Yesterday at UCLA Medical Center, our friend Lowell Smith died after a bout with lung cancer.
He was 56 years old, or at least that's what he was admitting to. Lowell and I had a unique friendship. I was one of the few people to know him after his dancing career. He still had a dance career as choreographer and ballet master. But, I met him after he retired from dancing himself.
I was fortunate to spend a couple of weeks with him in L.A. before he went into the hospital. Those weeks were some of the best I've had.
This still is from some footage I shot while we were together. Hopefully, I can edit something meaningful from it.
3 comments:
MARY JANE WHITE
ATTORNEY & COUNSELOR AT LAW
The O. J. Hager House
402 Allamakee Street
Waukon, Iowa 52172
MARY JANE WHITE (563) 568-4038
FAX: (563) 568-4038
E-Mail: mjw3@earthlink.net
November 14, 2007
Mrs. Dorothy Smith
2552 Lafayette
Memphis, Tennessee
Dear Mrs. Dorothy Smith,
I was very saddened to learn of the most untimely death of your son, Lowell Dennis Smith, on October 22, 2007.
Last weekend, I had (as I have done periodically for many years) checked up on him through the Internet, to read of his most recent accomplishments and travels. Of course, I was stunned to learn he had died—but I was not surprised that his death was noteworthy, a matter for both the AP wires and a New York Times obituary. He was an extraordinary person.
I do not think there has been a day since I met him at the North Carolina School of the Arts that a thought or two of him has not crossed my mind—like a brilliant dragonfly. He was a person of such great vitality, charm and raw talent! it is difficult to accept that he is no longer a living part of this world
I will always remember Lowell taking me in to the NCSA library to play me Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. It was a piece of music he wanted to be able to choreograph for—achingly beautiful—as you are likely to know.
I remember, too, and always will, his near single-minded determination to dance—whether his car was repossessed, whether he had water or lights or rent money—he did not miss class, or rehearsal, or the chance of performance. He did whatever he had to do, to keep dancing.
It grieves me to know that he was not given the opportunity of another forty years (which he deserved) to finish his work as a choreographer and great teacher (as he dreamed to be, when he was 19 and into his early twenties, as I knew him), but it does comfort me to know that his performances were always, always well-noted, and consistently appreciated in the great capitols of the world of dance.
. I know you must have been extremely proud of him, and that you and the rest of his family will miss him very much. Please accept my condolences on your loss.
Sincerely,
Mary Jane White
Dear Bear Creek NYC, The letter I've posted was "returned to sender." If you, or someone close to Lowell might know Dorothy's current address, I would appreciate knowing it. Mary Jane White
This is for the NYC February event.
Mary Jane White
LOWELL’S ELEGY
Happy New Year
--New World—New Land—New Home!
--New Light—New Border—New Eve!
Our first letter to your New . . .
--Our misunderstanding, to think it might be “green”—
(Lush—pastoral)—your resonant, sonorous place:
Aeolus’ empty tower.
Our first letter to you from the Past,
Where, without you, we languish,
From Mother Earth, that for you now is simply one
Of the stars . . . Our conventions at leave-taking, of distancing,
By which a beloved becomes a someone,
An unbelievable person, merely fabulous.
Shall we tell you how we learned of your—?
No earthquake, no avalanche.
A screen opened—a page written by someone—(you—
Are who we adored). –A sad story.
--In the Times and the Daily. –Would you write something?
--Where? – At UCLA. (A window onto palm branches.
A sheet.) --You haven’t seen the newspapers?
Will you write something? --No. –But . . . --Please, spare us.
Aloud: It would be hard. Inwardly: We won’t give him up.
--In a sanatorium. (In a rented heaven).
--When? --Yesterday, day before yesterday, I don’t remember.
Coming to out to eat? --No, we won’t be.
Aloud: Our family. Inwardly: Anything but—some Judas.
Happy New Year! (Starting tomorrow!)—
Shall we tell you what we did on learning of . . .?
Shh . . . a slip of our tongues. Out of habit.
When we were always one to put life and death in italics,
As if they were the most idle gossip.
We didn’t do anything, but something
Happened, without leaving so much as an echo
Or shadow!
So--how did you go?
Your heart—how did it break and not fly
Apart? As if drawn behind matched horses,
Black as coal, and slick as ribbons,
As if by eagles, you said, flying, no less,
Was it that breathtaking—or more?
Sweeter? With no more of life’s highs, or lows,
For those who’ve flown behind those eagles,
Though we were blood-coupled to this world:
Whoever has been so drawn--has seen the next world
In this. It makes for a smooth transition!
If we utter the words life and death with a latent
Smirk—you widen yours to meet it!
If we utter the words life and death with footnotes,
With asterisks (hoping there might be some night yet:
Instead of this cerebral hemisphere—
Starlit!)
Friend, don’t let us forget to say:
If some letters now
Come by e-mail, and not enveloped—
It’s not because, as they say nowadays, everything’s
Run to ruin, or that the dead are expected to swallow anything—
Without complaint!—but to say that our next world,
--O, from childhood, hidden behind our shyness, we
Knew: is not dumbstruck, but speaks in every tongue.
If we ask, sadly: will you
Never want to know again, what’s Samuel Barber’s
Best? What’s the single, fully-
Closed step upon a star?
Do we wander? But nothing
Can be found—to distract us from you.
Every thought, each, Du Lieber,
Syllable leads to you—whatever
Its meaning
And there’s
No place you’ve not been, no, save one: the grave.
It all seems as if it never was, and all is as it was,
--Really, about me, nothing at all?—
Where are you, our dear, and how are you?
Tell us, without fail, we insist—
Everything about your first glimpse of our universe
(That is, of your admirers left behind
In it) and the last—of our planet,
Only once is it given you—to see—as a whole!
Some encounter, not of you with your dust, or your soul with its body
(To distinguish such parts is to insult them both)
But your encounter, of you in yourself, of you with yourself even,
--To be taken by Zeus doesn’t mean he’s done you an honor—
Of Castor—of you in yourself—with Pollux.
Of marble—of you with yourself, with a slender grass blade,
No parting, no meeting—a mere confrontation
Of witnesses: as nearly a parting as a first
Meeting.
How did you fix your gaze
On your own hand (at the trace—in it—of movement)
From your several (how many?) million miles—
Infinite, pre-temporal—
Altitude, above the crystal-levels
Of your two oceans—and world’s other watery saucers?
It all seems like it never was, and all is as it will be—
As it is for us in our backwaters.
It all seems like it never was, and all is as it is already
--What do you, conscripted, you-called-away care how our final weeks
Of the year run out!—and where else are we to gaze,
Elbows on the balcony rail,
From this—if not to the next world, and from that next—
If not back to the much-suffering this.
In a land between two oceans, we live. In small towns of nests
And branches. Something to catch the eye of a realtor:
Our cells with a beautiful view
Of the skylines—the pile of Gotham’s chimera—
Of Los Angeles—and a bit beyond . . .
Resting your elbows on the scarlet rail,
How absurd to you (some would say, may) “must seem,”
(We would say, surely) must be, from your matchless altitude,
Our Bellevues and Belevederes!
We wander. In detail. In haste.
Your wake is upon us. To what, with whom, shall we offer toasts
Across a table? With what? With cotton wadding—
For foam. To what? Let the clock strike—and why am we even here?
What are we to do—make a celebratory racket
With this internal rhyme: Our dear—no more?
If you, such an eye, go dark,
Life’s not life, death not death,
Meaning darkens--as we may come to know in time, should we ever come face to face!—
Not in life, not in death,—but in some third realm, some new
Aspect. So, to that, then, (having strewn out all the straw of custom—
As the seventh year of our new century passes
Into the eighth--our privilege
To see it out with you, to see it in with you!)
Over some table, too wide to see across,
Shall we salute you with a quiet clink,
Glass to glass? No—not just our tavern-ware:
We against you, two givens moving beyond time:
Into a third realm.
Across a table—where a cross marks your place.
How many places—in the country, so much space
Out of town! For whom else, if not for us,
Does a bush incline? Places—that were ours,
And everybody else’s! All the leaves! All the needles!
Places of your encounters with us (of your encounters with yourself).
(We’re prepared to attend even some awful first-run with you—
Should we admit that?) Not to mention the other places! Or the months!
Or the weeks! Or the rainy, un-peopled
Streets! Or the mornings! Or altogether everything else
Not yet broken into by nightingales!
Likely, we see badly, from our pit,
Likely, you see better, higher up:
Nothing ever worked out between us.
So little, so clearly and simply
Nothing, nothing to suit our capacity or stature
--Useless even to count the loss.
Nothing except—expect nothing
Out of the ordinary, (how clumsy of you to be out
Of ordinary time!)—but in what time would you arrive
If you could?
It’s an old refrain:
Even nothing plus something is
Something—even if only from a distance—a shadow
Of a shadow! Nothing: that hour, that day,
That house—even a prisoner—condemned—in his manacles,
Has the memory of: those lips!
Or do such things court for too much?
Out of all that, a single world
Was ours, as we ourselves were just a reflection
Of ourselves,--for all this—all that light!
From our cities and towns—we wish you
Happy new place, dear, world, dear!
To the furthermost point of proof—
Happy new eye, our dear, ear, our dear!
Anything would have been an obstacle
To you: a passion, a friendship.
Happy new sound, dear Echo!
Happy new echoes, dear Sound!
How many times seated on a school bench:
What are the mountains there? What are the rivers?
Are they lovely, those landscapes without visitors?
We weren’t wrong, were we, dear—Heaven—is mountainous,
Stormy? Free of all claims, all dower—
There’s not a single heaven, but beyond it lies another
Heaven? In terraces? As we judge by our Appalachia—
Heaven cannot fail to be
An amphitheatre. (A curtain lowered on someone . . .)
We weren’t mistaken, dear, God is – a spreading
Baobab? No Sun King—
And not just one God? But beyond him another
God?
How are you dancing, in your new space?
But if you are—your dances are: for you yourself are—
Dance! How does one choreograph, in that good life,
With no movement for your elbow, no gesture of your hand,
(Your cupped hand).
Send us some news of yourself, in your
usual, lightly-penciled and slanting scrawl!
And, dear, how do you find the new moves?
But, to make the new moves
Properly—what’s Death—if not
A whole new series of movements?
It’s no where to go: a language mastered.
A whole new series of meanings and
Gestures.
--Goodbye! Until we meet!
We don’t know--that we will, but--let’s agree to.
Beyond the earth that lies before us—
Beyond the seas, dear, beyond the last of us!
So we don’t lose touch—drop us a note ahead of time.
Happy new tracings of sound, dear!
Up the ladders of the sky, climb with your Offering . . .
Happy new gesture, dear!
--So nothing spills on it, we lift our—level, on our palms.—
Above New York’s skyline and L.A.’s, above the manifest
And total separation—this—we have addressed:
Lowell—Dennis--Smith--for delivery, into his hands.
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