a
wage-earner. Even the menial nature of his employment was a boon to him.
Even his vile accommodations down in the bunkhouse where he was housed
with
the beautiful losers that wash up on an employer of last resort seemed
just
ducky to him.J
To my surprise, he wasn't a particularly stellar horseman. This might
have
been because he was riding a western saddle for the first time, but I'm
more
inclined to think that it was because riding was his mother's thing, and
he
avoided the obvious paths his parents had inscribed.
Still, he was plumb willin' and perfectly patient with being given the
drag,
i.e., riding on the tail end of the herd and pushing along the laggardly
cows and calves. Pretty boring work, really. Damned little romance to it.
But he did it uncomplainingly and enthusiastically, as he did everything.
He was the light in our world that summer and remained the brightest in
mine
until last Friday. No task I put him to was beneath his germinating
dignity.
He operated a shovel like a human backhoe. He was patient with both cows
and
cowboys. Within a day or so he ceased to be remarkable for whom he was
and
became remarkable for what he was. I believe that had he been born to
nobody
in particular, his personal qualities would have propelled him to
stardom.
I suppose I was the first "father figure" in his life who was neither an
uncle, nor a Secret Service agent, nor some mother-imposed friend of the
father he never really knew. But, over the course of our friendship, he
became a brother and eventually something like a father to me.
That is, I found his instincts, probity, and judgement to be so
appropriate
that I relied on his counsel to temper and guide my own behavior. Now
that
I've allowed myself to participate in the media frenzy that's currently
feeding on his corpse, I long for his guidance.
Still, despite our inversely symmetrical relationship, I did still
occasionally proffer my own. Only three weeks ago, I extended some advice
I
wish he'd taken. He'd broken his ankle crash-landing a flying contraption
called a Buckeye, something like a cross between a paraglider and a
snowmobile. While I'd always trusted his ability to dance on the edge of
danger, I thought the Buckeye might veer a little too close to the Abyss.
The conversation turned to piloting in general. I'm a pilot myself and I
remembered clearly the period in my flying career when I knew just enough
to
be dangerously confident in my abilities. "Listen, " I said, "when I had
about 150 hours, I thought I knew what I was doing. I kept flying myself
into conditions that were beyond my abilities. The Holy Who Knows
preserved
me, but please remember: if you can't see he horizon outside the plane,
don't look for it. Glue your eyes to the instrument panel."
"I'll bear that in mind," he said. It now appears that he didn't. I
understand. Shattered as I feel I don't blame him. It could have happened
to
me as easily.
There was another element to that conversation. He had been through a
number
of dark tribulations in the past couple of years. He danced through them
with the very personification of Hemingway's definition of courage: Grace
under pressure. I told him that he had become a hero to me. Of course,
it's
rare that one can remain a hero to his friends. It's rarer still that one
can become a hero after years of friendship.
Rather than diverting the compliment with automatic modesty, he said,
"I'm
honored you feel that way." "I'm honored you're honored." I replied.
When I last heard from John, I could no longer reply. On July 10, my
ancient
mother died in my arms after 12 days of preparing to shed her mortal
self.
As you BarlowFriendz will recall, I sent out a message describing the
hour
of her death and the 93 year wonder of a life that preceded it. On
Saturday,
July 17th, We buried Mim under a violet Wyoming sky. That hard day had
begun
early with a phone call informing me of John and Carolyn's disappearance.
Suddenly her death, which I had accepted, was permanently smeared with
tragedy.
I came back from the cemetery and reflexively checked my e-mail. There
was a
message from John, dated 4:05 pm Friday afternoon, not long before he
left
the office to fly off into the sea. It read:
I received the news of your mother. Though I'm truly sorry that I never
met
her, your elegiac epistle rendered her vividly. I'm happy for you that
you
were there at the critical moment of her passing - it was something I'll
never
forget when it happened to me and not something that was at all macabre.
Give
yourself a little time to reflect now....
come visit
john k
These are the words of a true mensch. God, how I wish I could come visit
him
now. How much I now have to reflect on.
Nevertheless, I think he and Carolyn will always visit me. Relationships
don't necessarily die with their participants. For over two decades, John
and I were so woven into one another's lives that he will always be
embedded
in the fabric of mine. I will always have methods of being and looking at
things that I contracted from him. I will always respond to certain
situations in imitation of him.
The same applies to Carolyn. Even though she was not a part of my life as
long as he was, she swiftly became as nearly important in it. Though her,
it
seemed I could connect with all that was female in this world. She helped
me
accept that I would never understand women, despite the study of women's
being one of my current lifetime's core curricula. She also helped me
accept
that one extended women more appropriate honor by simply appreciating
them
rather than trying, with endless futility, to figure them out.
Still. John and Carolyn are dead. It seems impossible, but of course I
realize that it was not only possible but likely. At the risk of sounding
like someone whose reason as been tainted with newage, I will tell you
that
I believe there are angels among us, appearing to be human in the bodies
they lightly wear.
My late lamented Dr. Cynthia Horner was surely one. And so were John and
Carolyn. My experience with these creatures - which has been unusually,
blessedly, and tragically extensive - indicates that they don't wear
their
bodies long. John's mother was the longest-lived of the angels I've
known,
and she died younger than most expected she would.
I think angels enter our sordid midst to encourage and teach us. To
remind
us that there is more to life than life itself. They embody love and
faith
and humor, which are, I believe, the essential characteristics of the
Immaterial.
The last thing Cynthia said to me was, "Nothing can keep us apart, Baby."
I
now understand that the only that could have been true was through what
immediately followed. The same applies to John and Carolyn. Nothing can
keep
us apart.
@@@
London
Tuesday, July 27, 1999 - Wednesday, July 28, 1999
So I'm taking a little time to reflect. The last five days have been
impossibly hard, but I'm doing my best to behave, as I said earlier, as
John
would have had me do. I'm trying to draw on his dignity and courage.
When I arrived in New Orleans - where I was contracted to speak to a
group
of architects (including the man who designed John, Sr.'s grave) - I
learned
that I had been disinvited from John's memorial service for having made
myself accessible to the media. Perhaps I shouldn't have done that, but I
wanted people to know who he and Carolyn really were and I knew that both
Clan Kennedy and all who curried their favor would observe the
information
embargo, leaving the world to imagine the essences of these remarkable
people.J
An ugly part of me presently suspects that there is a self-serving method
to
their silence. I wonder if there isn't a "myth management system" among
the
Kennedys that is better served by increasing mystery. This may be a
necessary expedience since their personal reality is often not so worthy
of
mythologizing. I suppose they reflexively extended it to John, of whom
the
truth would have only served to elevate, both out of reflexive habit and
because he was not really one of them. They may have been practicing a
game
of "capture the flag" with his memory, attempting to own in death what
they
could never quite claim while he lived.
But such thoughts are graceless. While I was deeply hurt that I couldn't
attend the death rituals of two of my closest friends, I understood that
anger and sorrow are often cross-wired and that no one can gainsay what
another does in grief.
In any event - since I knew John and Carolyn to be special in ways that
never shown back through the klieg light glare, and since no one else who
knew them well was uttering a word - I took it to be my hard
responsibility
to eulogize them accurately and from the heart. (Not to say that Uncle
Teddy
didn't, but someone else wrote the eloquent words he spoke last Friday at
St. Thomas More's Church.)
This has been a greater sacrifice than I might have made had I known what
I
was getting myself into. In a single week, I appeared three times on
Larry
King Live, twice on Dateline, once on 48 Hours, twice on the Today Show,
repeatedly in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and one of John's
secretly favorite rags, The New York Daily News. On last Wednesday
morning,
I found that my various voice mail boxes contained 105 unheard messages
from
the press.
I started to feel like the big chocolate bunny on Easter morning, nibbled
everywhere by many ravenously unconscious teeth, hollow inside.
Further, I'm sure that many beyond Clan Kennedy, perhaps even including
some
of you, thought that I acted as I have out of some self-aggrandizing
impusle. And, while a self-confessed egomaniac, I can assure you this was
not my motive in this instance.
Consider what's in this for me. By identifying myself as an official
"Friend
of John," I will be hounded for the rest of my days for further evidence
in
the media autopsies. This will be a drag.
But I felt what I was doing was right, and I still do. The flood of
e-mail
and phone calls I received from all over the world assured this
conviction.
Most said that they were grateful to have more human flesh placed on
these
glowing bones. Most seemed to think that, through mine, their own grief
had
been somehow "de-virtualized." And some were simply glad that I had
shared
publicly what they had privately experienced. All these hundreds of
messages
were moving and re-affirming, but there was one that eulogized Carolyn
more
accurately that I have (or probably could) which I will quote:
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 18:24:17 -0400
Subject: rachel feinstein
From: Anthony James
To:
barlow@eff.org
John,
First off, let me tell you how I know you. I am a friend of Rachel
Feinstein's. I have had several opportunities to meet and converse with
you
over the years, most recently at Rachel's wedding in Miami. I was the guy
producing television shows in Spain (if that helps). Anyway, the reason
I'm
writing you is to thank you for going on television recently and being
one
of the first people to humanize Carolyn in the press. I was lucky enough
to
be her friend. I met Carolyn years ago when she first started to date
John,
just weeks after first meeting you at a party you where throwing at your
Chelsea Apartment. She and I met at Barneys and instantly became friends.
At
that time I really needed a friend but Rachel was going through her Ethan
Hawk debacle so consequently was M.I.A.
I was without direction (professionally and personally), lonely,
depressed
and suffering from very low self-esteem. It was the worst time of my life
and Carolyn was there for me every step of the way. She was solely
responsible for raising my spirits and getting me out of my depression.
She
wanted me to quit my job and go to work with her at Calvin Klein. She
even
set me up with an interview with her boss and Calvin. She would talk
endlessly on the phone with me about everything from her situation with
John
to what movies to go see. One of my favorite things about her was that
she
would go out shopping with me and introduce me to the most beautiful
women
on earth and tell them really great things about me. She was so good at
boosting someone's ego and she had a talent for making people feel
special.
I miss talking to her on the phone, having lunches with her and shopping
with her, but most importantly, and this is the first time I can bring
myself to say this (which, to me is accepting that she is gone)...I'm going
to miss her terribly. She forever changed me, she confided in me, she
encouraged me, she trusted me, she saw me as being more than I could have
ever imagined for myself. She is and always will be a beautiful, beautiful
person, and I thank God I now have a friend in heaven. I never had a chance
to thank her for what she did for me, so I thank you John for letting the
world know a little bit of what I always knew. Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Anthony James
Thank you, Anthony James. That was Carolyn alright Always touching your
sleeve lightly at the elbow, always fixing you like a pinned bug in her pale
blue stare, and making you believe that you were utterly extraordinary,
because she genuinely believed you were. There was no artifice in this. She
believed it, because it is true. Each of us is extraordinary. She could see
it.
And so could John. But more of him directly.
I first heard of Carolyn well before I met her. He told me about her one
night at Tramps in early '94. He was still very attached to Daryl Hannah.
But he said that there was a woman he'd met who was having a heavy and not
entirely welcome effect on him. He wasn't going to pursue it, he declared,
because he was loyal to Daryl. (Loyalty was one of his many virtues.) But it
was hard for him, because he couldn't get his mind off her. "Who is she?" I
asked.
He said, "Ah, she's not really anybody. She's some kind of functionary at
Calvin Klein. She's an ordinary person." Which of course she manifestly was
not. She was anything but an ordinary person, but as far as the rest of the
world knew at that point - or even today - she was.
He maintained a platonic relationship with her until after he and Daryl had
broken up. In fact, he even passed what I would consider to be a decent
waiting period before engaging that relationship.
An aside: John was not, as was commonly believed, a dog with the ladies. (I
admit that some might think this assessment descends from my own liberal
standards in this regard, but I believe that far less Casanovian observers
than myself would have reached the same conclusion.) There were not so many
women in his life that he took seriously. I think I knew them all. And there
were even fewer that he took casually. In this regard, as in most others, he
was anything but a Kennedy.
Furthermore, once John came to love someone, he never quit loving her, even
if circumstance, his own fragile heart, and the asymmetries that inevitably
developed between "The Sexiest Man in the World" and most mortal woman
conspired to separate them. Years after he and Daryl broke up, he was always
asking me about how she was doing, hoping that I was being the friend to her
that he could no longer be.
In any event, I didn't meet Carolyn until the fall of '94. At once, I found
her to be as charismatic as he was. "Charisma," you may know, was once a
theological term meaning "grace." She had that. She was utterly compelling
I was also impressed with the fact that she was more than a little
eccentric. She was not conventional in any sense. Carolyn seemed a lot like
John's mother in her quirkiness and also in her unbelievable capacity to
engage one's attention. Jackie could be talking to six people at one time
and make each of them feel like he was the only one in the room. Carolyn had
the same ability.
But like many angels, her empathy was her enemy. She was too raw to the pain
of others. She felt it as deeply herself. And after she became the "Howard
Hughes of Brides," as I darkly put it to her, she found that she couldn't go
out in public without reducing practically all whom she encountered.
I remember one occasion when she emerged from the bunker for a long
nocturnal walk with me up 6th Avenue (which we agreed was as stupid a street
as 5th Avenue was smart.) At a certain point, we went into an ATM enclosure.
While she was getting cash, another smart and beautiful young New Yorker
flounced in, looking utterly self-possessed. This girl moved into the
machine next to Carolyn's and was about to get her cash when suddenly she
turned, looked at Carolyn and lost it.
"Wait," she said in a thin, clutched voice. "I know you."
"I don't think so," Carolyn softly replied.
"No, I do! Is your name Carolyn?"
"Yes."
Suddenly the girl lost herself. She become what Bob Dylan sang about in
Idiot Wind:
People see me all the time
And they can't remember how to act.
Their minds are filled with big ideas,
Images and distorted facts.
And it makes me feel so sorryI
What the girl then did made Carolyn feel just that sorry. She seized Carolyn
by both her delicate shoulders and insisted with hysterical intensity,
"Carolyn! You have to come with me! We have so much to talk about. Really!
My friend in the car just has to talk to talk to you too!"
I ended up having to literally tear this formerly poised young lady away
from Carolyn. I had to drag her to the door of her waiting car, shove her
inside, and tell the driver to get the hell out of there before slamming the
door against her imploring hands.
Carolyn never wanted to turn anyone into the mess this girl had
instantaneously become in the intersection between the media hallucination
of familiarity and the actual presence of the weirdly "known." It hurt her
so much she hid from it.
Otherwise, she was better at being a fully developed beautiful smart woman
than any of the many I've studied. Since all of my daughters seem destined
to become something like her, I gave them over to her instruction. It was
the greatest compliment I could pay her. I can't imagine who will assume
that role in her absence. I'm grateful that Daryl has just re-emerged from
her own exile. Perhaps shell be willing to reassume this tutelage.
Otherwise, I'll be left with what I can impart from my own entirely
vicarious appreciation of Female Mysticism.
@@@
And what was John really like? I'll try to tell you. But I know too much. I
have an embarrassment of riches in the memories I could convey here.
As I've said, the reality exceeded the myth, though over the time I knew
him, he was many different versions of his essential self. Some of his
qualities were constant. He was always gracious, decent, loving,
egalitarian, and engaged.
He was always adventuresome, energetic, and endearing.
He hated alcohol - especially when there was a lot of it in me - but he was
a was a veteran pothead and a fearless psychedelic cadet. He took refuge in
the countless and delicious ironies that surrounded him. He was a great
gossip, though never malicious. In his sly, dry, perfectly timed wit, he was
more like Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde than any of those ruddy Kennedy jocks
who imagined him one of their own.
He was also forgetful and incurably tardy. The other night Larry King asked
me if I could ascribe to him a humanizing fault - since I had been
suspiciously uncritical of John in all three episodes where I'd appeared -
and I said, "Well, you wouldn't want to set your watch by him." But even
this deficit was understandable given his utter inhabitation of whatever
moment contained him. He was easily transfixed on the here and now. The over
there and some soon time could always wait. I personally found that easy to
forgive, since it was one of many characteristics we shared.
He was a great prankster. He played more tricks on me than you'd be willing
to read about now, but a couple come to mind.
There was the time I was roller-blading through Central Park when, all of a
sudden, this apparent madman lunged out of the bushes and tackled me. I had
no idea who it was, because he emerged in such a blur. I thought, "Oh, God.
It's a wilding," as the press then had it. "I'm gonna be wilded." Cynthia,
who was skating with me, howled as already raped and beaten. I had cocked
back a desperate fist and was about to land it when the jaw that was my
target turned full-face. It was John. Grinning at the perfection of my
terror.
Or there was the last time I actually saw him, May 19 of this year. George
Magazine and Newman's Own were staging an awards banquet in Manhattan's
majestic old Customs House to honor philanthropic enterprises. John sat me
with himself at the head table near Kenneth Cole, Puff Daddy, and right next
to the dread Alfonse D'Amato (who, despite is fellow Republicanism, I'd
always abhorred.) To John's obvious across-the-table delight, I found the
actual Al D'Amato utterly likable. Sooner than I could have ever thought
possible, we had our arms around one another's shoulders, conspiring like
Borgia cardinals. Meanwhile, Kenneth Cole seemed a stick and Puff Daddy,
maintaining phony a sunglass-ed cool in the near darkness, seemed almost
without human merit.
(I recounted this bizarre episode later to Leah, my eldest daughter. The
revelation that I actually liked Al D'Amato was as baffling to me as another
encounter, earlier in the year, which I spent an afternoon with Kenneth
Starr and was even more surprisingly beguiled. After I admitted my
consternation, she said dryly, "Daddy, there's probably an explanation for
this that you haven't considered." What might that be, I wondered. "You
could be turning into a bad man," she replied.)
I don't think that was it. It was actually a lesson, imparted by John, that
returned me all the way back to my father's relationship with Teno Roncalio:
Except for true ideologues (which is to say people who have given over their
humanity to a political philosophy), ideology counts for less than heart.
John knew that. And when D'Amato, at one point that night, told John that
the funniest and most useful thing he could do at that moment would be to
run for Mayor of New York as a Republican, I honestly believe there was at
least a New York nanosecond when he seriously considered it.
It is for such heterodoxy that I will ever treasure him. He was his own man.
The most knowing innocent I ever met.
John "The Hunk Flunks" Kennedy was actually a genius. I mean that. I have
always defined genius as the ability to see that which becomes obvious to
all the moment the genius points it out. John's genius was more refined and
instructive than that. He had the ability to ask the guilelessly dumb
question the answer to which seems trivial until you realize that you don't
know it. He could ask the obvious that no one else has asked. In this way,
he taught me more about matters of my own supposed expertise than any of my
other mentors, none of whom was ever so humble in his instruction.
@@@
I can't yet imagine what my life will be like without John and Carolyn.
Without them or my old dragon mother, I feel terribly lost. I suppose that
learning how to live on in a world that lacks them will become one of the
greatest lessons of the long trudge that awaits the non-angelic likes of
myself. (There is, after all, a corollary to the world-believed notion that
"only the good die young.")
But I take some solace in the fact that they will always be as perfect as
they were as they spun down into the wine-dark sea. As "Shakespeare" had
Caesar say of Cleopatra, "Age cannot wither, nor custom stale her infinite
variety." This would have been true of them had they lived to rare
antiquity. Now it is irrevocably, horribly, and wonderfully true.
Forever and ever. Amen.
*************************************************************
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School
JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ
Home(stead) Page:
http://www.eff.org/~barlow
MegaPhone: 800/654-4322
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European RentaFistFone: +44(0)700-770-7779
Barlow in Meatspace Now: Grosvenor House, London
Coming soon to: Amsterdam 8/3-8 -> Stonehenge/Cornwall 8/9-11 -> London
8/12-13 -> New York City 13-15 -> Salt Lake City 8/16 -> Pinedale, Wyoming
8/16-19 -> San Francisco..?J
In Memoriam:
Miriam Jenkins Barlow Bailey (1905-1999)
John Kennedy (1960-1999)
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (1966-1999)
JJJJ
**************************************************************
My guru is death.
-- The Buddha