9th & 10th October, 2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rod 4/16/04 Photo by Billy Iz

A Thought for Today

Belief usually brings relief.

 

TWO NEW APPEARANCES

Saturday October 30th

TEXAS 2004 BOOK FESTIVAL
Reading and Book Signings

Reading 12:45 PM
The State Capitol Auditorium,
Congress & 11th St. Austin, Texas

Book Signings
1:45 PM. & 4:15 PM
Barnes & Noble Book Signing Tent.
State Capitol Grounds

For more info: www.texasbookfestival.org

Saturday November 6th

THE BEST IS YET TO COME
The Music of Cy Coleman

With an all star cast including
DEBBIE ALLEN*, CHRISTINE ANDREAS, LUCIE ARNAZ,
LIZ CALLAWAY, KEITH CARRADINE*, JOY CLAUSSEN, CAROLE COOK, TYNE DALY, NANCY DUSSAULT , ILENE GRAFF*, KEN HOWARD*, BILL HUTTON, JANE A. JOHNSTON, PAULA KELLY, JANE LANIER, MICHELE LEE*, MARIN MAZZIE, ROD MCKUEN, BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL, JACK NOSEWORTHY, VALARIE PETTIFORD, CHARLOTTE RAE, ALICE RIPLEY, CHITA RIVERA, JOHN SCHNEIDER, CHRISTOPHER SHOWERMAN, MARK SMITH, SALLY STRUTHERS, LILLIAS WHITE*, PATRICK WILSON, JO ANNE WORLEY...

* Re-creating an original Broadway performance.

Directed by
David Galligan
Musical Director:
Ben Lanzarone
Lighting Design:
Michael Zinman
Executive Producer:
David Michaels

Saturday, November 6, 2004, 8pm
Luckman Fine Arts Complex,
5151 State University Drive
Campus of Cal State University Los Angeles


Tickets: $60, $30, $60, $100, $150, $200
(323) 656-9069 • S.T.A.G.E. Website www.stagela.com

FROM the¨BOOKS

Three Entries from Coming Close to the Earth

A Statement
You fill me with anxiety and that is better than not being filled at all. You open up your life to me - could I ask more. I have no quarrel with the men who love or have loved you, only appreciation for their taste.

I believe that every time we love or try to love, unconsciously we seek out duplicates, probably with help from someone else because the cloning is not always obvious. Then again there are those rare times when opposites like magnets pull us forward. Maybe this was such a time.

Changing Course
A compass is a small thing, trapped amid the panel’s instruments or resting in the hand. I am not sure any compass knows the truth - any more than all or any of us knows what’s real or facsimile. The needle hasn’t quivered, but I think the vessel’s changing course. Where it’s bound for I’m not sure, but it will go on pounding through the seas till every sea’s been sailed.

Call me or send a message in a bottle. I’ll be within the next port waiting. Always in the harbor.

Times
To write about you is not easy. Compare it to a blind that its spring flaps up to smash the window casing. To praise or talk about you would do more injury than compliment.

Within my own heart’s head, I remember sun in California, mid-Manhattan corridors and hotel beds, a Sunday walk within Miami’s mall. Island nights of fireflies and lightning.

Some pages in my diary are blotted or unused. Those must have been the happiest of times, for who can jot down happiness when it is happening? Bad times? Sure.

Still in this year together I have never once considered life or lifetime to be anything but synonymous with you.

-from “Coming Close To The Earth,” 1977, 1978

IN CONCLUSION

Hope I’ll be seeing some of you at the end of the month in Texas or California. In “The Best is Yet to Come” I’m singing two songs; one a major hit for Tony Bennett the other made into a standard by Frank Sinatra.

Sleep warm and please continue to urge all of your friends to file absentee ballots (they leave a paper trail.) I’m off to watch the second presidential debate and then later surf channels so the pundits can tell me who won. Tomorrow I hope to get some mail answered for Ask Rod.

RM 10/8/2004 5:45PM PST

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ROD McKUEN CONCERTS

ROD McKUEN APPEARANCES

notable birthdays

Saturday 9 October

Scott Bakula o Jackson Browne o Zachery Ty Bryan o Steve Burns o Bruce Caption o Bruce Catton o Fyvush Finkel o Georgi Griffith o E. Howard Hunt o Brian Lamb o John Lennon o Sean Ono Lennon o Walter O’Malley o Aimee Semple McPherson o Michael Pare o Joe Pepitone o Eddie Rickenbacker o Howard St. John o Camille Saint-Saens o Savannah o Tony Shalhoub o Alastair Sim o Randy Spelling o Jacques Tati o Peter Tosh

Sunday 10 October

Antonio Bandaras o Bob Burnquist o James Calvelle o Charles Dance o Dale Earnhardt, Jr. o Harry "Sweets" Edison o Brett Favre o Johnny Green o Helen Hayes o Ivory Joe Hunter o Richard Jaeckel o Mike Malinin o Thelonious Monk o Mya o Jodi Lyn O'Keefe o Sharon Osbourne o Harold Pinter o John Prine o David Lee Roth o Bob San Souci o Joanna Shimkus o Dallas Smith o Adlai E. Stevenson III o Julia Sweeney o Tanya Tucker o Giuseppe Verdi o Ben Vereen o Ed Wood, Jr.

Rod's random thoughts Because pride seldom lets us beg forgiveness, we must content ourselves with dying a little each time a door is closed.

To love is to live out among the giants.

Ideas have in common with the acorn the luxury of starting small and taking several lifetimes to become oaks.

JOHN LENNON, 1940 – 1980

This man
came across the universe
                         when needed
crying 'nothing's gonna change
                         my world'
and was taken from it
long before the job
that he invented for himself
                        was finished.

The silt that settles in and saddens
erases endings and enrages starts
is not that maniacs continue
to still genius,
it is the knowledge knocked into us
                                      yet again
that peace is not with the people
and love cannot, will not be legislated.
It does not spread among us
with the urgency of pestilence or plague.

Lunacy is the new epidemic.
Will there be statistics soon
that tell us madness now strikes
                                    one in four ?

The widow and the child
the nation and the citizen
                    cannot mourn
and by so doing be relieved.

With presidents and popes
                        and poet minstrels
                              in the crossfire,
who walks in safety ?
Not the Georgia child,
not the city subway rider,
not some divided country
believing that it fights a holy war
by sacrificing its people
                         to famine and fast.

It is not enough to hope
                       that ashes
taken by the wind so quickly
will come to earth as seeds,
and new John Lennons will begin to sprout
by the thousands and the thousands.
We must continue to BELIEVE
that many are the men of peace
who from time to time will set out
                     to walk among us.

Even now
as we wait, anticipate
the arrival of the newest architect
                        of sensibility
we are late in joining hands
to form a circle of protection for him.

But I have noticed, only recently
that the widows of slain giants
take on a certain afterglow,
or was this the shine
that illuminated those great men
                                 before the slayings
seen only now
because the greatness we observed
                                      has been removed.
Perhaps it is a partnership,
one we never understood.
                                If so
the half that stayed behind
shines brighter than most constellations,
their guiding light or residue
remains a beacon
a searchlight that still scans the heavens
in search of that bright beam
                         that went ahead.

                                - from "The Beautiful Strangers," 1981

 
© 1977, 1978, 1981, 2000, 2004 by Stanyan Music Group & Rod McKuen. All Rights Reserved
Webmaster: Ken Blackie o Birthday research by Wade Alexander, coordinated by Melinda Smith
Poetry from the collection of Jay Hagan o Sound & Fury: Dr. Eric Yeager o Editor at Large: Bruce Bellingham
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