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| (Society of Medalist 1987 Robert Cronbach "Sunrise & Moonrise" |
This version of the gospel classic is dedicated to my father, who learned a lot of Ozark songs and music style from growing up in Missouri, and even more from hanging out with Woody Guthrie in New York City in the 1930s, when walking through the empty late night streets from some radical leftwing meeting. In turn, my father taught me this music style when as a kid I accompanied him in our van when he was driving some new piece of landscape bronze sculpture he had completed to its destination. He would sing a dozen or songs he had learned from Woody or from friends in St Louis where Dad had grown up. He didn't intent to teach me as such, just keeping us entertained through the long drives to upstate New York, or Missouri, or some other distant locale (Dad hated the radio). He knew a dozen songs, but the only one I remember is the Ozark version of 'Careless Love" ("well its on this railroad track I stand, well, its on this rail-road track I stand- with a ticket to heaven in my hand'). I never listened much to "hillbilly" music after that, but I remembered the style, and when the offer came to play in the Mountlake Terrace Lutheran Church in 1999, I discovered that the congregation loved it when I played an old gospel hymn in my father's 'Ozark mountain' style. For many of these blue-collar families, this was their home style - and I kept the job for 14 years. Thanks, Dad!
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| One of Dad's "architectural" pieces, from his late period (c. 1980s) |
I replied mentally – so as not to offend – “heck, I’ve been seeing that ever since my Dad showed me how to look when I was 12 years old!” So psychedelics held no visual excitement for me: they were strictly for rare social use). Dad was a great teacher – all his college class students loved him – and by his teaching he gave me new eyes, which have stayed with me ever since (and how fortunate that I am spending my last years in a country with the most beautiful skies and landscapes I have ever seen, in life or even on Metroflix
Dad’s one flaw was that he feared that one of his children might become more famous than he was – not unusual in artists, who often feel that its bad enough have to face competition from the outside world, let alone from your own children (read Steve Martin’s autobiography Born Standing
Up for a really extreme case of this: ). My brother Mike had the perfect career from Dad’s viewpoint: becoming a well-off civil servant with no possibility of international fame, while first my sister, and then myself, became artists (in prose and in music respectively) and he became increasingly negative towards us. His rare comments on our work were made only to disparage it. However, he also loved us as a father and his letters and rare meetings with us were startling alterations of love and anger, praise for success (rarely) with subtle denigrations of whatever we were doing. And my sister Maria discovered there had been several times when he had deliberately tried to block our success so we would not surpass him.
I reacted by throwing away all the copies I had made of photos of his work – and then feeling ashamed of this psychic attack on my father. Then I read in a book of Jewish ethics that if a parent is trying to harm his or her child, the Fifth commandment is superseded by the commandment to protect your life. But then again Rabbi Moses Cordovero’s Palm Tree of Deborah, which I ‘providentially” found just as I was beginning this section, which says that just as the Lord forgives humans, we need to those whom we think have hurt us before we pray.
I reacted by throwing away all the copies I had made of photos of his work – and then feeling ashamed of this psychic attack on my father. Then I read in a book of Jewish ethics that if a parent is trying to harm his or her child, the Fifth commandment is superseded by the commandment to protect your life. But then again Rabbi Moses Cordovero’s Palm Tree of Deborah, which I ‘providentially” found just as I was beginning this section, which says that just as the Lord forgives humans, we need to those whom we think have hurt us before we pray.
The Holy One .. recalls all the good deeds the have done from the days
Of their birth, .. So should a human behave …. Behold there was a time
when he had not sinned …And he should recall the good they had done
in their youth .. In this way no human shall be found unworthy to be
prayed for ….. (Cordovero, The Palm Tree of Deborah, trans. Louis Jacobs,
Sepher-Hermon Press, 1974)
In his last years, when we met occasionally, his attitude towards his children was really schizophrenic: warm parental praise and contemptuous criticism, unpredictably alternating without any warning, Still, I knew how much he loved me when on my last visit to him in his small apartment in Mexico, I saw every book I had ever mailed to him arranged in a neat row on the windowsill next to his bed.
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