Visits with the dead people make for a satisfying life
Odd as it seems, I like watching dead people. For example, a few weeks back I stumbled across Johnny Carson on YouTube and still check him out now and then, making me wonder what sort of dried-up, stick-in-the-mud I’ve become. Lots of dead people talk to me on his show while I laugh at jokes uttered years ago while the folks saying them molder in their graves or dodder in The Retirement Home for Depleted Comedians. How would today’s nominal 22-year-olds react to Johnny Carson — or me sitting there enjoying that ancient stuff?
“Who the &%$@# is Johnny Carson?” they’d say, pounding away on their iPhones, finally saying, “Can I help you out of your chair or bring you your dose of Milk of Magnesia?”
I’d think, “Shut up, you lame-brained miscreants who wouldn’t know Don Rickles from a typewriter. And, by the way, stay off my lawn!” Is that what I’m becoming?
And I also like listening to dead people’s music. It's always amazed me how The Modern Jazz Quartet could take the long-dead J.S. Bach’s stylings and transform them so seamlessly into their own jazz idiom. Bach influenced the MJQ (John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Connie Kay) — now they’re all dead. But they live for me, nearly every day.
Wish I had recorded my mother’s piano playing so I could listen today as I did years ago. I recall some of her songs, but as I try to hear the notes and phrases, I sadly can’t. I also listen to living people’s music, especially old guys like The Rolling Stones, even though those boys have looked dead for years. Ugly, too.
Sometimes I'm told I look and act like dead people. On one occasion, I was having a fine time with my children and grandchildren — laughing and carrying on — when a relative across the room said she thought my brother Jerry was in the room. “You look like him and laugh just like him,” she said. “So does your son Alex. I couldn’t tell the difference.” My brother Jerry died several years ago. I’m honored to carry on in his image and manners. In many ways he still lives — for me and others who knew him.
I like talking to dead people. This is not something I particularly take pride in, but I’ve joked and laughed with dead folks as though they were standing beside me. People I’ve admired and trusted compel me to chat them up on occasion, and I do — my lips move, telling them what I’m up to and frequently ask their advice. (Dear reader, let this be our secret. OK?)
And as always, I like reading dead people’s writing. Recently, I reread Herman Melville’s Moby Dick for the third time while Ishmael and Ahab spoke to me anew as though I were sailing with them, keeping a sharp eye out for the Great White Whale. Did we spot him? Read for yourself. I often reread many other dead people's writing: Flannery O'Connor, Alice Munro, Ernest Hemingway, Philip Roth, Joan Didion. All alive, as far as I'm concerned.
Do dead people fascinate me because I become closer to them each day? I'm not morbid and don’t want to live in the past. Yet, what's becoming of me? So often when the dead come alive, I’m a satisfied man — blessed to have known them. Sometimes I wonder if they know me now as I know them. Maybe so. Hard to say. But I suppose death is always something to contemplate, to wonder.
Michael Pulley lives in Springfield. He can be reached at mpulley634@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: A continued fondness for the work of the dead
